It’s official folks.  The Pirates kicked off their exhibition season today with a game against the hated Manatees, currently in progress.  I realize they are playing against a community college team, but Pedro Alvarez already has an RBI double.  Tomorrow, things get started for real against the New York Yankees.  From what I can tell, that game will be broadcast on the MLB Network, but I could be wrong about that.  The entire spring schedule can be found here.

In other “news” the Pirates chose to renew the contracts of 28 players with 0-3 years of service time.  This  move is, more or less, just a formality.