Pitchers And Catchers! Pittsburgh Pirates Offseason Is Complete

It’s one day until pitchers and catchers report to Bradenton.

The Pittsburgh Pirates offseason was centered around a few topics.

Hoka Hey!

Andrew McCutchen became a superstar.

The addition of players such as Russell Martin along with quite a few “bounce back” players that had some rather awful performances in 2012.

The dealing of Joel Hanrahan to the Boston Red Sox.

And A.J. Burnett joined Twitter.

It was a business-like offseason in which there were a few surprises.  Over the next few days we will start looking ahead to some highlights as we begin our own countdown until we arrive in Florida.  Until then, here are some links for breakfast.

Bill Brink of The Pittsburgh Post Gazette has a spring training primer up that is a must read.  The Pirates player development will always be an important topic and it’s addressed in detail in the article.  Anytime development is discussed of course Hoka Hey comes and Brink gets another quote on the topic that was so popular this offseason:

"“In my conversations with Bob, it was we need to make sure we understand the  benefits and risks of everything that we do,” Huntington said. “In terms of ever  getting a direct mandate to stop, we never got a direct mandate.”"

Rob Biertempfel goes in depth with Andrew McCutchen.  It’s a decent article about what becoming a superstar has done off the field to Cutch.

The Pirates tweeted this picture of Kyle McPherson earlier this morning.