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On our 26 man Active Roster right now, there are some decisions to be made regarding who we think should stay. Listed below are players for consideration -

Williams - send back to AAA

McKinney, Taylor - DFA

Tellez, Grandal/Davis - ?

If we send Williams back to AAA, DFA McKinney and Taylor, and add 2 more players when the Active Roster increases to 28, we will have room for 5 players from AAA. My picks would be Peguero, Yorke, Suwinski, Cook, and probably another pitcher. And, if we want to get max benefit from the time that Yorke and Cook are up, we need time at 1B regardless of whether we have a RH or LH hitter to put out there.

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What's that old saying again? Rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.

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Yes, calling up those four would make watching much more interesting, assuming they're playing those guys everyday. Hoping we get some news today that Tellez, Grandal, MAT, and even Chapman have been claimed by other teams, both to provide them opportunities to play meaningful baseball in September and to clear spots for us to play guys who may be part of the team next year.

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Pretty sure MAT already cleared waivers with no claim, meaning a release would be next

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Yep, only reason to keep him is to give as much knowledge to Cruz in CF as possible. MAT seems like a great person that might be able to help him, other than that it's time to clear space for Yorke, Cook, Peguero and possibly Gorski.

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So the Pirates offense puts up 31 runs in last 4 games, never scoring less than 5 runs in any game, and they lose them all.

Gut! Punch!

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Difficult to know what we need and when we need it? The bullpen has been in disarray all year much of it due to injuries. I think this was Mlodzinski's first MLB outing in a few months, and we still have 2 or 3 bullpen arms we were depending upon this year who are still rehabbing. You do the best that you can and hope that will be good enough.

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Everybody has injuries. No bullpen is stable all year. Major league teams are prepared for that.

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Yeah, FG did an article a couple of week ago on the projected ZIPS WAR each team lost due to injuries. We were 12th, essentially tied with Cleveland (6.30 vs. 6.31 WAR, respectively), one spot behind Cincinnati, and four spots behind the Brewers.

It's far from a perfect measure, but it would seem to undermine any suggestion that we're in last largely because of injuries:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/river-ryan-jazz-chisholm-and-baseballs-most-injured-teams/

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Folks should consider the bullpen when they go into ecstasy over the Pirates’ pitcher development. The toughest part of development is that last step. They’ve had five years now and this fiasco is what they’ve produced.

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Take away Skenes, perish the thought, and the pitching looks very average at best. And they really shouldn't take credit for developing Skenes, though I did read a quote from Shelton suggesting as much.

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BC's staff didn't develop Skenes any more than they developed Honus Wagner. After five years, there's Jones and . . . nothing else.

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