Good morning. It's Tuesday, August 6th. The Pirates are in first place by two games after the Cardinals' loss to the Dodgers last night. They have a 99.3% chance of making the playoffs and a 51.1% chance of winning the NL Central. They have six games against the Marlins and Rockies this week to pad that two-game lead before they go to St. Louis next week. 

Last night, James from Pirates Prospects, Cory from Three Rivers Burgh Blog, and I did a roundtable. We discussed a lot of things, but mostly the composition of the playoff roster and how the bullpen will be composed. You can watch the whole video (it's about an hour long) below, or get the audio at Pirates Prospects: 

I think that we'll be doing the same thing around the same time next week (that is, Monday at 7:30), so keep an eye on the WHYGAVS Twitter account (@whygavs) if you're interested in watching us live. 

Jameson Taillon made his Indianapolis debut last night. He gave up three runs in the first inning, but was otherwise solid, holding Louisville scoreless for the next four. 

There's been a lot of talk about Gerrit Cole's workload lately, and since I actually discussed that a couple of weeks ago I want to go back and link that post. Short version: it's worth talking about how many innings he's going to throw this year, but you can throw the Veducci Effect out the window and there are plenty of reasons to think that he should be fine going forward with the way the Pirates are using him this year. 

I have a lot of links to share this morning. You might think that’s because pitchers and catchers and quite a few other players are in camp and so news has started to trickle out of Bradenton, but pretty much none of these links have anything to do with that. They’re just various interesting tidbits and things to read or browse. 

First up: Dan Szymborski posted his ZiPS projections for the Pirates last week. They are, as they have been wont to be over the last couple years, pretty ugly on the pitching side of things (you can find his AJ Burnett numbers in the comments), but not completely awful for the hitters. His projection system is very kind to Pedro Alvarez for 2012, which is heartening, though all I’ll also note that it gave a similarly kind projection for Jake Fox, so it may just be predisposed towards those types of hitters. Dan also gave a pretty nice write-up on the state of the franchise and the direction things are going, so you can count him as one of the smart guys that likes what the front office is doing in Pittsburgh, even if its taking a longer time than we’d all hoped it would. 

Jim Callis has each team’s draft pool posted at Baseball America, and the numbers are very ugly for the Pirates. They’re going to currently have a shade over $6.5 million to spend on this year’s draft (maybe about a million more if Derrek Lee signs somewhere), which is $10 million less than they spent on last year’s draft. Charlie examines this number vs. what Frank Coonelly told the bloggers the number would be at Piratefest before Christmas. I’d guess the Pirates are pretty steamed about this number, too. 

Deadspin has a great write-up about the making of the classic Simpson’s Episode “Homer at the Bat.”

And finally, Sean has his “Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament” going at Sean’s Ramblings this week. I will note, as always, that this sort of thing is a great chance to check out Pittsburgh sports blogs that you might be unfamiliar with. I will also note that a Pirate blog has won each of the last two years and I think that’s pretty cool, given the way that people tend to think about sports in the city. And yes, WHYGAVS is the #1 seed in the Dave Clark Division, should you be so inclined to check out the tournament and vote. I won’t tell you what to do, I’m just mentioning it.