Hope you had a safe and enjoyable Labor Day Weekend! I spent mine working on the yard, cleaning up around the house, and doing some recording.

Not a lot to report at the moment. Figured I’d throw some more Brian Giles stories at you while we’re still in the infatuation phase:

• Stats Geek says Brian Giles’ statistics with Pirates were among best in franchise history (Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette). Brian O’Neill has some interesting thoughts on Giles. He gets bonus points for mentioning Baseball-Reference.com.
• Shortening preseason won’t lessen injury count (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). Check the second bullet point. Evidently some Pirate fans may have thought Giles was tanking it toward the end.
• Pirates Report: 9/1/03 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette). Pirate GM Dave Littlefield reminds fans that Oliver Perez is "not a finished product." Perez makes his second start for the Bucs this Friday in Atlanta.
• Giles for Perez — The Baseball Crank weighs in with his thoughts.
• Sinner to Saint — And David Pinto’s take over at Baseball Musings. Perez is compared, in passing, to Randy Johnson. I think guys like Al Leiter and Randy Wolf are more realistic when talking about Perez, but that’s just me.
• Transaction Oracle (Baseball Primer). Dan’s thoughts on a trade that some sources initially reported as including Xavier Nady.
• Done Deal! Aaron Gleeman gives a thorough (and pretty solid) analysis of the deal.

Anyone know of a Pirates blog? I found a couple, but both appear to be quite dead. Oh well, I was hoping to see what some of those folks thought of the trade.

Time to go. As always, thanks for stopping by. I’ll have something more substantial for you later in the week…