With Jerry Sands’ demotion earlier this week, it became pretty clear that Jose Tabata will start 2013 out in Pittsburgh, most likely as Travis Snider’s primary backup/platoon partner in right field. Tabata’s only 24, but this is almost certainly his last chance to play regularly for for the Pirates. If he can’t hack it in the early part of this season, Sands will be at Triple-A waiting to relieve him and Tabata will probably be ignominiously non-tendered or appended as an inconsequential throw-in in a trade to some other poor Neal-Huntington-in-2008-type sap, loading up on ex-blue chip prospects to try and accelerate his club’s rebuilding process. Tabata is on fire this spring, with four doubles and a home run in 26 at-bats. People are raving about his conditioning

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Is there any upside left to Jose Tabata?

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Ultimately, the debate among Pirates fans about whether Travis Snider or Jose Tabata should start in right field probably doesn’t matter much. They’re both out of options, and based on everything we’ve heard so far out of camp, they both appear likely to make the team. (A couple months ago, I thought Jerry Sands might make it ahead of Tabata, but that now appears unlikely — Sands has an option, and reports from camp on Tabata so far have been uniformly positive, so it seems likely Sands will head to Indianapolis.) Also, Snider is left-handed and Tabata right-handed, so it makes sense to simply start Snider against most righties and Tabata against lefties. That’s ultimately what I think will happen, almost regardless of their spring training performances.Neither Snider nor Tabata played well for the Pirates last season, but my visceral reaction to Tabata’s poor play was much stronger, so I headed into this post expecting to write that Snider clearly should receive most of the playing time, and that anyone overreacting to a week’s worth of spring training games should check themselves.After looking into it more carefully, though, I’m not sure it’s that simple.

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Travis Snider or Jose Tabata for right field? – Bucs Dugout

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