Both Bucs Dugout and Pirates Prospects took a look at Alex Presley and finding him a spot on the roster. I’m of two minds here; Presley has been hugely impressive over the last year-plus, but he wasn’t a great prospect before then and he’s almost 26 now and it’s hard to get excited about that sort of profile, no matter how good he’s been. I certainly understand the argument for calling him up and giving him a chance, but there’s no guarantee that he’d get regular playing time with Garrett Jones mashing and Lyle Overbay helping the defense considerably. So is it worth it to call him up and put him in the Xavier Paul role, or is it better to let him play every day in Triple-A? Does a guy get anything from playing every day when he’s hitting .350? This is all stuff worth wondering about and keeping an eye on.
In that vein, FanGraphs wonders just how important finishing .500 is for the club and whether they should do something like trade Jones while his value is high or keep him around and make a run at .500. And now that I’ve read these two pieces and thought about them a bit, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be doing my own longer post about Jones and Presley and right field in general. Hm.
Rocco DeMaro takes a look at Pedro Alvarez’s struggles and tries to decide whether it’s time to panic yet. In the last ten days or so Pedro’s been squaring the ball up awfully well, so hopefully we can get beyond this kind of discussion.
Joe Posnanski writes for Pitchers and Poets about Jeff King and how much he really, really disliked playing baseball.
Jon Heyman tweeted earlier this week that the Pirates are insisting on any Andrew McCutchen extension including at least one of his free agent years, which is a very good thing.
Not directly Pirate-related, but this New York Times story about Bartolo Colon having his shredded shoulder treated with stem cells is incredibly interesting, both from a science-nerd perspective and from a “where is the line drawn when we’re talking about what’s considered ‘performance-enhancing’ and what isn’t?” perspective.
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