By Dejan Kovacevic | 1:32 p.m. Wednesday
From the second day of the Pirates' conditioning camp this morning at PNC Park ...
> Delwyn Young, almost invariably outspoken, has opted to stay mum on the team abandoning him at second base in favor of newly acquired Akinori Iwamura.
"It is what it is," Young said. "I'm going to leave it at that. I'm taking the high route."
Pressing a bit, I asked how he felt about management declaring that he would be a bench player because he had done well in that role.
"It's the flip of a coin. Seth Smith hit .400 as a pinch-hitter in Colorado, but how often does that happen? Look at it this way: Do you want one good swing a game, or do you want four?"
Young batted .266 after a brutal slump to finish his season, but he was a .316 pinch-hitter with a team-high 12 hits.
> Left fielder Lastings Milledge acknowledged for the first time that his right hand - the one that shut him down for two months early in 2009, mostly before the trade - hampered his power. But he expressed optimism it will be back at full strength by next spring training's end.
"The hand was healed, but it took a while to start getting the strength back," he said. "A lot of it's back now, and it was coming back late in the season. They told me all along it was going to take about a full year for it to be all the way back, so that would be just in time for next season."
> Pitcher Jose Ascanio, coming off major shoulder surgery, will remain limited to range-of-motion exercises for a while. He said he has had no setbacks, though, and was not discouraged by the serious nature of his injury.
"Nothing you can do," he said.
> Pitcher Craig Hansen got some good news Monday when doctors finally -- Or "Finally!" as he put it -- cleared him to begin re-teaching his arm how to throw. The nerves in his upper back have shown signs of regenerating, so he basically has to rebuild all of his upper-body strength and, slowly, gradually, work the arm and a throwing motion into it.
"Still no timetable for anything, but I'll take it," Hansen said. 
> Jeff Clement, the power-hitting Class AAA prospect acquired in the Jack Wilson trade, is planning to prepare for first base and catcher heading into spring training. He would like to be invited to minicamp as a catcher -- his position of choice -- but has not yet been informed about that by management.
Clement had a strained oblique that pretty much wiped out his final month with Indianapolis, and that was aggravated on the season's final day. But he said that was now fine, as well as his long-troublesome left knee, which has been twice surgically repaired for a torn meniscus.
"I want to give myself and the team the best options possible, so I'll prepare for first and catcher," Clement said. "If my knee holds up, I'd love to catch. But I'll do whatever they ask."
This is Clement's official page.
> The conditioning camp concludes tomorrow, but today was it for media access, so there will be no report after the last day.
Posted
Nov 11 2009, 01:32 PM
by
Dejan Kovacevic