Shorstop, Ronny Cedeno

Is downright awful. His major league OPS this year is .504 (OPS+ 34). Does he make up for his disastrous hitting gwith the glove? Well, his lifetime UZR at shortstop is -4.1. For those of you who aren't familiar with UZR, a negative number is like crossing the streams, which is to say, it's bad. He's 25, so his upside is that maybe in the next two years he'll have one season that isn't completely embarrassing.

Catcher, Jeff Clement

He's a rookie. His major league OPS is .701. But he's 26. He's a passable hitter for a catcher. And major league catchers don't grow on trees. He's a worthwhile addition.

Pitcher, Aaron Pribanic

Third round draft pick from last year. In A-ball, he has 54 Ks in 87 innings. His WHIP is 1.17. He could have a future.

Pitcher, Brett Lorin

Drafted last year in the fifth round. In A-ball this year he has 87 Ks in 88 innings. His WHIP is .970. Not bad. Throws righty but bats lefty. I like his stats, and he's young. Maybe he could be a major league starter one day.

Nathan Adcock

Drafted in 2006. He's 22. This year in high-A he has 71 Ks in 102 innings. His WHIP is 1.539. I don't see a lot to be excited about, but you never know.

So, we got a passable, young major league catcher, a horrible shortstop, two of their best draft picks from last year, and another young minor league pitcher. I'm most excited about Aaron Pribanic and especially Brett Lorin. It's like we got an extra mini-draft -- not a bad return for an aging shortstop and a pitcher who says that he doesn't want to pitch in the major leagues.

Pirates ask Wilson, Sanchez to take sizable cuts

Sanchez's offer also seeks forfeiture of 2010 option worth $8 million

The Pirates yesterday made their initial financial offers toward keeping shortstop Jack Wilson and second baseman Freddy Sanchez, and they drew decidedly mixed reactions.

The offer to Wilson, according to two sources, covers two years plus a club option. No money terms were divulged, but it was seen as competitive even though it represented a significant cut from his current $7.4 million salary. Wilson would prefer three guaranteed years.

But the initial offer to Sanchez, also made yesterday, was for two years and a total believed to be in the range of $10 million. That would represent a cut from his current salary of $6.25 million and, more striking, the total is $2 million more than the $8 million Sanchez is set to make in 2010 alone under the vesting option in his current contract, one that would be annulled under the Pirates' proposal.

Now that's more like it. There was some hand-wringing and conspiracy theorizing yesterday about rumors that the Pirates were trying to sign Jack and Freddy to some crazy long-term contracts with no-trade clauses, but this new story makes a lot more sense.

Their skills will be declining in the next few years, so their salaries should too. If the Pirates can keep them for cheap, then that's great. And if they leave then the Pirates can find replacements and that's fine too. And it's not as if the Pirates have to find two new middle-infielders in a hurry. They're going to lose next year whether they have a great double-play duo or not.

Concerns that the Pirates will overpay for aging middle-infielders while the team is supposed to be rebuilding are now allayed. Neal's head is apparently screwed on properly after all.

Freddy says:

"Me and Jack are pretty genuine people, and we've made our feelings known about how much we want to stay. We have to see how genuine everybody is about this."

Genuine Fred and Genuine Jack have shared their genuine feelings with us about keeping their genuine friendship together. Well, now they can do it. I have a hunch which option they'll pick. I predict that Freddy and Jack will be selling their services to the highest bidder starting this September.

Unless of course, they really are in love, in which case I'm genuinely happy for them, and they'll be in Pirates uniforms together forever.

The Dejan thread blows my mind. The guy makes an idle comment in his column and people are treating it like his idle comments are better than other people's idle comments because maybe Dejan has the map to the holy grail.

I've never met Dejan and I bet he's probably a nice guy. And I read his writing and I like it. But I'm not going to thank him for showing up in the comments because I don't thank anyone else for showing up in the comments. And if you thank him and you don't thank other people then you're giving him special treatment.

Dejan explained his column and his explanation was that it's not based on any special insider knowledge, and yet fans continue to defend their elevated opinion of his comments because he might have special insider knowledge, even though Dejan himself has said that his speculation was based on no such thing. Fans are giving Dejan credit for things that he's telling you plainly that he isn't doing. This is what you call fan-splooge.

I've you've ever enjoyed any sort of celebrity yourself, you know what I mean. Once you're a celebrity, people start thanking you for showing up at their parties when they never thanked you before. People notice what you drink and find it suddenly fascinating, even though you drink the same old stuff you always drank before. In my life, I've been on both sides of fandom, and from experience I can tell you, it's pathetic both coming and going.

Have a little self-respect guys. Dejan isn't a magical wizard. Sometimes he writes good columns. Sometimes his columns are just so-so. Sometimes he has insider knowledge, and sometimes he's just speculating and theorizing like the rest of us. Unless everybody deserves a special thank you note for commenting on blogs, then Dejan doesn't deserve one. And when Dejan says he's just analyzing based on no insider knowledge, then you should believe him and treat his comments like any other comments.

I'm glad, you're all here. Thanks for being a part of the community.

In 2007 at the age of 23 he had an ERA+ of 191. His WHIP was 1.15. This year his WHIP is 1.69.

Last year his K/BB was 7.80. This year it's 1.54. This year he has allowed 13 walks. Last year, for the entire season, he walked five batters. It's not even the All-Star Break yet and he's already walked almost three times as many batters as he did last year.

His fastball used to be consistently 95 MPH and he could gas it up to 98, but this year he's lucky to hit 92.

Practically every pitcher on the staff has said thankful words about Joe Kerrigan, so I can't blame it on him. I wonder if Matt Capps is injured and in denial. It would hardly be the first time that a pitcher was seriously hurt and told people that he was just feeling a little tight. At the end of last season he was out for seven weeks with "arm soreness." I don't think he ever got better.

Dave Regan was the high school baseball coach in Fort Scott, Kansas where his sister's kids Adam and Andy LaRoche went to school. His sister was married to Dave LaRoche, major league pitcher who was on the A.L. All-Star team in 1976. Dave was known to use the famous eephus pitch, but he called it "La Lob." Dave LaRoche was born David Garcia. He adopted the surname LaRoche from his stepfather when he was seven. Andy says it's a French name, but that his grandfather was 100% Mexican.

Andy and Adam's dad is currently the pitching coach for the AAA Las Vegas 51s, as in Area 51.

In high school, Adam was diagnosed with ADD. He went to Fort Scott Community College where his dad was the coach. He was drafted by the Marlins, and refused to sign, twice, in 1998 and 1999. In 2000 in the 29th round, he was drafted by the Atlanta Braves, and he accepted. I don't think he ever graduated so I wonder what he was waiting for. Maybe he just hates the Marlins. It took him four years in the minors to break into the big show. He spent his rookie year platooning with 46-year-old Julio Franco, the oldest player in the majors.

The Braves traded him and a prospect to the Pirates for Mike Gonzalez and a prospect. This year, Adam has 1 Win Above Replacement. Mike has .7 Wins Above Replacement. I guess Adam wins.

He didn't steal a single base in his first three seasons in the majors. But on August 4th, 2007, in the bottom of the ninth of a 8-8 tie game against the Reds (known at the time as the other worst team in baseball), he was walked by Jared Burton and then stole second base. He was stranded when Ronny Paulino flied out to right. Matt Capps blew the game in the 10th. Pirates lost 9-8.

He's famous for his second-half surge. Historically he has hit much better in the second-half of the season than in the first. Over the the past three years, the only month in which he has had an OPS over 1.000 is July. But so far in this current July, he has an OPS of .410. Maybe he's skipping the surge this year.

Adam never made the All-Star team like his dad did. He's 29 years old now, and if he hasn't done it already, he probably never will. According to Baseball Reference, the player he most closely resembles is Tino Martinez, who did make the All-Star team twice and finished second in MVP voting in 1997 despite having a very nice but historically unremarkable season. But then, Adam LaRoche doesn't have the benefit of Yankee Mistique. Like Tino Martinez, Adam LaRoche has never lead the league in anything.* But he is in the history books. He's the first player to have a home run taken away by instant replay.

He's the subject of trade rumors, but he probably doesn't want to be traded to the Mets. He says that Carlos Beltran has no class. And he might be right.

*That's not technically true. Tino Martinez did lead the league in sacrifice flies in 1997, which apparently justifies him getting more MVP votes than Frank Thomas, Edgar Martinez, David Justice and ten other players who outhit him that year.

Last year, he was the #10 prospect in the Phillies farm system. This year, while Ryan Doumit is injured, he's the starting catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

He's from Racine, Wisconsin. From what I can tell on their Website, the biggest attraction in Racine is the Laurel Clark Memorial Fountain. Other notables from Racine include suffragist Olympia Brown and adult film star Max Hardcore, who is currently in prison for distributing obscene materials.

According to Baseball Prospectus' seven-year forecast, he'll hit six home runs per year until he hits age 30 in 2013 and he starts to slow down. Right now, in his rookie season, he ranks 23rd among all major league catchers, better than 28th place Ronny Paulino, for whom he was traded last December. Ronny Paulino has been traded twice since then, from the Phillies to the Giants, and then to the Marlins. Consider that Jaramillo costs, $0.40 million this year and Paulino costs $0.44 million. In that trade, the Pirates seem to have gotten a better player for less money.

"He’s filling in great," left-handed pitcher Donald Veal said. "We haven’t missed a beat with the pitchers. He’s getting hits, driving in runs, helping the staff and just doing a tremendous job behind the plate. We have no complaints." -- The Journal Times, Jason's hometown paper

By the end of July, Ryan Doumit should be back from rehabilitation. What happens to Jason then? Rob Neyer says it might make sense for the Pirates to trade Doumit now and let Jaramillo have the job for a while until Tony Sanchez is ready.