As I’ve mentioned a couple times before, I’m working as a TA this semester and it occasionally limits my time pretty seriously. Those times are generally when the undergrads take a test. That happened yesterday, so I’m going to be mostly out of commission until sometime early this evening at the absolute earliest. I’m wasting time right now as I type this!

WHYGAVS has made the final four of the Pittsburgh Sports Blog tournament as the champion of the Dave Clark Division. I’m up against Pitt Script in the semifinals. They all seem like a bunch of nice guys and they’re fellow Bloguineers, but I’m not losing to a Pitt blog. It’s not happening. Help make sure it doesn’t happen.  

Trevor Gooby, all-around great guy and the Pirates’ Director of Florida Operations who’s helped me quite a bit on my two trips to Bradenton, delievered a baby at McKechnie Field yesterday in a pre-spring training event. That’s one way to rebuild fan relations!

Jeff Polman, who you probably know as the guy who replays old baseball seasons with Strat-o-matic cards and then writes fictional stories framed by his new alternate baseball history, has moved on to a replay of the 1958 season. It’s a noirish tale based in San Francisco with updates three times a week. Most baseball fans recognize 1958 as the year baseball moved to California (it’s why Jeff chose the season), but most Pirate fans probably know it as the year that Branch Rickey and Joe L. Brown’s rebuilding project finally started to come together and the Pirates’ 1950s long losing streak ended. Jeff was kind enough to let me “manage” (which basically means pick the lineups and the rotation and let him do all the hard work) this version of the Pirates and as always, I’m more than happy to point you to the site to see exactly where he takes things on the best pseudo-historical baseball fiction blog on the internet.

Bill Brink has some good stuff up at the PG about the Pirates’ blueprint. Both his main article from yesterday about the “waves” of talent that the team is trying to create and his behind the scenes chat with Frank Coonelly (at PG+) that goes into detail about the payroll are worth your time, if you haven’t read them already. 

At The Platoon Advantage, The Common Man nicely sums up what I hate about the Hall of Fame witch hunt at this time of year, especially as it currently relates to Jeff Bagwell.  

MLB Trade Rumors says the Pirates could be a “dark horse” for Edwin Jackson. That’s probably not indicative of a whole lot at this point, but it says to me that they’re still looking for pitching. You probably already know that I think they need one more starter for their rotation right now, so I’ll keep on looking for any sign I can find that they’re trying to do that.  

In line with the discussion here on RAR and WAR earlier this week, Matt at Pittsburgh Lumber Co. runs the numbers using the CHONE projections and sees the Pirates as a 76 win team in 2010.

And speaking of CHONE projections, FanGraphs has made them available in easily digestible form on each of their player ages, right down to WAR projections for 2010. And for good measure, they also have an interesting interview with Sean himself.

Meanwhile, at Baseball Digest Daily, Dave Golebiewski looks at Ian Snell’s fall from grace.

And at the Hardball Times, Jeff Sackmann looks at our ridiculous two-year roster turnover.

Meanwhile, former BCT and PiratesReport beat writer John Perrotto has himself an awesome new gig; editor-in-chief at Baseball Prospectus. It’s well deserved, so a big congrats goes out to him.