(I'm also thankful for Pete Diana at the PG and his great photo).

Anyways, I'll be spending most of the day in the car thinking of what I'm thankful for as a Pirate fan, but while I'm doing that I've got some links.

Baseball America ranks the Pirates' top 10 prospects. They're 70% Neal Huntington, 20% Dave Littlefield, and 10% Rene Gayo (I refuse to give Littlefield credit for Starling Marte since he spent most of his time not giving Gayo enough of a budget to do anything impactful). Seriously, this list has more potential on it than I ever remember seeing.

David Chalk and Bugs and Cranks makes good points about the Pirates' payroll.

Tim at BUCCO Fans is nearing the end of his Top 50 prospects countdown. Speaking of which, I'm doing my pitchers list just as soon as I finish the glossary.  Can anyone tell me how to rank Donnie Veal?

I should have some time to get these things done while I'm at home this week, because other than Thanksgiving, the only thing that's taking my time up this week is the Gobble Wobble. Do you live anywhere near Mercer County? Come to the Gobble Wobble and there's a good chance that your favorite Pirate blogger will actually register you for the race. With a blinding hangover.

Quick correction on something I wrote last Friday: the Pirates can't outright Robinzon Diaz to the minors because he's got too much Major League experience. So they'll try to trade him in the next five days, but more than likely he's going to be granted his release. In that caze, farewell Robinzon, I zhall mizz you and the z'z in your lazt name (link: Jen Langosch's blog).

All I'm saying is that the Duquesne Dukes are 3-0 and I don't think Pitt is going to crush them this year.

This morning let's do open question time. I did a Q&A with Simon On Sports last week and one of the questions was about free agency. I kind of shuffled it off with a John Lackey joke, but the honest truth is I'm not sure who I think the Pirates should be going after in free agency this year. They'll probably take a look at Rick Ankiel and I can get on board with that. I think Carl Pavano might be a cheap source of good innings for a National League team. I'm not sold on Khalil Greene, but I guess maybe Nick Green or John McDonald could possibly provide an all-glove substitute to Ronny Cedeno at shortstop. Marcus Thames could make a nice platoon partner for Garrett Jones.

Even there, I feel like I'm stretching. I know the Pirates are going to spend money this off-season, I'm just not sure who on this list that would be a productive signing considering that a team in the Pirates' situation is much better served by giving at bats to guys like Milledge and LaRoche and Clement than it is signing a stop-gap to fill their positions. The stop-gaps will always be available, but we need to know about these players now. The Pirates could certainly afford to do something like the Brewers did with Mike Cameron, but that's a much less valuable move for a team further away from contention. So who on the free agency list should the Pirates be interested in? Why?

The net movement puts the team right at 40, though they can still drop guys before the Rule 5 (Anthony Clagett, Jeff Sues, Luis Cruz, and Brian Bixler among others are still candidates, I would think), should they be interested in someone.

Via John Perrotto's Twitter

UPDATE (9:00 PM)- Sorry, I meant to update this with more information as soon as I got home, but I got caught up in a book and had no choice but to finish it.

Dropping Thomas isn't surprising in the least. I'm a little surprised to see Karstens dropped, but only because guys like Clagett and Sues are still on the roster. He's the only one that was out of options are arbitration-eligible, though. There's a pretty solid chance he'll clear waivers, though, so we can send him back to Triple-A if that happens. I'm really surprised to see Diaz dropped because Doumit is so fragile and Diaz seemed to be a decent backup. I think he'll probably be traded in the next week. According to DK's report, only Karstens has been put through waivers, so far.

If you're unfamiliar with how a DFA works (or need a refresher), after you're designated for assignment, your team has ten days to decide what to do with you. You can be traded, released, or put through waivers. If you clear waivers, you can be sent to the minors after the ten days are up. Because the waiving is a three day process, the team has seven days after the DFA to place the player on waivers. That means if someone wants Diaz, but doesn't think they'll get him on the waiver wire or pick high enough in the Rule 5 to get him, they have about a week to work out a trade. Because the Pirates have to be assuming he'll be picked in the Rule 5 (I mean, James Skelton was picked last year, people always need catchers), I'm guessing they have a trade about worked out.

As for the actual impact on the team, well, we've still got Doumit and Jaramillo and Kratz in Triple-A is a respectable short-term option (if he's not taken the Rule 5, that is, because I think he's eligible) and Sanchez will probably move quickly this year. It's a little surprising to see Diaz kept off the roster and presumably to lose him, but it's really not worth getting upset over.

UPDATE #2- Crap, I forgot to write about Jakubauskas. Besides being the worst blogger's nightmare since Mientkiewicz, he seems like a really interesting pickup. He pitched in the independent Frontier League (the Washington Wild Things' league) for three years starting when he was 24, then moved out west to the Golden Baseball league, where the Mariners finally signed him when he was 28. He'll be 31 in December, but his first stint in Triple-A in 2008 was quite good (7.8 K/9, 2.1 BB/9 in the PCL) and I think he'll be a solid addition to the bullpen. I mean, he can't be worse than what we already have on the far end of the bench, can he?

First off, here's the full list of minor league free agents. Maybe the next Garrett Jones is on there. Probably not, but maybe. More likely, there's one or two useful relievers on there.

Next up, I see a lot of people talking about Jayson Stark's story yesterday, in which he estimates that even the Pirates start every year with $80 million in pocket when you combine revenue sharing, the central fund, and local TV contracts (warning: annoying autoplay video at link). I won't dispute his math, which guesstimates about $30 million from the central fund, $35 million from revenue sharing, and $15 million as the low-end from the local TV contract. My question is this; how much are the high end TV deals? How much do teams that own theithe Yankees make from YES or do the Red Sox make from NESN or the Mets from SNY? This article from 2007 puts the Yankees profits from YES at $60 million, but that's only assuming the Yankees own a third of the network. Wikipedia says that both the Yankees and YES are owned by the same holding company (think the Sheinhardt Wig Company from 30 Rock), which means that Yankees' owners (Steinbrenner et al) might end up with three times that. The Red Sox own 80% of NESN, so their deal is likely similar while the Mets own an unspecified amount of SNY.

I'm not disputing that the Pirates should work towards a higher payroll, but small market and large market clubs have to operate in pretty different fashions to keep themselves from losing money. For the Pirates, the $60-$65 million they get from revenue sharing and the central fund is a huge part of their entire revenue for the season, while it's an incredibly small fraction of what other teams pull in. Obviously we're not going to know the real numbers, but most of the guys that own these teams didn't get rich from being free-spending idiots who flush tens or hundreds of millions of dollars away on their baseball team ever year. From Hank and Hal Steinbrenner to Bob Nutting, they're all trying to cut some kind of profit; the nature of the sport dictates that they do it differently.

The Arizona Fall League is wrapping up today. Heading into the last game, Jose Tabata is hitting .363/.425/.478. The high batting average is nice, but only eight of his 41 hits are for extra bases(four doubles, three triples, and a homer). Still, he seemed to be finishing strongly despite adjusting to Triple-A, so it's good to see him staying hot. Chase D'Arnaud has picked things up considerably. His line is up to .286/.356/.377 after an ugly start. He's also got 11 steals in 12 attempts. Ben Badler wrote some very nice things about him in a recent AFL Notebook for Baseball America. Brian Friday, meanwhile, has a .615 OPS. If you had any remaining doubts about which was the better prospect, they should be gone by now.

I'll assume Donnie Veal's AFL season is over since he's the only Scottsdale pitcher with seven starts. Over 21 innings, he struck out 22 batters and walked just 7 while allowing 17 hits and only five earned runs. He had a couple rough starts recently, but it's a huge deal that he not only got a chance to pitch after his lost Rule 5 season, but that he pitched well. Evan Meek also had a very good winter season last year in route to turning himself around after being a Rule 5 pick. Danny Moskos had a very Danny Moskos-like line, in which it wasn't completely awful, but wasn't inspiring either. And Tony Watson pitched well in relief. The full stats for the Scottsdale Scorpions are here.

In Mexico, Brian Bixler is starting to hit well again. He's got four homers now and his line is up to .296/.364/.434. He's also struck out 42 times in around 150 PAs. Rogelio Noris is on his team and he's started to see some action, hitting .368/.419/.500 in 38 at-bats.

In Venezuela, Neil Walker has a nice .277/.382/.464 line with four homers, nine doubles, and 17 walks in about 130 plate appearances. Prove me wrong, Neil! Gorkys Hernandez, meanwhile, is slumping badly with a Ramon Vazquez-esque .233/.347/.267 line. Ronald Uviedo has made some relief appearances, pitching fairly well, Argenis Diaz is now below the Mendoza Line, and Ronny Cedeno has a .232 OBP in 17 games.

In the Dominican, you can find Eric Kratz and Starling Marte on the Aguilas Cibaenas. Kratz is hitting poorly and Marte isn't playing much, but they are teammates with noted slimeball Jose Lima. Meanwhile over on the Estrellas de Orient, Robinzon Diaz is upping his trade value with his .372/.388/.487 line while projection monster and newly minted minor league free agent Bryan Myrow has a .921 OPS in his 10 games.

Those are the only Pirates I can currently find over there, so if I'm missing anyone in the DR or anywhere, drop me a line in the comments.

• Andy LaRoche in 2009: .258/.330/.401 with 29 doubles, five triples, and 12 HR
• LaRoche 2010 Bill James Projection: .254/.338/.402 with 28 doubles, two triples, and 15 HR
• LaRoche 2010 CHONE: .263/.346/.406 with 23 doubles, two triples, and 12 HR
• LaRoche 2010 ZiPS: .260/.345/.399 with 24 doubles, two triples, and 12 HR

So each of the three projection systems see a bump in OBP for LaRoche in line with his minor league numbers, but not much else improvement. That's not to belittle even a .015 bump in OBP; a .345 OBP for LaRoche in 2009 would've given him a .746 OPS and pushed his OPS+ over the magical 100 barrier.

Still, I wonder, is that all the improvement we can expect from a player entering his second full big league season at the age of 26? We know LaRoche can hit well for extended stretches. In May of 2009, he hit .330/.411/.457 and in September/October he hit .313/.359/.552. Seven of his homers and 14 of his doubles came in those two months. If he could just be a little more consistent ...

But that argument can be misleading, though. Think back to when Bill Mazeroski was on the verge of being elected into the Hall of Fame. His supporters were saying things like, "If Bill would've just gotten two more hits a month in his prime, his career batting average would be almost .280 instead of .260!" That argument is nice, but he didn't get those hits. In his 38 career wins, Ian Snell has a 2.11 ERA, a 1.17 WHIP, and a 7.6 K/9. If he'd just pitch like that in every start ...

I'm rambling, but the point is that what separates good players and bad players is that consistency. Remember when LaRoche was struggling badly with the Pirates in 2008; there was some speculation that his good batter's eye was the reason for his high minor league batting average because he simply wasn't swinging at pitches he couldn't hit and the pitchers he was facing just weren't good enough to consistently throw him pitches that gave him trouble. It seemed then that maybe his passive approach at the plate just wouldn't translate well. Though the sample sizes are awfully small, in August he drew more walks (12) and struck out less (10) than any other full month on the season, and he hit .205/.307/.352. Maybe there is something to the criticism that he can be too passive/defensive at the plate.

Then again, projections only see his .166/.252/.256 line in 2008. They can't take in to account his thumb injury, the toll of being traded to the Pirates, or the effect of having Joe Torre and Ned Colletti yank his chain around all year (though those last two things are a little too intangible for my liking). And if we want to throw out all of his big league experience prior to 2009, LaRoche has a pretty consistent record of improving in his second year at each tier of his career.

But we can't just ignore his pre-2009 MLB numbers and pretend that he was a rookie last year, no matter how much we want to do it for our own sanity (again, those projections for the whole team are bleak). He's capable of ugly slumps. We've seen that again and again. But we also know that he's capable of very good months, months and that if given the chance, he's still young enough that he could flourish. Of course, he's also not so young that we should expect that. If I had to guess, I think his projections for this year might be on the low side, but probably not by much.

I feel like in some regards I've been rehashing this same argument here for three or four years and I'm honestly just kind of tired of making it. Anyways, Rob Neyer makes some good points about the McCutchen vs. Coghlan debate here, while Rob Iracane, maybe one of the biggest non-Pirate fan 'Cutch supporters on the web, at Walkoff Walk makes the argument for McCutchen. I'll stick with my BBA ballot and we won't talk about this anymore, except to say that if playing time really is what cost McCutchen this award then I'll take an extra year of him over a statue every single day of the week.

On to other things. MLB Trade Rumors has a list of left-handed trade targets/non-tender candidates. Perez might be an interesting buy-low guy given his history with the Indians and Rhodes might be a really cheap trade candidate if the Reds are looking to dump salary.

Beyond the Boxscore has UZR projections for 2010, if that's your sort of thing.

There's now a petition to have the MLB Network air the Dock Ellis no-no. I know online petitions never work, but a man can dream, can't he?

This isn't Pirate-related, but the Twins' new uniforms are sweet.

And finally, don't forget to check FanHouse tomorrow for a bunch of offseason NL Central previews by yours truly.