Sunday funny papers

John Perrotto has the scoop:

The Pittsburgh Pirates have inquired about trading for Mets center fielder Mike Cameron in recent weeks but New York does not want to pay any of the $12.5-million left on the final two years of his contract. The Pirates have tried to entice the Mets to eat some salary by offering pitching prospects, though it is unclear which ones.

Oakland manager Ken Macha, a former Pirates catcher/infielder, turned down a three-year contract extension offer and likely won't return to the Athletics next season. Macha, who lives in Murrysville, would likely become the leading candidate for the Pirates' job if they don't pick up Lloyd McClendon's contract option for 2006.

Two things here. First, confirmation that yeah, the Bucs are going after Cameron. I wonder how the Benson trade has or has not eased relations between the two clubs. They got Keppinger. They can't complain. If Cameron's owed almost $13M for two years, obviously the Bucs have to get the Mets to pay about half. Cameron is a huge question mark and the Mets signed him for a ridiculously high wage. Even at $7M per year, I doubt he's a great value. I'd pass if I'm Littlefield. Save the money to acquire a player from a team that unexpectedly tanks and throws it into Rebuild to save face in June.

This could shape up as a big season for Joe Liggins. I'm one of those people who believe that a change of manager, like a change of lineup, doesn't make much if any difference. The only exception is when there are some kind of personality conflicts or philosophic differences between the manager and the GM that results with some kind of unusual incompetence filling out the lineup card--say the manager just won't play some rookie that he finds disrespectful, or he won't use players in the roles for which the GM acquired them; then a team might change dramatically by replacing him. When managers are made into scapegoats, that often compounds the underlying problems with a team by creating the illusion that things will be different. Anyway, Macha has a good reputation and now we'll see if his name continues to bounce around as a possible replacement for the current skipper.

Dejan Kovacevic and Joe Rutter both have twin features preparing the reading public for the upcoming spring. Dejan echoes Perrotto's reporting that the Bucs are "aggressively pursuing a trade to upgrade the outfield and to add a starting pitcher". I also admire the subtitle of that piece, "With a handful of young players like Wilson, Bay and Perez just establishing themselves, talk of a better year for Pirates may not be nonsense." Talk about setting the bar low.

Kovacevic and Rutter both offer things-to-look-for lists. Kovacevic counts ten, Rutter does five, but both pieces don't really have a lot of new information in them if you have been reading about the team every day since mid-November. I don't think we're really in the target audience for these kind of pieces though I enjoy them a lot. Rutter also has this essay on starting pitching. I will have to update this post before April begins. One thing I will say about the current team: regardless of whether or not Littlefield adds another starter, the core of 2005 rotation looks much stronger than the 2004 rotation looked on opening day, mainly because of the emergence of Ollie and the addition of Redman. We're missing some of the depth we had last year, however.

Finally, Perrotto also offers this off-season recap for those of you who have been living in a cave.