Pirates hitting, but will they join trend toward more steals?

I started this post late Friday night, figuring I could finish it Saturday morning. Well, it's now early Sunday morning. I'll just update what I wrote for the most part.
The Pirates again jumped on an opposing pitcher early Saturday, then held off the Rays to win 10-5. Pittsburgh scored six runs, four earned, against LHP Matt Moore in the first inning, even without CF Andrew McCutchen. C Russell Martin hit a three-run home run, his third this spring, against RHP Grant Balfour, who's supposed to be Tampa Bay's closer this season. The Bucs' final run came against another veteran reliever, RHP Joel Peralta.
Let me summarize some of the rest of the baseball news.
-- Free-agent RHP Ervin Santana reportedly is close to signing with the Blue Jays, but there also are indications that the Orioles could sign him to complete (?) an almost total overhaul of their rotation. One report said he had agreed to a 1-year, $14-million contract with Toronto, which would make Santana less expensive than Phillies RHP A.J. Burnett.
-- Cardinals 2B/3B Matt Carpenter signed a six-year contract for a minimum of $52 million, with an option for 2020. That's truly a contract with vision.
-- Diamondbacks RHP prospect Archie Bradley is 2-0 and hasn't allowed an earned run this spring. He pitched 3 1/3 scoreless innings Saturday in a 5-2 victory over the Angels.
-- The Mariners hammered the Giants 18-3. SS Brad Miller hit his second homer of the spring. OF Michael Saunders also homered and drove in three runs.
-- White Sox LHP Jose Quintana left Saturday's game after facing just two batters. Diamondbacks OF Gerardo Parra hit a line drive off Quintana's lower left leg. He's expected to be held out of baseball activities at least for Sunday.
-- Mariners 2B Robinson Cano missed his third consecutive day Saturday because of root canal surgery.
-- Giants OFs Hunter Pence and Michael Morse are listed as day to day and are expected to miss Sunday's split-squad games because of injuries to Pence's left elbow and one of Morse's calf muscles.
-- Nationals RHP Doug Fister said he isn't concerned about the elbow inflammation that caused him to be scratched from starting Friday. Royals RHP Luke Hochevar might not have been concerned at first, either, but now he'll undergo Tommy John surgery and miss this season.
-- For openers: RHP James Shields will start for the Royals on Opening Day.
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I made a crack a couple of days ago about how Oakland OF prospect Billy Burns could be the next John Cangelosi -- that is, a guy from 20-plus years ago who stole quite a few bases but couldn't do much else for a major league team.
I've also been doing some statistical studies, which show that scoring and power are down in the majors.
What I wasn't thinking was how those two pieces of information are interconnected.
Perhaps it took a feature I saw on how Reds OF Billy Hamilton has been bunting to try to get on base more often so he could use his speed to steal bases.
And I went back even farther, more than 50 years to 1962, to recall how Maury Wills revolutionized the running game with the Dodgers. That influence remained strong for most of the next 30 years, until steroids and power hitters began to take over the game.
Let's talk 2014 -- or definitely later in this decade, if the trends continue. With fewer baseballs flying out of parks and fewer runs being scored, teams will be looking to manufacture runs, as they did during the pitching-dominated '60s.
One way to manufacture runs is by stealing bases. So we can expect to see more steals. Hamilton seems ready this season if he can hit at all. Speedsters such as Burns and Delino DeShields Jr. would arrive later in the teens, if at all.
Will they and other base-stealers have increased value. As an aggregate, no. In Rotisserie (R) League scoring, there still are a finite number of points and dollars of value. More stolen bases mean less value for each steal. If teams do go toward Hamilton/Burns/DeShields-type players, we could see an influx of even more of them, as we did with players such as Vince Coleman, Willie Wilson and Rickey Henderson 30-40 years ago.
There will be more 50-base stealers. Each one of them will have less relative value from base-stealing than Jacoby Ellsbury did with his major league-high 52 bags last year.
That doesn't mean that you shouldn't go after such players. If there are, let's say, eight 50-stolen-base guys in the majors, you'll want one of them and not the ninth-best base stealer. What you won't want would be a bunch of high-power, zero-steals players.
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Hockey. I had just two players active Friday night. The Texas Puckin Penguins lost half a point by dropping into a tie for second in power play points. On Saturday, my team dropped another half a point, to third place, in PPP, and lost half a point in wins. I'm down to 66. The fourth-place team added 1 1/2 points on its own, leaving my margin over that owner to 12 1/2 points.
The good news is that my players now have accumulated fewer games than the two teams ahead of me. I should be able to have more players in my lineup than they do during the last few weeks of the season. I doubt that would help me to move up even to second place.
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Basketball. Team Fresh Prints managed to increase its lead to 6-2 after Thursday's games. Gerald Green would have been practically a one-man wrecking crew -- with 44 points and high totals in the two categories I needed most, 3-pointers and steals -- if his 55% field goal shooting hadn't been the worst of any of my players for the night. On Friday, my opponent had several more players in action than I did, and I fell behind in steals to lead just 5-3. I thought I had posted Friday's lineup after the Thursday game, but apparently not. I just noticed three active players on my bench, highlighted (or lowlighted, in this case) by Jose Calderon's 19 points.
I set my lineups for the final two days of this week. After Saturday, I'll waive two players who will be on the court that night, and grab two free agents so I'll have a full active roster of 10 on Sunday. I'm not going to tell you whom I'll add. Wouldn't want to jinx it or tip off anybody.
Saturday's games came and went, and my lead still is 5-3. I will have a full complement of 10 players Sunday, after re-signing free agents Jared Sullinger and Jodie Meeks to replace Boris Diaw and Marco Belinelli.

Freeman earns big contract; can Heyward do the same?

The biggest contract signing Monday was the Diamondbacks' re-signing with OF Gerardo Parra for this season.
Tuesday's activities dwarfed that one. The Braves avoided arbitration with the two players they hope will be the kingpins of their offense for the near future. 1B Freddie Freeman signed for a franchise-record $135 milion over eight years, and OF Jason Heyward agreed to two years and $13.3 million.
To put Freeman's contract in perspective, the most Chipper Jones ever got was $90 million for six years. Yes, there has been some inflation since then, but Freeman's amount still blows Jones out of the water. Can Freddie earn it? Yes, unless complacency sets in. In Heyward's case, Atlanta must be hoping that his seeing a few million now could be the incentive he needs to show that he's ready to earn and receive much more in his next contract. He hasn't yet shown that he's worthy.
A more sobering note: Padres LHP Cory Luebke will undergo Tommy John surgery for the second consecutive year, and as a result will not be pitching for the second season in a row.
Free agency continues to be a topic, but a slow-moving topic with no signings for a while.
The players being spurned because they would cost the signing team a draft pick are RHPs Ubaldo Jimenez and Ervin Santana, OF Nelson Cruz, DH Kendrys Morales and SS Stephen Drew.
With RHP Jeremy Hellickson out for at least six weeks this season, the Rays could sign RHP Bronson Arroyo, the next-best available starter to take Hellickson's spot in the rotation for at least a while.
Other starting pitchers still available include LHPs Chris Capuano, Barry Zito and Paul Maholm, and RHPs Tommy Hanson and Jake Westbrook. Out of that group, I'd be most interested in Maholm and Hanson (if he isn't hurt).
Former closers available are RHPs Joel Hanrahan, Andrew Bailey, Rafael Betancourt, Kevin Gregg, Brett Myers, Francisco Rodriguez and Fernando Rodney. There are reasons why most of them USED TO BE closers. Rodriguez is second among active pitchers with 302 career saves, but at this point he's far more likely to get 2 more saves than to get 300. Rodney is the best of the lot; he still seems to have that chip on his shoulder/swagger combination that works so well in that role. RHPs Luis Ayala and Frank Francisco have had some saves during their career, but seem barely capable of keeping a major league job now.
LHPs Mike Gonzalez and Oliver Perez also are available for bullpen supporting roles.
Other free agents who have had some success in years past are 3B Placido Polanco and OF Juan Pierre, who doesn't seem likely even to steal enough bases to have some fantasy value.
Look ahead to Thursday. That's the day when the first pitchers and catchers will report -- for the Diamondbacks, who will open the regular season (with the Dodgers) a week earlier than everyone else in Australia. Arizona also seems serious about being a player, both in free agency and on the field.
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Hockey. On Monday, eight skaters were active on my team, and they provided no goals, one power-play point and two penalty minutes.
As usual, I misplayed my goalies. I used Frederik Andersen, who gave up four goals in Anaheim's loss. I really had been counting on Ben Scrivens to win for Edmonton against the Sabres, the league's worst team. But he wasn't in goal. The newly reacquired Steve Mason did play for Philadelphia, allowing two goals in a win.
Tuesday was better. Clarke MacArthur helped me pick up a point with 14 penalty minutes that moved me into second in that category. That point lifted my team's total to 67, 7 1/2 points out of second place. I'm also within 20 of first place for the first time in ... a month? two months? My plus/minus is sliding into at least the outer circles of hell. I'm down to plus-45, just 4 ahead of the team behind me and 41 away from the next higher team. My best chances for an additional point are save percentage (trailing by .025) and assists (10 back of the next higher team).
For Wednesday, I decided to go with Joe Pavelski, playing at home against Dallas, than with Corey Perry, who's going against the Blackhawks.
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Basketball. Through Monday, my lead was just 5-1-2 -- with ties in assists and 3-point field goals, and trailing again in field goal percentage. After Tuesday, it appears that I'm up to 6-2, with a lead in assists on the strength of Ricky Rubio's 13. Gerald Green sabotaged me with his 2 for 13 shooting. Jodie Meeks played only a minute before he decided he couldn't play on his sore ankle -- just long enough to miss both of his shots.
Meeks is now off my roster, along with Joe Johnson. In their place, I picked up Jose Calderon to help on 3-pointers and Boris Diaw for his shooting percentage. It doesn't hurt that he's one of my favorite players. What's not to like about a black man named Boris from France? (Especially one who can play.)
I really need to fix my field goal percentage before the playoffs to avoid a premature exit. If I don't I'll have to depend on building up big leads in the counting stats, and late in the week still trying to use only my best shooters.
It's possible that I would make more playoff moves, or that I could stand pat with players I hope will do better.