The Pittsburgh Pirates’ 2016 season is over, but Pirates Breakdown’s never stops. Here’s a look at our offseason coverage plans.
The Pittsburgh Pirates are now in offseason mode. Players and coaches are scattered off to their down-time haunts. Prospects are going through Instructs, Arizona Fall League and other winter ball locales. The front-office will be hard at work, attempting to put the team on better footing than when they embarked on the 2016 season.
Pirates Breakdown will be there to cover it all.
Hoarding Regular Features for Winter
So, you may asking yourself how PBD will get you through the cold, baseball-less winter. The answer is by developing new and unique regular features.
We’ve already started this with our 2016 Gradeouts. In these, we will be grading out every member of the Pittsburgh Pirates who spent significant time with the club. These will include stalwarts such as Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole. Newcomers who spent some time with the club will be included as well – think Tyler Glasnow and Josh Bell – while still others did not play a big enough role to be included, such as Chris Stewart and Pedro Florimon.
2016 Gradeouts will be featured each weekday at 12 pm EST. The easiest way to be on the lookout for these is to bookmark our 2016 Gradeouts Page. There you will find links to each player as we go through them. Here now are links to the three features already completed:
[irp posts=”10307″ name=”Pittsburgh Pirates 2016 Gradeout – Jung Ho Kang“] [irp posts=”10253” name=”Pittsburgh Pirates 2016 Gradeout – Chad Kuhl“] [irp posts=”10257″ name=”Pittsburgh Pirates 2016 Gradeout – Andrew McCutchen”]You Still Need A Wake Up Call, And Your Weekly Rumors
Your daily Wake Up Call – published every weekday at 9am – will still be published with regularity. In the offseason, we’ll spend time discussing the ongoing MLB playoffs, which are shaping up to be one of the most exciting in recent memory. After that, we’ll be providing the Wake Up Call as a primer of Hot Stove news.
We’ll also be collecting our weekly Rumor Mill on Fridays. This will be much akin to our in-season rumor mills, but will take more of an offseason slant. Here is the latest edition, filed by Tyler Waite.
Recapping The Season Properly
2016 was akin to a lost year for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and we aim to figure out why. To that end, we will be reviewing the ‘Highlights & Lowlights‘ from the year. Steve Kubtiz will be leading the charge here, and each column will examine one highlight, and/or one lowlight from the 2016 season. These could take the shape of certain players, certain games or even general concepts about the club. Look for this to start soon.
Looking Forward
In addition to grading out the players and recapping the season, we’ll begin to look forward through a couple of interesting, NEW features. ‘Burning Questions‘ is a column that will examine the hot topics going into 2017. This will be wide-ranging, and is sure to surprise and delight. Free Agent Fridays will be a weekly column on, you guessed it, Friday. It will focus on, you guessed it again, potential free agent fits for the club. We’ll review a potential target and present both sides of the coin on whether or not he would be a potential addition.
Events Coverage
Of course, the two biggest events for baseball fans in the waning calendar 2016 are the Winter Meetings and Pirates Fest. PBD will have extensive coverage of both, including a very pronounced presence at the team’s annual fan convention. Details are forthcoming, so watch this space!
The Podcast Lives!
Throughout the offseason, PBD will still be producing the Pirates Breakdown Podcast. We aren’t exactly sure what form this may take, so the best thing for you to do is subscribe so that you don’t miss an episode! Here’s how:
On an iPhone or iPad: Reading this on an IOS device? Then simply open up the Podcasts app that Apple pushes by default to all iOS devices, search for us, and click subscribe. It truly is that easy! Oh, you want it to be easier? Okay – just CLICK HERE.
On an android tablet or phone: Android has no default podcast player, so you will need to download an app. We suggest Stitcher. Just search for “The Pirates Breakdown Podcast” and you will find us. Note: if you have a preferred app on Android, let us know about it! We would be happy to put our show on there as well.
On a desktop: You can listen a la carte over at our Soundcloud page or subscribe in iTunes. Just click that link or go to the iTunes store and search for us and hit subscribe. While there, why not leave us a review?
We want to wrap up by taking a moment to sincerely thank you for your readership.
We started Pirates Breakdown because we felt there was a lack of solid, unbiased, insightful Pittsburgh Pirates coverage from an independent media outlet. We looked upon 2016 as our own little “bridge year.” We used it as a playground to figure out how we wanted to make good on our promise to “connect Pirates fans to the team in unique ways.” I think we’ve accomplished that and more.
And it’s all thanks to our dedicated base of loyal readers. You have made this more fun than possibly imaginable, and our first year was a rousing success. We simply cannot wait for you to grind through the long offseason with us until the pop of a ball hitting a glove rings true again in the spring.
Thank you for your readership.
-Jason Rollison-
-Managing Editor, Pirates Breakdown-
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