On the first weekend without football since September, the focus shifts to baseball.
The Pirates welcome pitchers and catchers to workouts tomorrow after a sleepy offseason.
They're counting on plenty of in-house improvement, and they'll try to jump start that process with a new outfield alignment.
Starling Marte moves to center, Andrew McCutchen shifts to right, and Gregory Polanco goes to left. If you're keeping score, last year's 7 is now 8, 8 is 9 and 9 becomes 7.
How do the new numbers add up? It makes sense, but there's also an element of risk.
Marte should be fine in center. He moves fluidly, and he's won Gold Glove awards in left field. PNC Park's left field is a pasture, complicated by creative angles and a low fence. Marte has learned to handle those, and he's also served notice that running on his arm is a flawed idea.
McCutchen should benefit from being responsible for less real estate in right field. Lumbering Craig Wilson played right field in PNC Park, for goodness sake. McCutchen will learn quickly to stay out of Marte's way on balls to the right-center gap.
The trickiest part of right field at PNC Park is playing balls that carom off the metal that covers the scoreboard.
The wild card in this is Polanco's transition to left field. He has a long, loping stride and doesn't always take the most efficient path to fly balls. Right field at PNC is tight enough to be pretty forgiving of those mistakes. Miss a ball in left field, and it might roll for a while.
Polanco will also adjust to consistently playing in front of the low fence that allows left fielders to reach into the stands to prevent home runs.
The changes are inevitable. McCutchen's defensive play has deteriorated to the point when one metric system had him as the worst center fielder in the league. Besides, McCutchen isn't likely to be with the Pirates beyond this season. It's possible he'll be moved to another team during the season.
The Pirates are making these changes with an eye to the future, which doesn't include McCutchen. Might as well start now.
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--KEEP HIM
It seems like a lot of people are fed up with Antonio Brown, to the point where they wouldn't mind seeing the Steelers trade their No. 1 receiver.
That wouldn't be a smart move. Brown's selfishness became an issue last season when he took 15-yard penalties for overdone celebrations and then betrayed his teammates with a pointless live webcast from the locker room.
He's a handful. But there are indications that Brown knows he went over the line and is willing to make amends.
Given that the Steelers have absolutely no legitimate receiving depth behind Brown, they'd better keep him.
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--SAY WHAT?
Bob Errey does a nice job as the analyst on Root Sports' Penguins TV broadcasts.
He understands the game and conveys what's happening without falling into a lot of coaching jargon. He also adds an element of Canadian flavor that's being constantly wrung out of the sport by the growing influx of players from the United States and Europe.
But maybe someone at Root could counsel Errey to lighten up on the use of the archaic term "netminder." This is a synonym for goalie that was in fashion in the golden era of cornball sports writing. Those were the days when quarterbacks were referred to as "signal callers" and pitchers were "hurlers."
You don't hear those terms any more, and there's good reason. "Netminder" should also go back on the shelf to collect dust.
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--THE NEW NORMAL
At what point does Tiger Woods' either not playing golf or playing the game poorly fail to qualify as news?
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