I had to give lab meeting this week, which is why posting has been a bit light the last few days. The Pirates have managed to do a few small, newsworthy things this week, though, so let’s briefly run them down.
Denny Bautista, Chris Bootcheck, and Craig Hansen are off the 40-man roster. Hansen is really the only one of the three that’s news, but it probably has more to do with his injury than anything else. The story says on Bootcheck has elected to go to free agency, so Bautista will probably sign another minor league deal and be around to haunt our nightmares once more. I guess Hansen might, too, but a lot of that depends on his injury.
The other news is that Perry Hill has elected to snipe at Neal Huntington through the media. I’m not surprised that this story still has legs, but I honestly couldn’t care less about it and it’s not nearly as important as it probably seems inside the microuniverse of Pirates’ baseball. As Charlie points out, the distinction between “doesn’t want to coach” and “doesn’t want to coach for the Pirates” doesn’t currently exist because Hill’s under contract with the Pirates. And Hill is very well-regarded as an infield coach and I’d certainly like Pedro Alvarez to take grounders with him watching, but to pretend like the disagreement between a grumpy infield coach and a general manager is a huge deal is an overreaction. Until the entire Pirates’ coaching staff quits and publicly names Huntington as the reason, I’m not reading any more into this.
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