Pirates Journal

The Pirates signed Nick Evans to a minor league deal and he’ll get a chance to compete for the first base job come spring training.  Evans was a fifth round pick by the Mets way back in 2004 and he’s been with the Met’s organization ever since until they cut him loose.  He’s pretty much split time between MLB and the minors the past four seasons and in 2011, he got into a career best 59 games.  His numbers aren’t anything to write home about, but then again, he hasn’t gotten much of a chance to play consistently for a big league club.

He did put up solid numbers at Triple A last year so that’s probably why the Pirates are taking a chance on him. He hit .313 with eight home runs in 64 games.  It looks the Pirates are still going to try to fill the hole at first, but if they don’t then Evans is going to be given the chance to be the backup plan.

Here’s the list of the Top Ten Pirates prospects as determined by Baseball America.

1)  Gerrit Cole  RHP
2)  Jameson Taillon  RHP
3)  Josh Bell  OF
4)  Starling Marte  OF
5)  Luis Heredia  RHP
6)  Kyle McPherson  RHP
7)  Tony Sanchez  C
8)  Robbie Grossman
9)  Stetson Allie  RHP
10)  Jeff Locke  LHP

With Ronny Cedeno on his way out, the Pirates had a hold at shortstop.  Now that hole has been filled because the Pirates signed Clint Barmes to a two year deal.  They’ll pay him $5 million in 2012 and $5.5 million in 2013.  They decided not to exercise Cedeno’s $3 million option and with the money they’re given Barmes, they must have thought they got an upgrade.

Barmes was probably the best guy at shortstop after the two blue chips, Jose Reyes and Jimmy Rollins.    Still, the Pirates may have overpaid on this one.  He has a career .252 batting average although he has shown some pop.  Of course the pop came while with the Colorado Rockies.  Last year he struggled with Houston but his career OPS is just .703.  2010 was a bad year too and you have to go back to the best season of his career, 2009, to get a little optimistic here.