Friday Notepad

Let's start the weekend with a little Bucco news:

• Marc Normandin of MLB Daily Dish looks at the Bucs' recent pickups in his post "The Pirates' Low-Risk, High Upside Gambles."
• Todd Devlin of Canadian Baseball Network interviewed Pirate and Team Canada RHP Chris Leroux...ends up he started out as a catcher, who knew?
• Jonathan Mayo put out a list of 10 guys that just fell under his Top Hundred Prospect rankings. Pirate RHP Luis Heredia was one of the players knocking on the door.
• Dewey's value as a hitter is verified by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. But he's curious about how much of that value is negated by his defense behind the plate; his back-of-the-envelope Sabermetrics make Ryan Doumit more or less a wash.
• Mike Axisa of Fangraphs expects the feel good season that Brandon Moss enjoyed in Oakland not to carry over into 2013 after crunching a couple of semi-advanced metrics. ZIPS agrees, predicting a 2013 line of .236/.305/.426 for the ex-Bucco lefty.
• A lot of old Bucs got fringe deals: The Blue Jays announced that they signed IF Andy LaRoche to a minor league contract that includes an invite to camp. Ditto for the Indans & RHP Matt Capps; the Yankees & OF Matt Diaz and the Red Sox & 1B Lyle Overbay.
• It's fast approaching: pitchers and catchers report to Pirate camp on February 11th.