Now that Jordy Mercer has been called up, let's take a look at how much he might be able to help the woeful Bucs' offense at the shortstop position, where Clint Barmes has been one of the key non-contributors in a disastrous offensive attack of historical proportions.

A certain parallel is bound to be drawn to when Neil Walker came up to take the place of the sinkhole in the lineup that was Aki Iwamura a couple of years back. Mercer was never supposed to be quite the offensive player Walker was to be, and has not shown much previously in the minors, but as a defensive shortstop, he has definitely shown himself to have value.

In fact, Mercer's value was noted in a calculation of minor league WAR last year when he was one of the most valuable players in AAA when including their defensive WAR measurement. I wish I could remember where that article is (maybe someone can find and post it in the comments), but anyway, that's not the point of this post. This post is about his offensive potential and whether he is ready for MLB.

I'll look at his MLE (Major League Equivalents) and also compare him to my own statistical criteria for determining MLB readiness and success.

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A good deal of teeth-gnashing has gone on among Pirate fans regarding Pedro Alvarez’s performance so far this season. Rather than taking a step forward, he has seemingly imploded with a mind blowing 10 K’s in 16 AB’s so far in 2012. His lone hit so far was a typically long majestic home run of the kind that pulls out the optimist in every die-hard Pirate fan at least until his next flailing at bat.

A good bit of press has gone into the question of whether Pedro can get back to what appeared to be a promising rookie half season in 2010, when he hit .256/.326/.461 for a .788 OPS. However, there’s a huge problem with those numbers, which on the surface still aren't all that great. That is, he never in any sustained stretch brought his K/AB percentage down below 30 percent, even when hitting well, and his BABIP for that year was an unsustainable .341.

In order to get inside the numbers, I have broken down his 2010 season in stretches when he was getting good results and when he wasn’t. His 2011 performance was pretty much equally poor, so I just broke it up into stretches of around 100 PA’s. Let's see if we can discover his true ability inside these stats.

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I have talked before about how fast Chase d’Arnaud is, but I think many people didn't quite believe it. Well, in his very first MLB game, d’Arnaud gave us at least two plays to watch and therefore time him to see just exactly how he compares to the other speedsters on the Pirates, Andrew McCutchen and Jose Tabata.

For reference, you may recall the videos I did last year of Tabata, and how he was surprisingly Cutch's equal flying down to first base. Here is one of those pieces:

Cutch vs. El Lagarto THROWDOWN ROUND 2 (via marklandson)

As if that wasn't surprising enough, check out d’Arnaud's speed that he showed last night to compare with our more established speedsters:

How Fast is Chase d’Arnaud? (via marklandson)

That’s right! I have never clocked McCutchen getting down to first base as quickly as Chase did in his very first game! Three seconds and 29 frames! He may have hit into a DP there, but he certainly impressed with his speed tool. let's hope he can make enough good contact like his triple yesterday for the Pirates to replace a minus in their lineup with a plus. The Pirates could have three of the fastest guys in MLB at the top of their lineup for years to come.

Brad Lincoln dominated the Bisons for seven innings in his last outing. Lincoln continued on his trend of striking out a lot of batters, and this time also kept hard contact to a minimum. In fact, if it weren't for some defensive gaffes in the field, his outing would look even better, as two of the four hits against him came on batters who should have been retired if it weren’t for his teammates’ defensive problems. He tired a bit in his last inning, which is when his lone walk occurred, but was able to get through it with only some hard outs.

The knock on Lincoln has been his straight fastball and inability to throw the curve for strikes. How do you think he’s coming on improving those issues? Could he be the next in line for a Pittsburgh tryout?

2011-05-18 Lincoln Indy highlights (via marklandson)

Justin Wilson has had a fine season in AAA to this point, compiling a 4-3 record and an 2.27 ERA. His walks have been a concern, and he doesn't strike out all that many batters, either. Nevertheless, hitters have had a very hard time making hard contact against him, and that begs the question as to what's going on with him. Is he ready for the Show?

Here are all the pitches from his latest game, where he allowed one run over 5.2 innings on a cold day.

2011-05-18 Wilson Indy highlights (via marklandson)

Here is Rudy Owens’ first outing this year on April 11. He allowed 1 run in 7 innings on a very long HR in the 2nd inning. I noticed that the Mudhens’ approach seemed to be to try to hit the first thing that looked good early on. Then he was able to get more K’s as the game went on. There was a lot of hard contact on him, however, they were unable to get anything going except for that one big blast.

The video condenses his whole outing down to 11 minutes.

2011-04-11 Owens Indy highlights (via marklandson)

Rudy Owens allowed one run in 6.1 innings against the Louisville Bats, one of the best teams in the International League. Owens took a no-hitter into the sixth, and lost the shutout in the seventh. Tony Watson came on to avoid any further damage and keep Owens to his current 1.35 ERA after two starts. Owens now has the only two wins that Indy has been able to muster this season so far.

Sadly, the Louisville video archive was missing the first three innings, so you have here innings four through seven, edited down to less than seven minutes.

2011-04-16 Owens Indy highlights (via marklandson)

This edition of "Your Possible Future Pirates" shows how the boxscore doesn't always tell the story. Chase D'Arnaud went 0-for-4 with a walk and Alex Presley went 2-for-5. But, in each case some of the plate appearances where they didn't get on base might show you something more interesting than on the ones where they did.

All of D'Arnaud's plate appearances are first, and then all of Presley's.

April 13, 2011 Louisville vs. Indianapolis

2011-04-13 Indy highlights (via marklandson)

Here's a video of all of Chase D'Arnaud's and Alex Presley's PAs for April 12 edited down to seven minutes. You'll also see all of D'Arnaud's plays at shortstop. All right-handed batters you see are d'Arnaud and the lefties are Presley.

2011-04-12 Indy highlights (via marklandson)

With Chase D’Arnaud’s hot start to the season’s first six games (8-for-21, .381 AVG and 1.167 OPS), I’ve been eagerly watching both his at bats and his play in the field. His shortstop play has been very solid, but yesterday he got a chance to show his range in the hole...something I’m sure we’ve all been waiting for. It doesn't look like he’s going to have to move off the position to me.

Chase d'Arnaud makes a tough play in the hole at short. (via marklandson)

I'm sitting here listing to the Pirates/Yankees matchup on the radio, and there's one overwhelming feeling that has overcome me. That is, that as bad as the Pirates have been for the last umpteen years, the Pirates' play-by-play announcers have got to be some of the worst announcers at the MLB level.

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There has been some fretting about whether the Pirates' core of Andrew McCutchen, Jose Tabata and Pedro Alvarez might become Super Two-eligible, even though the Pirates seem to have tried their best to time their promotions so they would fall after the phantom Super Two cutoff date.

Previous to this year, two years and 130 days of service time was the lowest needed for Super Two, but the 2011 date has unexpectedly come in at only two years 122 days. If the same thing happens in 2012, McCutchen will be due for a big raise, which could seriously affect the Pirates' ability to sign him to a reasonable extension, especially if he goes crazy and puts up a 5+ WAR year.

The prevailing thought by many has been that the Super Two date has been creeping later due to teams like the Pirates that have tried to manage their players arbitration dates by calling them up after the third week in May.

However, I have taken a closer look at the numbers, and I'm happy to say that this fear is probably ill-founded.

Most likely, this year's Super Two date is an anomaly that will not repeat itself next year and is not in immediate danger of creeping towards July. Here's why ...

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In reading Jayson Stark's article on how to screw the small market teams even more, I glanced down the page and noticed this mind-blowing tidbit...

One baseball man we talked to speculated that if the Nationals had been willing to give Harper a minor league contract -- which would have meant paying him all the money up front -- they might have been able to sign him as, uh, "cheaply" as $8 million.

Whoa. So, this source is saying it was the Nationals' preference to sign Harper to an MLB deal? And the answer is, yes, apparently...

But because the Nationals wanted to stretch out the payments, the rules required them to do that via a big league deal. And because of Harper's age, they felt they needed a five-year contract instead of something shorter.

The problem with giving him a big league deal is that Harper is 17, and this means he will have only options in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and after that he will have to make the big league club to stay at the age of 21. If he somehow gets injured, like Tony Sanchez or Starling Marte, and loses development time, well, too bad, at least in most cases (if it happens near the beginning of a year he could get a fourth option).

It seems crazy that the Nats would have purposely put themselves into this position because they didn't want to spend the upfront money. I just don't see Neal Huntington making this same mistake.

I wanted to take a look at how other teams lineups are put together and to see how much of an impact Pedro Alvarez could have on the team. I wanted to see where other teams have punch, holes, and whether adding one impact bat to the Pirates might lift them enough to compete with other offenses.

I took the starting 8 for the Reds, Brewers, Cards and Cubs to see how close the Pirates are from some of those other division offenses.

First, let's look at what the Pirates have been running out there most often this year...

PIRATES - 208 Runs
Andrew McCutchen OF   0.384
Garrett Jones    OF   0.357
Ryan Doumit      C    0.351
Lastings MilledgeOF   0.297
Andy LaRoche     3B   0.278
Ronny Cedeno     SS   0.271
Akinori Iwamura  2B   0.264
Jeff Clement     1B   0.237
                     -0.200 Total wOBA points below average

McCutchen is a really good hitter - by far the best the Pirates have right now. And that's not good. Because unless you've got a .400+ wOBA hitter, it's tough to compete.

Jones is heating up - hitting about .450 wOBA this month, but that's not a realistic sustainable level for him. I still think he can be a .370 wOBA guy. We'll see how he does from here out. Last year he was close to .400 wOBA. But he's probably a .360 to .370 wOBA guy.

Doumit at .350 - this is probably about right for him. He's really struggling at the plate right now, but .345 to .360 seems about right.

And then....yikes. Luckily, we've got the calvary up to take the place of most of these others. Let's see how far away we are....

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Once again, the two exciting Pirate speedsters showed their wheels in Tuesday's game. Andrew McCutchen, "Cutch", flew down the line to beat out an infield single in the 7th inning, and Jose Tabata, "El Legarto", practically beat out a routine grounder to the shortstop.

THE QUESTION FOR YOU - WHO WAS FASTER TO FIRST??

IMPORTANT!! TAKE THE POLL BELOW BEFORE VIEWING THE VIDEO!

OK, did you do that? Now watch the video...

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With the Pirates’ season spiraling out of control, we must look for new and exciting things to discuss and analyze. Of course, what could be more fun and exciting than arguing about which of the Pirates’ fastest players is, you know, faster?

Luckily, both Jose Tabata and Andrew McCutchen had to hustle down the line today with the intent of beating out a ground ball. Who do you think was faster?

IMPORTANT!!! TAKE THE POLL BEFORE WATCHING THE VIDEO! (no cheating now...)

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On Rocco DeMaro's show, Neil Huntington called in to talk about the draft (they never expected Stetson Allie to be available to them in the second round and scrambled to find out if there was some problem underlying why he did) and the imminent promotion of Pedro Alvarez (sometime in the next few weeks).

The most illuminating of the comments is probably that they indeed see Lastings Milledge moving off left long term in favor of Jose Tabata (strongly implying that he will be a fourth outfielder) and Andy LaRoche will move to a utility role when Pedro arrives.

Click to listen to the podcast.

In the last video comparison of Akinori Iwamura's performance from last year to this one, we looked at some plays Aki made running and in the field. The majority of people, 75%, agreed with me that Aki's perfomance this year seems more related to weight gain over the winter than it did his knee injury.

The consensus to this point seems to be that the Pirates did their due diligence, but Aki showed up to camp out of shape. This also might suggest that if Aki gets into better shape, he might actually still be a decent player.

Here's another look, but at specifically one area - that of speed down the line to first. This study has also produced some very interesting results.

First, we'll see video of Aki with the Pirates, then with the Rays post injury, and then before the injury. The video is at 30 frames per second, so 10 frames is a third of a second. 3 frames slower would be a tenth of a second.

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UPDATE by Charlie: This video really is eye-opening.

There has been a lot of debate surrounding the Pirates' decision to trade for Akinori Iwamura after his knee injury last year. Aki has seemed slow and lumbering this year, and many have attributed that to his knee injury in 2009. Others have mentioned that Aki just looks heavier and may have been depressed that he had been traded to the dreadful Pirates and let himself get out of shape.

Huntington has said the Pirates scouted Aki last year after the injury and the scouts reported that Aki's running and time down the line to first was not affected, and that his range at 2nd base was good.

I decided to go back and find some plays that would show him running and playing 2nd base to see if there was a noticeable difference.

What do you think? Should the scouts have come to the conclusion that Aki was on the decline or not?

Again we focus on what the two closet hitting prospects did, this in their last game on May 25 against the Gwinnett Braves. Jose Tabata went 1 for 4 with an infield single, a hard hit out, and two Ks, one with the bases loaded. Pedro Alvarez went 1 for 2 with a double, a K and 2 walks.

Tabata's infield single up the middle shows his speed and I doubt anyone would throw him out in MLB on that play.

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With the promotion of Neil Walker to Pittsburgh, we're down to two main prospects to analyze from AAA Indianapolis. I've recently given a taste of Argenis Diaz's interesting offensive surge, but I'm going to concentrate on the two we expect will be making an impact in Pittsburgh fairly soon. That is, Jose Tabata and Pedro Alvarez.

On this day, Tabata and Alvarez both had good games as Tabata had two singles and a double and Pedro had a double and a near opposite field HR that the left fielder caught with his back against the wall.

Jose Tabata is a near lock to come up to Pittsburgh in June. He's been showing a bit more power lately, and has found a favorite power alley to right center field. He has recently sent half a dozen balls that way in the last week, hitting two off the wall for extra bases, two more have gone for doubles in the gap, and a couple have been run down by the center fielder on good plays. In this game, he shoots a ball into the gap that the center fielder cuts off, but Tabata easily makes it into second with the double.

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Wally Whitehurst, the Bradenton Marauders pitching coach, chats with Seibel and Starkey in a very interesting interview on 93.3 TheFan.

He talks about Jeff Locke, Nate Adcock and Bryan Morris's development as well as how Tony Sanchez is doing with handling the pitchers and calling games. He gives a good run down on what their strategy is, as well as mentions that the pitch count they have at high A is 90 pitches.

Click to listen to the podcast.

Jose Tabata - A line drive hitter who is stealing a lot of bases this year. He gets a lot of infield hits, but also has displayed some impressive opposite field gap power lately.

Neil Walker - With high average and pretty good power, Walker hits better from the left side, but can also do damage from the right side as well.

Pedro Alvarez - An impressive power hitter who is struggling with strikeouts, lefties, and identifying breaking pitches in general. You'll see him freeze on curve balls and unless he's looking for it, he can't adjust right now.

Argenis Diaz - A defensive wizard at shortstop who has had practically no bat in pro ball, Diaz came over in the Adam LaRoche trade from Boston last year. Diaz's approach was changed by the Pirates at the beginning of the season to utilize right field almost exclusively, and he has responded by pushing the batting average north of .300. This at least makes him interesting enough to put on the radar.

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Neil Walker did not play in this game, which was shortened to 7 innings due to finishing the suspended game. Unfortunately, there's no video of game 1. Instead of Walker, I'm adding Argenis Diaz, who has been surprising with the bat so far this season.

Jose Tabata - A line drive hitter who is stealing a lot of bases this year, but generally has around a 20% extra base hit rate (XBH). This means 80% of his hits are singles. He's surprisingly fast and gets a fair amount of infield singles, and you'll see evidence of that in the video.

Argenis Diaz - A defensive wizard at shortstop who has had practically no bat in pro ball, Diaz came over in the Adam LaRoche trade from Boston last year. Diaz's approach was changed by the Pirates at the beginning of the season to utilize right field almost exclusively, and he has responded by pushing the batting average north of .300. This at least makes him interesting enough to put on the radar.

Pedro Alvarez - An impressive power hitter who is struggling with strikeouts, lefties, and identifying breaking pitches in general. You'll see him freeze on curve balls and unless he's looking for it, he can't adjust right now.

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Last night, the Indianapolis announcer said he saw the lineup card early in the day, and it had Tabata playing center as usual. Then, later he saw the lineup card, and Tabata had been switched to left field with Brandon Moss in center.

Apparently, Kyle Stark had called Kremblas mid day and said that they wanted to see Tabata in left field.

With Lastings Milledge struggling, it seems obvious that Tabata could replace Milledge in left field, keeping Jones in right as they continue to look at Steve Pearce at first base.

What's the right move?