Pittsburgh Pirates

Also in the present, Huntington strongly suggested last night that recently acquired outfielder Lastings Milledge will make his Pirates debut tomorrow, coincidentally against his former Washington team.

Milledge has batted .337 in 17 games with Class AAA Indianapolis and, by all accounts, has been a model worker and citizen off the field, a main stressing point given some of Milledge's past turmoil. "We're very happy with what Lastings has done," Huntington said.

His recall is certain to mean a demotion for outfielder Jeff Salazar. That would leave Milledge, Brandon Moss and Garrett Jones rotating around center fielder Andrew McCutchen.

Post Gazette

MLBTR rocks...

11:58am: Kovacevic says Cedeno's the only player who will report to the Pirates. Clement will head to Triple A, the others to A ball.

MLB.com's Jonathan Mayo calls it a "pretty good haul" for the Pirates and Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus says it's the best deal the Pirates have made yet.

11:45am: Kovacevic says the Mariners acquire Wilson and Ian Snell for Clement, Ronny Cedeno, Aaron Pribanic, Brett Lorin and Nathan Adcock.

MLBTradeRumors.com

I wonder if any of our other viewers here are members of the "Pogo the Ostrich" fan club. Personally, I am card carrying member. Have been for years. Heck I think my card says fan number three, right behind Mrs. Pogo the Ostrich, and any family pets he might own.

This week the Osterich is pimping Garrett Jones (even if said Osterich is late getting to the Jones bandwagon) and Everth Cabrera. Two guys I own in a couple of leagues, and have pimped here recently, which probably explains why I am in the fan club in the first place. :)

Called up on June 30, Garrett Jones has been destroying the baseball. In fact, he just hit his eighth HR of the season while I was typing this and it is only his fifteenth game of the season. Jones has settled into the third spot in the order for the Pirates and is playing 1B, LF, and RF making him a very versatile fantasy player. His run and RBI totals might suffer some from Pittsburgh’s anemic offense, but McCutchen and Sanchez have been doing a good job of getting on base, plus LaRoche is a notorious second half hitter, so perhaps the concern is overstated. Garrett Jones should be a good source of power while putting up decent numbers in Rs, RBIs, and SBs.

Let’s not beat around the bush. There is one reason you want to own Cabrera, and that is for his SB totals. Cabrera is only 22, so there will be some inevitable growing pains, but he is now hitting lead-off and has seven SBs while only being caught once. The number that really caught my eye was 73. That is how many SBs Cabrera had while playing in the minors last year. He has wheels and he has opportunity. If you need SBs, make the move for Cabrera

Fantasy Baseball Cafe 2009

Sweet! Adrian Gonzalez survives his first trade rumor of the year!
Hilarious. This trade speculation has crashed the Pittsburgh Post Gazettes server, and you just know the rush to read a story wasn't coming from Pirate fans

With the trading deadline now just nine days away the Red Sox have gotten a head start by acquiring veteran first baseman Adam LaRoche from the Pirates in exchange for prospects Argenis Diaz and Hunter Strickland. LaRoche is an interesting pickup for Boston, because if everyone is healthy and productive he'll be a part-time player. However, he also provides the Red Sox with a backup plan that basically covers three positions. He can sub for Kevin Youkilis at first base or David Ortiz at designated hitter, and can essentially be the backup for Mike Lowell at third base as well because of Youkilis' ability to move across the diamond.

Aaron Gleeman

With all these teams looking for pitching, somebody will snag him up real soon. watch.

Ian Snell has a 0.34 ERA in four starts with Class AAA Indianapolis, but he has no clear course back to the Pirates, general manager Neal Huntington said yesterday, because of what Huntington described as Snell's desire not to return. "Ian has spoken publicly that he doesn't want to be here, and it's tough to bring back a player who doesn't want to be back," Huntington said. "There's no doubt he's gone down there and thrown well. Time will tell."

Reached in Pawtucket, R.I., where he was with Indianapolis, Snell responded that he never said he had no desire to return to the Pirates, publicly or otherwise. "Why would I say that?" Snell said. "What I've told a couple reporters here is that I've enjoyed my time here with Indianapolis. It's a great group of guys. And I think there's some great chemistry right now in Pittsburgh, so maybe they're better off without me. But I never said I wanted to stay in Indianapolis or that I didn't want to pitch for the Pirates or in the majors."

The Pirates are pursuing a trade for Snell, but Huntington said his contract -- $3.5 million this year, $4.25 million next year -- has been a deterrent. "Teams are poking around, but they're mostly offering one bad contract for what they see as our bad contract," Huntington said.

Dejan Kovacevic

LF Lastings Milledge (.317), pictured at right, went 4 for 6 with a double and two RBIs, including the winning hit in the 10th. In seven games with Indianapolis, he is batting .520 -- 13 for 25 -- with five RBIs and one strikeout.

PBC Blog

Charlie Morton pitched seven scoreless innings, and John Grabow and Matt Capps finished off the Pirates' 2-0 silencing of the San Francisco Giants tonight before 37,023 at PNC Park. It was the third sellout of the season.

Morton limited the Giants' light-hitting lineup to three singles and two walks, striking out six, and improved to 2-2 since joining the Pirates. Neither his stuff nor his location was dominant, but the results ended up that way, nonetheless.

Morton mows down Giants

Moss is probably on what I like to call the, "Nice Player" career track. He's very solid defensively and his bat isn't awful. He's not likely to ever be more than a fourth or fifth outfielder, but I'm guessing he'll have a job for a while because of his good glove and decent bat. Jones, meanwhile, is a never-was who didn't post a Triple-A OPS over .800 until his third full go-round there, but has shown nice pop, something the Pirates sorely lack, in both Indy and his short stint with the Pirates.

Using Moss's 237 PAs as a baseline, there are 27 players that have done less than him at the plate this year, including guys who, like Moss, are trying to get established in the big leagues like Chris Davis and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Chase Headley, another such player, just barely ranks above Moss. Since May 12th, he's actually hit.306/.359/.470. He's still only got 3 homers in that span, but I still think that's reasonably productive.

Jones, on the other hand, has a career .312 OBP in the minor leagues and is 28. I know that John Russell and a lot of people that watched him play in the spring are impressed with his swing, but those sort of numbers just scream to me that he's a quad-A guy that three or four years from now, I'm going to be watching him play for someone's Triple-A squad in Durham and laughing about when he was a Pirate. Moss is still only 25 with good minor league credentials and he's shown both this year and last year that he can hit big league pitching for extended stretches.

Neither Jones nor Moss strikes me as a player that's going to be a long-term starter in the big leagues, but if either one of the two is going to do it, it's almost certainly going to be Brandon Moss.

Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke?

Got him in the NL Only. Hopefully he can be my answer at corner. Murphy the Met wasn't cutting it ..

In the brief history of Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park, only three balls have landed in the concourse beyond the center-field wall. Two were hit by Ryan Howard, whose reputation as one of the game's great sluggers is well known. The third was hit Friday by Garrett Jones, who may one day carve out a pretty big reputation for power hitting, as well.

Jones crushed a pitch in the first inning Friday over the center-field wall, onto the concourse known here as "Ashburn Alley" after the beloved former broadcaster and player Richie Ashburn. It was unofficially measured at 438 feet.

pirates.com

What makes Duke good

Pirates activate Doumit

I was amazed at how many yahoo rosters Milledge was added to after the trade. You mean to tell me that there isn't 10-15 outfielders better than Milledge, just sitting out there in free agency, waiting to be picked up right now? I am not buying it.

Outfielder Lastings Milledge will join Class AAA Indianapolis tomorrow after rehabilitating with Bradenton of the Gulf Coast League.

In three games there, Milledge went 3 for 11 with two doubles, but the biggest factor was rain, including a wiped-out doubleheader today. He had no issues with the healing of his broken right ring finger, though it remains swollen and "might look like that for a long time," he said

post-gazette.com

I just snagged Jones in my NL only, now I need to decide on playing time between him, Chad Tracy, and the Mets scrub, Daniel Murphy.

Garrett Jones: Three years ago, Jones was coming off 140 games in his second go at AAA, and he might have thought his career was in the balance because of his putrid showing (.238/.302/.430). But he bucked up and put up some numbers that caught the Pirates’ eyes. He’s had better than a .800 OPS for three straight years at AAA since, with a batting average over .280 and a slugging percentage close to .500. He also showed the best strikeout rates of his career to date, as he cut his near-20% rate down to around 15%.

If he can maintain his power with the new strikeout rate in the major leagues, he has a chance of strengthening his tenuous grip on a job. He’s battling Brandon Moss, whose .263/.313/.383 production this year is reminding people of his fourth-outfielder label coming up in the Boston system. Jones certainly has more power potential than the speedier Moss, and slugging two home runs in his first weekend as a Buc helped his chances of catching a regular job.

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