Your 2012 Pittsburgh Pirate Fan Guide to the Winter Meetings

Here’s a list of exciting things the Pirates might do in Dallas this week:

1. … 

And here’s a list of things the Pirates might actually do in Dallas this week:

1. Acquire Nate McLouth.
2. No, seriously, Nate McLouth. I mean, I guess Nate McLouth would be better at being Xavier Paul than Xavier Paul was and maybe a return to PNC would help him find his power stroke again. Probably not, though. Nate McLouth kind of sucks now.
3. Trade for Ian Stewart as a depressing form of Pedro Alvarez Insurance. 
4. Have Derrek Lee turn down their arbitration offer. 
5. Make a Rule 5 draft pick that will almost certainly make no impact on the 2012 team. 
6. Issue a statement about the Miami Marlins, saying that the way that they’ve basically blackmailed their fans into buying them a new stadium and MLB into paying their bills with revenue sharing money so that they can now go ahead and buy a World Series will “literally take the sport down.” Actually, if this happens it would be exiting. And they should definitely do it.

As usual, I will be spending most of my non-sciencing moments trawling the TwitterNetz for the latest in Pirate-related developments, rumors, rumblings, etc., and will do my best to get them posted here as quickly as possible.