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2017 Winter Mini-Camp: Day Four Discussion Thread

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Thursday is the last day of mini-camp down at Pirate City in Bradenton. The four-day event consists of voluntary workouts for players on the 40-man roster and also players who received non-roster invitations to Major League Spring Training. Nearly 40 players total showed up this week.

This is a discussion thread for any Pirates topic. Below are some notes from today, and if anything else comes up, we will add it below. Any major news will be posted in a new article. Tim Williams is covering the mini-camp and will have articles from the event, which will be posted later today and throughout the next week or so.

**Buster Olney continued his rankings by position this morning and the Pirates came up empty in the Top Rotation category. They failed to get an honorable mention as well, although I’ll point out for the latter that each previous category for positions had about 5-7 extra players listed and he only mentioned two extra rotations. Basically, Pirates did not make his top 12 rotations. Cubs took the top spot today. Over the next three days he will post the best bullpens, lineups and defenses.

**We mentioned that Gregory Polanco was scheduled to show up at camp, but he still hasn’t arrived. He has been helping underprivileged kids in the Dominican this week, putting on baseball camps in four different towns and working with Food for the Hungry to help people in need. He didn’t need an excuse to not show up to voluntary workouts, but he has a pretty good one anyway.

**Tomorrow at 1 PM is the deadline to exchange arbitration figures with players. The Pirates currently have six unsigned players. They have been using the “file and trial” method for arbitration, which means if they don’t come to an agreement tomorrow with Gerrit Cole, Drew Hutchison, Tony Watson, Juan Nicasio, Jordy Mercer and Jared Hughes, then that will be the end of negotiations and they will go to trial with that player or players. So we may hear about players agreeing to contracts today. Hutchison is the only one from that group who is at mini-camp. More on this topic later tonight.

**We will have an article on Elias Diaz later today. Yesterday’s discussion thread article had links to the articles from the first three days of mini-camp. We also added an article on Josh Bell later in the day about how he changed his off-season workout routine.

**Here is video of Josh Bell working on his throws to second base this morning. Notice the batting dummy providing a distraction on the throw in place of an actual runner.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPK4Hb3Aqoc/

**Here’s batting practice from Kevin Newman from today. Check out our Instagram account for more videos from Erich Weiss, Barrett Barnes and others going up from today. There is also a second Kevin Newman video posted now.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPK504kAfPn/

John Dreker
John Dreker
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball. When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.

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