Michael Sanserino is tweeting out a bunch of news today, but the most important points are here: Jonathan Sanchez has made the Pirates' rotation and Brandon Inge will make the Pirates' roster, though he may open the season on the disabled list. I've talked quite a bit about Sanchez already, particularly in yesterday's post about the rotation. There's some room for discussion over whether Neal Huntington did enough to bolster the rotation this winter (Francisco Liriano's weird injury was unforseeable and came at a pretty late date in the winter, Jeff Karstens' shoulder injury was only unforseeable if you're blind, obviously Kyle McPherson pitched poorly this spring and the team probably hoped for better from him, etc.), and so it's pretty unfortunate that Sanchez has made the rotation, but it's still hard to be hugely upset over it. As I wrote, the rotation is in a fluid situation for the early part of the season and at least if he sucks, there will be other options to try. Those options might suck, too, but it is what it is. Sanserino's other news is that neither Francisco Liriano nor Charlie Morton will go on the 60-day disabled list, which means that the Pirates are targeting fairly early-season returns for both of them. This rotation is ugly right now, but it should at least be acknowledged that it's a work in progress.

It's incredibly hard for me to stomach a roster that puts (or presumably will put) both Brandon Inge and John McDonald on the 25-man roster. If Inge starts the season out on the disabled list it's possible that it won't ever come to this, but the possibility is now looming. There is no universe in which Inge and McDonald don't replicate their skills; neither can hit, Inge can field well at third and no where else, McDonald can field well at short and at least passably at second and third. Still, neither can hit, and at some point the Pirates will need some bench players that can do that. It's true that the Sanchez/Jones and Snider/Tabata platoons will leave someone on the bench that can hit, but they'll always be same-handed and frankly, I think it's generous to say that Jose Tabata and Travis Snider can hit anyway. 

One way to approach this decision is to remember what Brandon McCarthy said about Inge and Jonny Gomes and their role on last year's Oakland club: that having fun guys that love to play baseball and make life easy for the young players is very seriously invaluable in a way that you simply cannot understand if you've never played Major League Baseball. McCarthy is a really smart guy -- definitely one of the smartest players in baseball -- and while I'd brush off most players making comments like this, he's one of the few players whose opinion I'd respect on something like this. I think he intentionally overstated the opinion that each was worth 10 wins to the club to get people to pay attention to him, but the point is taken. Sometimes it's good to have Brandon Inge or John McDonald around. 

On the flip side of that is this post by Wilbur Miller, which basically says that you'll never know if young players are any good if you don't just let them play. Jordy Mercer has a slick glove, good instincts in the field, and a little bit of pop in his bat. John McDonald and Clint Barmes are basically the same player. Why not leave Mercer around instead of one of those two, let him play against some lefties, slowly phase him in, and see if he can't be better than the 1-2 win shortstop that you've already settled for? Josh Harrison really hasn't hit much in Pittsburgh but he hit quite a bit in the minors. Frankly, even though I'd say that Inge and McDonald are both "better players" right now, I'd rather have Harrison at second for a long stretch if Neil Walker goes down again. I rag on him all the time, but if you want to talk intangibles, Harrison honestly has an infectious joy for baseball that makes even me smile sometimes. And I haven't even mentioned Ivan De Jesus: I know he's a project because of some maybe lingering issues from his long-ago broken leg, but why on earth would you even want to trade for a young guy that's not better than Brandon Inge or John McDonald? How are the Pirates better served with old, known-quantity guys than young players like this that might have even any upside at all? 

I suppose what bugs me the most is that in Year Five of Neal Huntington's run as GM, the Pirates are going to break camp with Jonathan Sanchez and John McDonald and maybe even Brandon Inge all on the roster. How are there not better options than this? How can you run a team for five years and build things from the bottom up, and not be able to do better than this for your Opening Day roster? I hope I'm wrong about all of this and given the fluid situation with the rotation and Inge possibly starting the year out on the disabled list, I'll freely admit that I might be. Still, this isn't where I thought we'd be in 2013 and I don't have a very good feeling about it. 

Here are the pitchers that I'm comfortable with in the Pirates' pitching staff (in order of confidence), one week before the 2013 season begins:

1. AJ Burnett
2. Wandy Rodriguez
3. James McDonald

That's not a great trio, but it's a pretty good one. Burnett had a strong year last year in the National League and in a friendly ballpark, with the Pirates' coaching staff helping him induce as many ground balls as he ever has in his career. He's getting older and he clearly ran out of gas late in 2012, but I don't really think there's any reason that he shouldn't be able to just about replicate his 2012 season for the Pirates in 2013.

Wandy Rodriguez was the Pirates' best starter after the trade deadline last year. He's 34 now and his strikeouts keep dropping, but he gets more groundballs now than he ever has and this is the sort of thing (quite possibly the only thing) the Pirates' coaching staff seems to be able to work with. Like Burnett, I'd expect his 2013 to look at lot like his 2012, which means 200-odd innings, a nice K/BB ratio, some groundballs, and mostly good starts with some bad ones peppered in the middle.

There is a caveat to both Burnett and Rodriguez. It's easy to look at how a pitcher has pitched and see no huge health issues and say that they'll be about the same in the coming season. The problem here is that Burnett is 36 and Rodriguez is 34 (they both have January birthdays). Eventually these two are going to wake up and be not quite the pitcher that they were the year before, for no reason other than that they're on the downside of their careers. I feel OK about Burnett even though he's older, because his rate numbers last year looked just about like they did during his last few years in Florida and his first year in Toronto. They weren't quite as good as his best years, but I don't think it's a precipitous drop. I'm concerned about Rodriguez a bit, though, because his velocity and strikeouts have been falling for a couple of years already. He's adjusted by getting more groundballs, but it's going to bite him eventually. I don't think that this year will be the year that either guy starts to really decline, but it's not fair to talk about how they're going to pitch in 2013 without mentioning their age and what that might mean for them.

James McDonald is a talented but wildly inconsistent pitcher, which means that he's going to have brilliant stretches and awful ones. Hopefully with age will come a stabilization of his mechanics and an adaption to the long big league season, which would probably tip the scales in favor of the brilliant stretches and make him an AJ Burnett-like pitcher. This is not a sure thing. 

These are the pitchers that will help the Pirates at some point in 2013 that are not available to them right now, in order of potential impact: 

1. Gerrit Cole
2. Francisco Liriano
3. Jeff Karstens
4. Charlie Morton

Gerrit Cole is starting 2013 in Triple-A because he is not ready for the Major Leagues quite yet. Frankly, I'd say that anyone that tells you otherwise is either uniformed or has a blatant agenda. That being said, the second that Cole steps foot on the mound in black and gold, he will become one of the most talented pitchers in Pirate history. This is not hyperbole -- the Pirates just haven't had nearly as many super-talented pitchers as you might expect a franchise founded in 1887 to have had by now. Talent is a guarantee of nothing, though. You surely remember Kris Benson. That's particularly true of someone as young as Cole is right now. Even if he blows the doors off of Triple-A and joins the Pirates in June, he's likely to get beaten up a little bit in the early part of his career. 

Returns diminish quickly afer Cole. We've been over Liriano ad nauseum this winter. He's talented, but even if he were 100% healthy he'd be a gamble to perform. He's not healthy and frankly, I don't think anyone outside of the team has any idea how his broken non-pitching humerus will really affect his pitching this year. Karstens is a decent pitcher, but his shoulder injuries scare the crap out of me and I don't think he should be counted on for anything substantial this year. Morton is more intriguing from an intellectual standpoint, because of the way he completely altered his approach to succeed in a non-traditional way for a starter. I do think that he's talented enough to come back from his Tommy John surgery to be a decent back-of-the-rotation guy, but I also realize that that's far from a slam dunk and that he wasn't really all that great of a pitcher before he got hurt, so relying too heavily on him is pretty stupid. 

It's probably accurate to say that what the Pirates have right now is a decent middle of a rotation with Burnett and Rodriguez and McDonald. There aren't any aces among that trio, but you can get away without having a true top of the rotation if you also avoid having a true bottom of the rotation. That is, you'd have a pretty decent rotation if you had five #3 starters. You can even argue that if Cole comes up and sets the National League on fire and the coaching staff helps Liriano find his old form during his rehab that by 1 July, we're going to look really dumb for worrying about the rotation in April. 

There are two problems with that scenario. The first is that it's hugely optimistic. The second is that roughly one half of the season will be played between 1 April and 1 July. How, exactly, will the Pirates bridge that gap? This is where things get really dicey. Really dicey. Here are five more pitchers likely to log innings for the Pirates in the season's first half, based on how many innings they will probably throw in black and gold: 

1. Jeff Locke
2. Jonathan Sanchez
3. Kyle McPherson
4. Jeanmar Gomez

Jonathan Sanchez is number two! And not in a scatological humor kind of way, in an actual "This guy is going to make the rotation and if he doesn't the options aren't really a whole lot better" kind of way. I wrote about Locke and McPherson a couple of weeks ago; I'm not really impressed or hugely encouraged by either guy, though I will admit that there is some upside to them. Logically (that is, based on minor league stats, overall level of experience, and not being a shambling disaster this spring) Locke is the one that deserves the first shot and he'll get it. 

I feel like I covered Sanchez pretty well in my post on him from Bradenton. Sanchez is 1.) coming off of a disastrous year, 2.) left-handed, and 3.) capable of striking out a ton of hitters. Numbers two and three mitigate number one to the point that he's the sort of pitcher that will always get another shot (see: Perez, Oliver -- LOOGY extraordinaire, Seattle Mariners), but I'd much rather that that shot start in Indianapolis and not Pittsburgh. It's one thing to think that you can fix Jonathan Sanchez; any pitching coach worth his salt must think he can fix Jonathan Sanchez. It's another thing to actually rely on fixing Jonathan Sanchez as part of your strategy for a season. Given the existent questions about McDonald, Locke, McPherson Liriano, and Karstens, the Pirates are now perilously close to relying on Sanchez before moving on down to Jeanmar Gomez. 

Jeanmar Gomez is kind of like Charlie Morton; he works in theory, but not so much in practice. He's a decent-sized guy (he's listed at 6'3"), he's capable of throwing fairly hard (his fastball/sinker can sometimes get into the lower-mid 90s), and he can induce groundballs. It's just not all there, though, and he gets hit hard a lot and he's not very good. He could maybe, possibly, make some decent spot-starts against right-heavy lineups in a park like PNC, but needing him to do more requires him to be a better pitcher than he's been in the past. He's only 26 and he has some tools, of course, so it's not completely impossible, but counting on this to happen is pretty foolish.

That means that what the Pirates have on Opening Day is the aforementioned solid middle of the rotation (Burnett, Rodriguez, McDonald), but no top of the rotation and a potentially disastrous back-end of the rotation. This is really bad news for as long as this situation persists. Locke and Sanchez/McPherson could absolutely combine to give the Pirates a decent back end of their rotation that's much better than it seems like they will be right now, but I can tell you that putting your eggs in this basket seems like a good way to end up with a basket full of rotten eggs. 

The problem is that what the Pirates need for the rotation to be any sort of good (Cole coming straight out of Triple-A as an ace, Liriano being relatively healthy and relative good, McDonald putting everything together) seems less likely to me to happen than the scenarios that make the Pirates' rotation a disaster (Liriano not really pitching much all year, Karstens not pitching much, Cole not rushing to the big leagues and having some growing pains at least at first, Sanchez, Locke, McPherson, etc. being really, really bad). Burnett and Rodriguez and McDonald are nice enough pitchers, but they're just not good enough to prop up a rotation that could be 40% lead anchor.

There's plenty of potential here. Burnett and Rodriguez and McDonald all have enough raw ability that they could actually be better than they were last year (not that it's likely, just possible) or that they could go through a blazing stretch of out-pitching peripherals to open the season and keep things afloat while Locke and Sanchez or whoever are still making regular starts. And with Cole coming and McPherson and maybe Irwin in Triple-A and Liriano, Morton, and Karstens all expected to make varying sorts of returns, the rotation shouldn't ever get stuck in a static state of terribleness. There should always be someone else that has a non-zero chance of being a useful pitcher (that is, no Dana Evelands or Hayden Penns, though Jeanmar Gomez and Jonathan Sanchez are awfully close to that level) that the team can give starts to if someone is struggling. That being said, a plan of "toss a bunch of crap at the wall and hope that something sticks" isn't really all that good of a plan when your top three starters don't include any elite pitchers.

There are a few places where this could go right and a lot of places where it could go wrong. 

Breathe in. Can you feel it? In one week, real live baseball will be here. We're going to be getting answers to all of our Pirate questions in seven short days, whether we like them or not. To kick your week off, here are two season preview posts I wrote at other sites: 

I did a fantasy-type preview for Razzball, which is honestly always one of my favorite Q&As to do every spring. 

I also did C70's "Playing Pepper" preview, which is a little more straight-forward and a little more doomy-and-gloomy. 

Season Preview Week at WHYGAVS starts in earnest at some point in the next 12 hours, just as soon as I remember what I was doing in lab before I left and find some time to write about the abject and horrific disaster that the Pirates' pitching staff is going to be this season. 

Spring training is like this: on Thursday night you see the entire Pirate starting line up in Sarasota and you get excited about it, until you realize that you also have tickets for Friday's game and Friday's game is starting in 15 hours and there's no way that any of those players you just watched are going to be playing on Friday. This is the story of Friday's game. 

Jeanmar Gomez started for the Pirates today. Jeanmar Gomez is the guy that's fallen behind Jonathan Sanchez in the race for the Pirates' fifth rotation spot. In the field behind him was Gaby Sanchez, Jordy Mercer, John McDonald, Josh Harrison, Jose Tabata, Alex Presley, Felix Pie, and Mike McKenry. In the stands, we briefly considered how nice it was knowing that this was the Pirates B-squad. The Pirates have definitely put starting lineups on the field worse than today's B-squad in the last decade and I don't mean that as a compliment to today's starting lineup. 

Not That J-Mac, Jose Tabata, and Josh Harrison. Feel the excitement! 

Gomez was OK today. The Rays had a typical spring training lineup that had a handful of regulars mixed in with some faces familiar to me as the guy that sees the Durham Bulls play a lot. Gomez got into a lot of trouble in the first and ducked out of it only allowing one run when Ryan Roberts ran into an out at third base. Other than that, the Rays squared up a few balls, but Gomez mostly kept the ball on the ground (he induced seven ground outs and just two flyouts) and didn't give up many hits after the second. Of course, he only made it through four innings and he never really wowed at any point, but he did do about the best you can hope Jeanmar Gomez to do. 

Gomez left the game after four innings with a lead, though, thanks to a Felix Pie RBI double in the third inning (it came seconds after I said to my uncle, "I think Pie has played more than any other Pirate this week, and I don't think I've seen him hit a ball hard even once), then a rare Hurdling that worked out to the benefit of the Pirates in the fourth. 

Seriously. Mike McKenry and Josh Harrison lead the inning off with perfectly placed singles. Jordy Mercer stepped up to the plate with John McDonald and the nine spot due up, and promptly squared around to bunt the runners over. The wasted out didn't matter since McDonald singled and Garrett Jones stepped up to hit a pinch-hit sac fly, but I was still pretty unamused by the whole thing. 

I caught a Hurdling in its natural element!

Jason Grilli came in and cruised through an easy fifth and so I was hoping to end my spring training trip with a nice, easy round of "the Pirates' bullpen dominates the Rays' scrubs." Then Mike Zagurski came in. I've seen a bit of speculation that Zagurski was going to make the roster based on his being a lefty that's still throwing with the team this late in the spring, but man, he was terrible today. He got absolutely lit up by the Rays, with no abilty to throw the ball by anyone on the Tampa Bay roster. In quick succession he gave up a homer to Ben Zobrist, a single to Matt Joyce, a double to Luke Scott, then walked Shelly Duncan, then gave up a double to Chris Giminez. It looked like he was going to have to suffer the ignominy of getting pulled from a spring training game when Jordy Mercer made a really heads up play that turned what looked like a 4U groundout into a crazy 4-6-2 double play that ended the inning. 

The Pirates then pulled almost everyone, and by the top of the eighth there wasn't one Pirate in the field that had a name on his back except for Mercer and Lucas May. If you haven't been to spring training, the guys without names on their backs are minor leaguers that aren't on the 40-man roster or have an NRI. Usually at McKechnie you'll see one nameless guy in an afternoon who's being rewarded for solid play. Today we saw (deep breath) Alex Dickerson, Jarek Cunningham, Junior Sosa, Stefan Welch, Jeff Larish, and Brett Carroll. All at once. 

I was curious to watch Alex Dickerson. He was like a modern version of Dr. Strangeglove at first base today. It was not pretty.

Cunningham is still a little intriguing, too, but last year was ROUGH for him. He's skinnier than I expected. 

At the point of the mass substitution, we all pretty much gave up any hope of a Pirate comeback. Which was fine, because this is how spring training works. Dickerson and Cunningham (the two out of that huge mess of players that I was interested in seeing) struck out in the seventh, then Sosa struck out and Carroll popped out to start the eighth. At that point, things flipped like a light switch. Jeff Larish bombed a double and May drew a walk. The Rays decided to change pitchers mid-inning (for the second time in a spring training game!). Someone named Kirby Something came in, and promptly served up a monster three-run homer to Stefan Welch on the very first pitch. 

Stefan Welch, if you were unaware, is an Australian utility man who's been in the Mets' system most of his career, who's never gotten above Double-A, and who played for Australia's WBC team. This is spring training. 

STEFAN WELCH, TRIUMPHANT! 

Stray observations: 

- Met David from 6-4-3 Putout last night and today. He's valiantly pecking out phone-posted recaps of these games, so make sure you check his site out. 

- Jared Hughes and Mark Melancon both pitched well today. 

- Jordy Mercer looked really slick at second base and shortstop today. He made a few heads up plays and was constantly positioned well. I will continue to not understand why Jordy Mercer isn't an acceptable backup infielder. 

- Tim Alderson closed the win out (though not without trouble), and his motion looks really awkward and uncomfortable for such a big guy. 

- On the assumption that Jeff Karstens starts the season on the DL (which isn't something that I've seen anyone say, but is a conclusion that I find hard to avoid with him not pitching a Grapefruit League game yet), I suppose I'm going to sit down and think about this Jeanmar Gomez/Jonathan Sanchez thing. I'm not really all that happy about it. 

- And finally, Clint Hurdle was looking particularly Grimace-y today: 

I'm heading back to Chapel Hill tomorrow and will decompress for a couple of days. Full-on season preview mode will begin on Monday. 

For three years now, Pirate fans have broken down every tiny aspect of Pedro Alvarez's game. What's his strikeout rate? What does that mean? Is he struggling with fastballs? Breaking balls? Is the "Daydro" thing actually a thing or a weird sampling problem? Why would he hit better during day games? Does he need contacts or something? Did you see how far he hit that ball? No, seriously, did you? Is he a good third baseman that's a little big. or is he just a bad fielder? Holy crap, did you see that throw? Can anyone become a good hitter if he strikes out 15 times in 25 plate appearances? No, seriously, I'm just asking because I don't know, but it seems pretty bad to strike out that much, doesn't it?

We've slowly gotten answers to most of these questions, and more are coming in 2013. There is one question that's always vexed us, though. What do the tops of Pedro Alvarez's ears look like? He's always got them tucked into that cap, and that's weird. Ladies and gentlemen, last night in Sarasota, with our seats directly in front of where the Pirates were stretching and right behind third base, the crack WHYGAVS investigation crew made a stunning discovery: 

Is that ... wait a second ... could it really be? 

PEDRO ALVAREZ HAS SET HIS EARS FREE! 

A new list of questions abound. Is this because the spring training hats aren't quite big enough to tuck the ears in? Will his ears go back into hiding the first time he goes into a slump? Who knows? 

Pedro: we're happy you're a Pirate. Your ears are perfectly normal. Keep them free and in the wind. Don't worry what we think about your ears. Hit home runs. 

Suddenly, I've got a good feeling about 2013. I know that doesn't make sense. Just roll with it. 

As I made my way to spring training on Sunday night, I tried to figure out the Pirates' rotation for this week. My main hope was to see Gerrit Cole in person, though I figured that might be a long shot given the late date in the spring and the fact that Cole had just pitched the day before. I was right about that; before I even made it to McKechnie field on Monday, Cole was demoted to minor league camp. My second main goal was to avoid having to see Jonathan Sanchez pitch. I realized pretty quickly that I was going to fail in that goal, too, and by Monday afternoon we'd fired out that Cole would be pitching on Thursday night in Sarasota. 

That's a mean thing to say about Jonathan Sanchez, who is still a fairly talented pitcher and certainly someone who should get the second chance the Pirates are giving him. What bothers me about Sanchez is more the idea of Sanchez arguably being the front-runner for the Pirates' fifth rotation spot on March 22nd and what that says about the 2013 Pirates. Sanchez's career with San Francisco was a spotted one; he always struck out a ton of guys, he always walked a lot of hitters, and the one year when his BABIP and hits allowed dropped, he was pretty excellent. Since that 2010 season, though, his walks have skyrocketed even further and in 2012, his strikeouts and velocity dipped and his homers allowed spiked. He was arguably the worst pitcher on two different 90-loss teams last year. 

Which is to say that if the Pirates watched him throw over the winter, decided his mechanics were back in line and his velocity seemed OK and wanted to give him a minor league invite with the idea that maybe he'd go to Indianapolis and work his way back to the bigs as a LOOGY, well, that'd be OK. With Kyle McPherson having a disastrous spring, Jeff Karstens still nursing a sore shoulder, and no word on Francisco Liriano, though, that's not what the Pirates are asking out of Jonathan Sanchez. The Pirates suddenly need Jonathan Sanchez to not suck, because they need a fifth starter. This should alarm Pirate fans: the Pirates are supposed to be either on the verge of or one year away from their first winning season in 20 years, and they might have Jonathan Sanchez on the Opening Day roster after his combined -1.8 WAR season last year. That they are in this position is a pretty bad sign, in my eyes.

All of those things being said, Jonathan Sanchez was pretty impressive on the mound tonight. The control problems that plagued him on the mound earlier this spring were completely invisible. He only walked one Oriole in five innings of work, and to my memory he didn't have a ton of deep counts. He got four strikeotus and made a couple of hitters look silly with his slider, as Jonathan Sanchez is wont to do. The gun at Ed Smith Stadium seemed a bit unreliable, but fastball was sitting at 90-91, which is about where it was when he was a decent pitcher for the Giants. Other than two hard-hit singles by Manny Machado, Sanchez shut down an Oriole lineup that contained a lot of regular players. If 2012 had never happened, I'd feel pretty OK about all of this.

2012 happened. I'm pretty concerned about all of this. 

Jonathan Sanchez was not the only thing that happened in this game, though it did end in a 0-0 tie and so it's probably true that Sanchez is the only thing much worth talking about. Starling Marte lead off the game with a double and absolutely blistered a line drive straight down the third base line in the ninth with Jose Tabata on second base, but our old friend Yamaico Navarro was perfectly positioned at third base and speared the liner. Marte also drew a walk and made a nice catch in deep left field. Travis Snider drew two walks and had a single and a "double" (by which I mean he hit a sinking line drive that practically hit Lew Ford in the face after Ford lost the ball in the lights). Alex Presley and Jose Tabata combined on a #Hurdled event in the top of the ninth, when Presley got hung up between second and first on a stolen base attempt that seemed like it was probably a missed hit-and-run sign. The Pirates went to Sarasota with their actual starting lineup (plus Brad Hawpe at DH, for some reason) and most of their starters played most of the game (Andrew McCutchen came out in the fifth or sixth, but everyone else played until the eighth or ninth) and failed to score. 

The one other thing from this one worth talking about is that Justin Wilson was awfully impressive in his two innings of relief. He popped the gun at 94-96 pretty consistently in his first inning, and the Orioles just couldn't catch up with his heat. The velocity dipped some in his second inning of work, but I still thought he was impressive on the whole and want to see him in the Pirates' bullpen this year. 

We had pretty good seats down the third base line. I didn't get many pictures once the game started since it got dark quickly, but the Pirates did stretch and warm up right in front of our seats and I feel like it wouldn't be a spring training post if I didn't put some pictures in here: 

Garrett Jones takes a lot of pre-game practice swings on the field during spring training. I'm pretty sure this has been going on for three or four years now, because I feel like I always see him (and always only him) taking pre-game practice swings on the field. 

I nominate "Starling Marte Being a Good Hitter" as the most important thing that can happen to the Pirates from a non-pitching perspective this year. 

These three spent a bunch of time in shallow center field talking to an Oriole. I figure it must've been an ex-Pirate Oriole since there are about a million of them. I can't be 100% sure of who it was, but I think it was Steve Pearce. After that, McCutchen joined them out there, then Adam Jones came over to say hi to 'Cutch. I know I put on the "dispassionate statistically oriented grump" facade quite a bit, but that last part was awfully cool. 

This is a less-good picture of the Three Amigos, but I included it so that you can see Starling Marte and Manny Machado having a conversation in the background, which I thought was cool to see. I'm not exactly going out on a limb with this statement or anything, but holy crap is Manny Machado going to be awesome. I like Jameson Taillon and I understand why the Pirates picked him instead of Machado and I think that Taillon might have a big breakout year in front of him, but I'll say again that Manny Machado going to be awesome. 

"How about we go for 70 combined homers this year?" "OK." 

With the Pirates on a two-day hiatus from playing baseball anywhere near where I am in Florida, I've been trying to take a break from the internet because that keeps me from worrying about work and, believe it or not, there aren't a lot of fun things that surround your sixth year in grad school. And so I missed out on some actual Pirate news this afternoon because I was off at Mixon's Fruit Farm eating delicious orange ice cream. I'm OK with most of my life decisions.

This afternoon the Pirates announced both that Chase d'Arnaud will go to the 60-day disabled list with the thumb injury that shelved him earlier this spring and that they'd acquired John McDonald from the Diamondbacks for cash or a PTBNL. Since McDonald goes on the 40-man roster, it means he's likely going to be guaranteed a bench spot. That makes the roster math quite a bit easier. 

If we assume that the Pirates are going to go with 13 position players, eight of those spots will go to starters counting Jones at first and Snider in right. McKenry will be the backup catcher (9), Tabata will platoon with Snider in right (10), and Gaby Sanchez will platoon with Jones at first (11). If McDonald makes the team, that's 12 players, which leaves one remaining roster spot for Brandon Inge, Jordy Mercer, Josh Harrison, Ivan De Jesus Jr., and Alex Presley. McDonald's only possible redeeming skill is that he's still got an excellent glove at short, even at the age of 38. He can play second and third, too. Knowing that, I think we can almost certainly rule De Jesus and Mercer off of the roster, and honestly I think I'd probably rule Inge out, too, because he can't hit at all and he can only play third base and McDonald can do both of those things. That leaves a spot for either Harrison or Presley. Given that the club will have four outfielders in McCutchen, Marte, Tabata, and Snider, that Marte can play center, and that Garrett Jones can play outfield in a pinch, I don't think Presley will make the club. That means Josh Harrison is the 25th man, unless Clint Hurdle really, really likes Brandon Inge. If the Pirates carry Brandon Inge and John McDonald on the roster simultaneously, even as the 24th and 25th men, I will scream. 

What this acquisition boils down to is this: McDonald has a good glove at any non-first base position in the infield. Inge can only really lend useful defense at third, De Jesus doesn't really have a strong defensive reputation anywhere since his leg injury a few years ago, and Mercer's only really been tested at short. McDonald can't hit at all, but Inge certainly can't, either, and neither Mercer nor De Jesus seem likely to be great offensive players in the big leagues. Essentially, McDonald seems like a defensive replacement and insurance in case Barmes gets hurt. You could read into a little more about what it may say about the team's opinion of Jordy Mercer and Ivan De Jesus, but it's always tough to draw those sorts of opinions when you can argue that a player might be better served playing in Triple-A rather than sitting in Pittsburgh.

All of which is to say that McDonald isn't a terribly inspiring acquisition, but that you could do a lot worse with your 25th roster spot. Of course, he'll probably be paired on the bench with one of (in order of likelihood with rapidly diminishing returns as ranked by me based on little more than my own intuition) Harrison, De Jesus, Mercer, or Inge, which is a little more depressing. Still, it's probably a short-term move mainly designed to let the team watch De Jesus play shortstop a little bit longer in Indianapolis, so it's hardly the end of the world. 

I think I say this every year, but one of my favorite parts of spring training games is the just the way that the players walk from the locker room and batting cages onto the field in front of  the fans, where they stretch and play catch and talk and joke around and sign autographs. 

Ivan DeJesus should change his name to Lemieux. They'd sell a ton of jerseys that way. 

Jose Tabata is in The! Best! Shape! Of! His! Life! 

I

I couldn't hear what Gaby Sanchez and Brad Hawpe were talking about, but I bet it put Plato and Socrates to shame.

Spanky!

In my head, they're re-enacting Reservoir Dogs

Check out who photobombed my picture of the team at the National Anthem. 

The game itself did not get off to a great start. Overcast skies and a very light drizzle lead to an hour rain delay. It was nice to be able to have some extra time to wander around the newly renovated McKechnie Field (and the renovations really are pretty great; McKechnie has always had a nice "old park" kind of feel to it, but the extra seating and more room to hang out and drink beer and eat and talk really bring it to a different level), but spring training games have a tendency to run on sometimes and so a rain delay can be worrisome.

James McDonald came out after the delay and immediately got into trouble. Shane Victorino smoked a triple that seemed like a certain home run, then Jackie Bradley singled into no man's land in shallow left, Jarrod Saltalamacchia walked, and Ryan Lavernaway smoked a two-run single before McDonald recorded his second out. He pitched his way out of the jam after that, but only because Boston's lineup was mostly full of scrubs this afternoon and after Lavernaway it was a vast wasteland of a lineup. 

You can see some of the new walkway at McKechnie behind McDonald here.

After that first inning, though, McDonald sliced through the awful Boston lineup the way you'd hope that James McDonald would slice through a Quadruple-A lineup. In his last four innings of work, he struck out five, walked two, and only allowed one hit. Even with the walks, his command seemed to improve throughout the afternoon. The level of opposition makes it hard to really judge his outing, but he defintely improved quite a bit after the bad first inning. Can't really ask for more from a spring training start, I suppose. 

Unlike the Red Sox, the Pirates had a lineup that pretty closely resembled a Major League lineup (Ivan DeJesus Jr. was at short, Brad Hawpe was in right, and Felix Pie was in left, but other than that it was all regulars). That lineup struggled pretty badly against Clay Buchholz. Neil Walker lasered a home run in the bottom of the second inning that didn't need any help from the strong wind blowing out, but that was the only hit the Bucs mustered off of Buchholz all afternoon. My memory could be failing me, but honestly, that might've been the only hard hit ball. 

This looks like it could be Pedro Alvarez mashing a ball into the fifth dimension. It's really just Pedro Alvarez bouncing out harmlessly to first base. 

Things turned around with Buchholz out of the game. Josh Harrison drew a walk (let's try that again: JOSH HARRISON DREW A WALK!!!!!!) off of Not That Chris Carpenter to lead off the seventh inning, then Gaby Sanchez destroyed a home run into the left field bleachers to give the Pirates a 3-2 lead. In the eighth, Mike McKenry took advantage of the wind by hitting a fly ball that carried out over the left field fence. 

Those four runs were enough to beat the Red Sox taxi squad. Jason Grilli followed McDonald with an easy inning. Mark Melancon followed him and he had some command issues, but he seemed to be changing speeds nicely and racked up a couple of strikeouts. Chris Leroux had a really easy eighth inning. Bryan Morris seemed to be throwing hard (the only thing lacking at the new McKechnie is a radar gun, though I suspect that the lack of one in a spring training park is more by design than an oversight), but he got himself into a bit of trouble before closing things out in the ninth. 

This picture has been included to show you that Jason Grilli has done the hair-growing that is the only requirement to become a Major League closer. 

A few other observations: 

• Starling Marte (who was in center with McCutchen getting the day off) covered a lot of ground to make a really nice sliding catch in the first inning and crushed a double off of Koji Uehara in the sixth.
• Pedro Alvarez didn't do much at the plate, but he did hit a warning track fly ball on what sounded like a broken bat. 
• Mel Rojas was the prospect that got called up from Pirate City to play late in the game and bat a couple of times. Mel Rojas looked pretty lost at the plate. 
• So did Brad Hawpe, for that matter.

The Pirates are off tomorrow and in Orlando on Wednesday, so I won't see them again until Thursday. I'm planning on uploading more pictures from today to a Picasa site, but it's late and the internet here is not great. 

I'm heading down to Florida tonight to take in some Pirate games and possibly some time at Pirate City this week. As in the past, I'll put up plenty of posts and pictures and the like. Real-time updates and pictures can, as always, be found on my Twitter account.