This is a repeat of a post from last year, I'm interested to see how the results will change. This is an interesting time to post this poll due to the recent discussion on BucsDugout and the fact it is almost exactly 1 year after the original poll was posted.

Simple question, simple answers, no middle ground. The poll is for 2013 only, if you want to retain him longer vote yes. Feel free to explain your choice if you want but it is not mandatory. Base your decision on what you know right now, and any factors you think should be weighed. Ignore the contract status of Huntington, pretend it is solely your decision.

NOT SHOULD, WILL.  I can't stress that enough.  We have already enough discussions about who is going to be the better pick, but I want to get a feel now that the last few mock drafts are rolling out.  Feel free to explain why you think the Pirates will go in a certain direction.

Please remember, this is about who they will take, not who they should take.

Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words. Words.

I know this has been mentioned multiple times throughout a few different posts and comments, but during my browsing this morning I noticed that the Pirates defense has been worlds better than 2010.  In 2010, the Pirates had a team UZR of -63.6 and a UZR/150 of -8.5, both of which were the worst in all of major league baseball.  Through this point of the season in 2011, our UZR is 5.1 (9th in the MLB) and our UZR/150 is 6.0 (6th in the MLB).  Obviously the pitching has been better, but I'd venture to say a good portion of the improvement has been due to the better defensive play we have seen this year.  There is also the fact that offensive numbers are down league wide which is helping our pitching numbers look a lot better.  I believe this fact helps the argument that defense is potentially a larger contributor to our success relative to last year than the pitching has been year over year.

I'm not saying that we have not made improvements to the pitching staff, because obviously guys like Morton, Hanrahan, Karstens, Resop, and Veras have either improved or provided improvement over their replacements, but I do think the improvement has been somewhat blown out of proportion by the media and some people on this website.

Thoughts?

I'm curious after all the fighting today to see what the best Pirate community online believes.  Simple question, simple answers, no middle ground.  The poll is for 2012 only, if you want to retain him longer vote yes.  Feel free to explain you choice if you want but it is not mandatory.

I'm honestly shocked this did not occur earlier.

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Didn't see a post yet so I figured I would go ahead and get this started.  I haven't been able to find any audio or video links to the game but I'm sure they are somewhere on the internet.

Lineups:

Pirates

1. LF Tabata
2. 2B Walker
3. CF McCutchen
4. 3B Alvarez
5. RF Diaz
6. 1B Overbay
7. DH Doumit
8. C Snyder
9. SS Cedeno

Rays

1. C Jaso
2. LF Damon
3. 3B Longoria
4. DH Ramirez
5. RF Zobrist
6. CF Upton
7. 1B Johnson
8. 2B Rodriguez
9. SS Brignac

Charlie Morton v. David Price

I figured I'd get a short summary of what the Pirates' prospects have been doing in the Arizona Fall League since it is a pretty slow time of year.  I was curious to see what level of competition the AFL was closest to, and after looking through the ages and levels of the Pirates' prospects teammates on the Mesa Solar Sox I'd say it is pretty clear that the league is comparable to AA. 

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Here is the other part of Pirates prospect analysis that I posted two days ago.  Unfortunately, the hitters don't look nearly as promising as the pitchers.  That being said, a good part of the reason is the graduation of Alvarez, Tabata, and Walker as well as some injuries.  The biggest problem is that we literally have no power.  This list does not include the 2010 draft prospects.  If you have any suggestions for ways to improve the list or players who I have forgotten, please let me know.  I'm going to update both parts of the list when the season is over.  Let's Go Bucs!

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I started this earlier this season, and it has been due for an update for a long time.  Below I have aggregated all of the Pirates pitching prospects' performances this year.  The list is for minor league pitchers only and it excludes players drafted in 2010 (they will be in a later update).  I compiled this data from multiple sources and it is a few days out of date, but the point is it gives you a good idea of where the Pirates stand as a system from a pitching standpoint.

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Here is another shot at something I tried earlier, but this time I have included a few more pitchers, a few more metrics, and all of the hitters.  I understand that there are some rounding errors, some numbers are a day or two old, and there are probably some human errors, but this is just to give you a rough idea of where the Pirates minor league system stands.  The ages listed are sorted by what age the player will be for a majority of this season, not their age at this exact point in time.  A lot of these guys look promising, but we shouldn't get too excited yet as the season is very young and minor league numbers are subject to various level differences and park factors.  If you have any suggestions for players to add or statistics to add in later versions, please feel free to comment.  Go Bucs!

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This is an idea that I stole from D-Rays Bay, another SBNation blog.  With the excitement around the minor league system that Neal Huntington is building I thought this would be a nice exercise to do once in a while to see where we stand.  I have the list sorted by FIP, and besides Tony Watson who may not even still be a prospect, I was able to find numbers for everybody.  I hope to be able to do this every few weeks, and eventually may start one with hitting prospects also.  After watching the major league team in 2010, I'm sure you are more worried about the future pitching situation than the hitting situation which was why I decided to go with the pitchers first.  Comments and suggestion are more than welcome.

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As I'm sure most of you know, Bucs Dugout has made the finals for the Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament over at this link http://seanramblings.blogspot.com/2010/02/2010-pittsburgh-sports-blog.html .  Bucs Dugout is currently behind but has put together a great performance to get to the finals and it is still early in the voting.  I'm sure Charlie would appreciate all of your help as he is too modest to advertise himself.

Good luck and happy voting.

Most of you probably haven't seen me around the site as I rarely post, but I always check the site daily for news.  I am a student at Penn State main campus and on Monday Feb. 25th the Pirates VP of Baseball Operations, Larry Silverman, is coming to speak to a group of students in the business school.  He will be running a mock arbitration trial and then opening up the floor to question and answer.

I was considering asking a bunch of questions based on sabrmetrics and quant analysis but I'm not sure I want to embarrass the guy. (We all have seen the past administrations lack of respect for these types of analysis and this guy is a hold over from the Littlefield administration.) Basically what I want to know is what sort of questions I should ask this guy and I wanted to see if anyone had any good questions they would like me to ask.  All of your input is appreciated.

Go Bucs.