Tag: Akinori Iwamura

To make room for Pedro Alvarez, the Pirates designated Aki Iwamura for assignment today.

I am not going to spend much time talking about Ron Cook’s article in this morning's Post-Gazette. There are plenty of misguided thoughts in the article, but I just wanted to make a single point.

According to John Russell, Neil Walker will receive the majority of playing time at second base moving forward. This pushes Aki Iwamura to the bench. With Iwamura out of the lineup, Andrew McCutchen has moved back to the leadoff spot.

The Akinori Iwamura acquisition made sense at the time, but things have changed. Even if we factor in expected positive regression, Iwamura is likely to provide slightly below average production for the season. At 31-years-old and on a one-year contract, that’s just not very valuable. It is time to replace Iwamura with the rejuvenated Neil Walker.

The Pirates will likely bat Akinori Iwamura first, Andrew McCutchen second, the pitcher eighth and Ronny Cedeno ninth often this season.

Steve Sommer of Play a Hard Nine posted 2010 defensive projections in November, so let’s look at how the Pirates stack up. Steve...