The Pirates have been in contact with representatives of lefty reliever Matt Thornton, Stephen J. Nesbitt tweets. Nesbitt notes that Thornton isn't a top priority, but that the Pirates do need lefty relief help.
The Bucs can use another lefty with Antonio Bastardo departing via free agency. It will probably be tricky to replace him -- many teams can use lefty relief, and there aren't many good lefty relievers on the market. Thornton might -- might -- be one of them, but with a ton of caveats. For one thing, he's 39, and despite his sparkly ERA last season, he suffered a significant loss of velocity, dipping from an average fastball speed of 95.