Setting the 40-man
Midnight tonight is the deadline for teams to set their 40-man rosters, meaning that to protect guys from the Rule 5 draft they have to be added by then. Before today the Pirates' roster was functionally at 38, after adding Jose Ascanio and Evan Meek back in from the 60-day DL. John Perrotto is reporting today that the Pirates will also add Ramon Augero, Brad Lincoln, Gorkys Hernandez, Bryan Morris while dropping Justin Thomas, Robinzon Diaz, and Jeff Karstens and claiming Chris Jakubauskas off of waivers from the Mariners. The net movement puts the team right at 40, though they can still drop guys before the Rule 5 (Anthony Clagett,

Free agency and spending
Free agency kicked off last night at midnight. The Pirates have not signed John Lackey yet, and so I'm going to picket PNC Park when I'm home over Thanksgiving. OK, I'm being dramatic. Neal Huntington says he's going to move slowly, and that's the right approach for a team in the Pirates' position. Here are the position players and here are the pitchers that are free agents. First off,

The fall/winter ball update
Haven't done one of these in a while, so let's catch up with the Pirate prospects playing in various parts of the Western Hemisphere this fall. 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.

Jim Tracy: Manager of the Year
In celebration, some Jim Tracy Rhetorical Questions! Did I think he would win? Yes I did. Am I happy about it? Well, I hate to bear a grudge, but no, not particularly.

Is Andy LaRoche done growing as a player?
When looking through Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projections for 2010 (which were posted last week), my initial reaction was almost identical to my reaction to last year's ZiPS: "Damn, this team is going to be bad." My second reaction was this: "Wow, these projections don't see a whole lot of room for growth in Andy LaRoche, do they?" So far, we've discussed projections from Bill James, CHONE, and now ZiPS. Baseball Prospectus won't release their PECOTAs for a bit, but it's easy enough to spot a trend. 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