Pirates designate three for assignment

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh Pirates have designated three players for assignment. Those players are Virgil Vasquez, Eric Hacker, and Steve Lerud. All three players will have ten days to be traded, claimed by another team, or released. The likely outcome would be that the players either get claimed by another team, and added to that team's 40-man roster, or they

To cap off the end of the 2009 season, I'm going to be counting down my list of the top 50 prospects in the Pittsburgh Pirates' system. I'll be counting down one prospect per day, with an extensive recap on each player, until I reach number one. Check out the previous installments:46-5041-4536-4031-3530 - Brian Friday29 - Aaron Pribanic28 - Evan Chambers27 - Brock Holt26...

Pittsburgh Pirates - Acquired 2B Akinori Iwamura from the Tampa Bay Rays for P Jesse Chavez A nifty little pickup for the Pirates here. Iwamura is a solid second baseman and fills a pretty big hole for the Pirates in return for a decent, but replaceable reliever. I think the Rays were a little too quick to trade Iwamura, but on the other hand, Japanese players have some decent...

Friday, the Pirates assigned pitchers Virgil Vasquez and Eric Hacker outright to Triple-A Indianapolis and catcher Steve Lerud outright to Double-A Altoona.

Latest sign that things are slowly changing on Federal Street: when the Red Sox traded for Jeremy Hermida yesterday and only gave up two minor league arms, I didn't go apopletic about the Pirates not being involved. Hermida seems like an intriguing buy-low candidate, but if he came to Pittsburgh he'd half about a half season to prove himself before he started costing Garrett...

Donald Veal, acquired by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2008 Rule V draft, may finally be displaying the talent that many have believed he possessed...Read the full article on Bleacher Report...