Driving day link
I'm packing up the car and headed back to the ol' Shenango Valley this afternoon, so I'm not going to be around to post much today. In terms of the Glossary, it's getting pretty close to finished but I had an internet malfunction last night and couldn't get as much work done on it as I wanted. Lesson: never promise anything on a timescale when Time Warner might get involved. 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 1

Where have you gone, Alex Ramirez?
Former Pirate, now two-time Japanese Central League MVP.

Mining the free agent list
I'm working on the WHYGAVS Glossary, but right now it's just a messy jumble of terms and definitions that keeps getting bigger and bigger. Hopefully I can get it refined and cleaned up and online by some time tonight. 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 tha

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,