TIOPS DAILY FIVE
RUMBLINGS, MUSINGS, OPINIONS
1. A.J. Burnett on Sunday threw around 70 pitches, 40 fastballs, 20 cuveballs, 6-10 changeups and the velocity was very encouraging. “He threw all three pitches effectively,” GM Neal Huntington said yesterday. “Curveball was good. Changeup was good for A.J. and the fastball showed life.”
The Pirates are about 10-14 days from needing to figure out their rotation for Burnett’s expected return for the Cubs series.
“We’ll have a challenging decision to make,” Huntington said.
Jeff Locke is the prime candidate to come out, but for Huntington and the Pirates, would there really be any drop off by keeping Locke in the rotation and planting Charlie Morton on the bench?
For whatever reason there continues to be a narrative that Charlie Morton is a quality starting pitcher. The only difference between Locke and Morton — Morton makes about $8 million, Locke $531,000 —
2. The Pirates believing they brought Gregory Polanco to the majors too soon last season has played a factor in the team giving little to no consideration to calling up Tyler Glasnow or Josh Bell at any point when rosters expand. “He [Tyler Glasnow] continues to remind us that there are some things he needs to do,” Huntington said of Glasnow.
Catcher Elias Diaz will be the only player who has no Major League experience to be among the first wave of Sept 1 callups this week. Alen Hanson remains the only other candidate at a later point when it comes to players who have no Major League experience.
It’s time to stick a fork in Tony Sanchez ever being in the Pirates plans. At least Bob Nutting’s booze bill will be down when the Pirates clinch a playoff spot.
3. The Steelers are on their third kicker in less than a month and Steeler officials should feel a lot more comfortable with Josh Scobee going into the season than Garrett Harley. The team even upgraded over Shaun Suisham in one area.
Scobee has a big leg and 54% of his kickoffs went for touchbacks the last three seasons.
4. Gerrit Cole vs Jake Arrieta in the wildcard game — who you got? —
If that isn’t the pitching matchup just over a month from now in the Cubs and Pirates likely facing each other, then one or both managers would be doing a disservice to their team.
5. The Penguins and Cody Franson.
Pittsburgh tried to acquire Franson last February prior to the deadline offering Simon Despres, expressed interest in Franson during the negotiating period in June, but the Phil Kessel acquisition took Pittsburgh out of the running on July 1 or at least they figured it did.
Despite limited cap space, a league source says the Penguins circled back to the Franson camp in late July and made a To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”!
— Check out the TIOPS Daily Five Monday – Friday’s —
Recapping Monday’s Action on TIOPS
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Malkin was disappointed in losing Hornqvist as his winger; Gonchar likely to get a deal….
John Steigerwald’s Monday Column
Steelers – Monday report on safety position
Why can’t the Pens just buy out Scuderi then give Franson $4mil/per for 2 years? Is it that big of a risk? Its easy for me to spend someone else’s money, but isn’t Franson worth the risk? Idk.. seems kind of an obvious thing to me, unless Franson is holding out while the Pens make a final decision on Scuderi.
[…] William DePaoli from InsidePittsburghSports.com said this in an article from yesterday: […]
i “liked” that comment
Sam the Chubster Frog.
ahh you’re back you must of found npl’s hot dog cart that he lost during the Florida storm
I’m assuming he will be on this site in shortly
ha sam thinks im not on here and he thinks i could give two shits about his awful posts…but…if thats what you want they ALL deserve a thumbs down I guess I’ll oblige and follow everyone else and give you the thumbs down opinion on your racist, arrogant, often retarded posts
Do the pens have any cap space right now? I’m just looking at the cap numbers on hockey buzz and they have the pens at 2M left but I don’t see plotnikov on there. Outside of a trade Pouliot will be starting in the AHL this year for cap reasons alone. NHL numbers has us at under 1M cap space and that has Plotnikov with a 3.775M cap hit. I thought we signed him for 1M or lower. I miss capgeek.
I thought I read somewhere they were at 1.6MM or something to that effect
1.68MM according to Cap friendly
hockeyscap.com Lancer. Not quite capgeek but the closest out there today.
Random question….has anybody with a PS4, upgraded their hard drive?
Funny when ou812 ,npl10,stan and jerk are not here people have less thumbs down on their posts .
Must be just a coincidence
if any of you interested this year http://www.ticketmaster.com/Pittsburgh-Penguins-tickets/artist/806005?brand=penguins&camefrom=NHLpenguins_MDL
did pens tickets prices went up ?
Apparently Buffalo News reports that Sabres have offered Franson a two-year contract.
[…] William DePaoli of Inside Pittsburgh Sports: The Penguins tried to trade for Cody Franson last February and offered up Simon Despres to the Maple Leafs. The Pens showed some interest during the negotiating period before July 1st. They don’t have much cap space left, but a league source is saying the Penguins circled back to Franson in late July. […]
If this team can’t unload Scuderi or another contract worth moving (which at the moment Scuderi’s may really be the only one as Kunitz seems posed to try and prove us detractors wrong) there is no point in talking about Franson. Especially if he wants multi year… we have Maatta and Pouliot to resign next year, are we willing to risk one for signing this guy, who cant skate near as well as the other two, now?
pouliot is the year after maatta, no?
That’s what I thought. Maata elc started, but pouliot didn’t start until last year.
I’ll be a lot happier when Maatta is signed. I could see him getting an offer sheet if it gets that far. I would be happy with a 4 year 16M contract if we can get it that low. It seems like RFA players are getting a lot more money these days.
I stand corrected!
Two years may be plausible but at the end of the day they still have to move someone this year to get him under the cap!
My concern with Scobee is whether he can kick in Heinz Field and the rest of the AFC North on a regular basis when the weather gets bad. That’s a far cry from kicking in Jacksonville, Indy (dome), Houston (dome) and Tennessee where kicking conditions are near perfect.
Number 4 is exactly why the wildcard needs fixed. Quit seeding division winners as wild card exempt. Guarantee a spot, but seed 1-5 based off of W-L, not a shit show matchup between the inferior teams of the Mets and Dodgers because they won the division. Baseball fans would much rather see a seven game series between the Pirates and Cubs….
#2….dear God shut up
Don’t worry. We have Ben Lovejoy
So we offered Franson before we offered Fehr. Makes perfect sense. We could use Franson a lot more than Fehr. And in Franson couldn’t situation Pittsburgh at $3 would be a great deal for him. A 2-year deal for Franson does nothing for him as he’s in a situation where its best to go UFA again as soon as possible and hope he gets better luck.
wooooo