About a week ago I posted about Joel Hanrahan’s injury.  Today we got some good news on that front, as it was announced that his latest MRI revealed no structural damage to his injured throwing elbow.  There is still no hard time-table given for his return, but the terms “dissipating inflamation” and “no structural damage” are both very good things, and should mean he’ll be back sooner rather than later.

This one is behind a pay-wall, ESPN insiders only, but Buster Olney seems very bullish on the potential of this Pirates line-up, especially the power potential of Garrett Jones and Pedro Alvarez.  There is also a note in there about Paul Maholm altering his pre-game routine to conserve his energy for later innings.

Just heard this now, literally as I was writing this post.  Charlie Wilmouth of BucsDugout is going to be on the FanGraphs Audio podcast (they mention it at the end of the linked episode) on Thursday.

I’m not quite sure what it is about this pirates administration, but I think they have a tendency to get caught up in the moment and speak a bit more freely than they should be.  The latest example of this, Frank Coonelly today says that “2010 is the beginning of the next dynasty of the Pirates.”  Really?  I truly believe this team is heading in the right direction, but Dynasty?  As they say on NFL PrimeTime, Come on, Man!  Edit: I forgot to note this originally, but in that same post, Chuck Finder also adds that Neal Walker is being turned into a super-utility player, something I’ve speculated about in the past.

Finally, something I really enjoyed seeing this week was this tweet from Rob Biertempfel about the energy CF Andrew McCutchen gives this team.  Looking back to when he was called up last year, and that was expected of him at that time, he has met or exceeded all of it.  Its easy to dream on how great a player this kid can be, and I’m glad to hear that he’s the one providing the team its energy.