Bob Smizik writes that Neal Huntington and John Russell will deserve to be fired this year. His evidence? The Pirates’ Spring Training performances.
With that in mind, we should know better than to pay much attention to what the Pirates are doing in Florida. But their performance—the magnitude of their ineptitude—screams for our attention…
It’s pretty easy now to see why the Pirates have failed to extend the contracts of Russell and general manager Neal Huntington. Both are in the final year of their contracts and baseball protocol usually calls for an extension to prevent lame-duck status for such key employees. But if Russell and Huntington escaped lame-duck status they would not permit them to fill the vitally important scapegoat status. Both men could fill that role nicely, and on merit, if the team plays as badly as their personnel indicates it will.
Nothing like a July firing to appease some of the fans, I don’t wish that on anyone. But the way this team is shaping up, someone is going to have to take the fall and Huntington and/or Russell fit that description almost perfectly.
I don’t even think the Pirates’ regular season record has much to say about Neal Huntington’s job performance at this point, let alone their Spring Training record. It’s funny, everyone seems to know that a team’s Spring Training record is basically meaningless, until it happens to confirm what they already think. The 2010 Pirates aren’t going to be good, but we hardly need to look at Spring Training performances to know that, and the ‘10 Pirates have had no chance of being good since several years before Huntington arrived.
Repoz
Posted: March 29, 2010 at 02:05 PM |
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1. The Pequod Posted: March 29, 2010 at 03:08 PM (#3487877)I'm not going to pretend that I know whether or not Huntington has done a good job, but it does seem like the number of completely pointless and boneheaded moves has greatly decreased under his watch.
I haven't followed the Pirates especially closely, but my general sense is that he's gotten high marks for saying the right things and willingness to do things a little bit differently (spreading draft money around, cleaning house, etc), if not necessarily the moves themselves (Tony Sanchez at 4th overall, questionable returns in trades, etc). I also remember reaching the conclusion that he shares Mark Shapiro's fascination with soft tossers (ugh), but I can't think of a specific example off the top of my head.
Maybe there's reason to question him, but it's not because the major league team stinks. They were headed nowhere before he got there and Huntington seems to be respected in the game, so two years in is at least two years too early to call for his head.
FIFY
Seriously, which this franchise, what is considered a good performance? 70 wins? 4th place? Winning more games than the Nationals? Still being in the Wild Card discussion on August 1st?
That long?
Considering where the team was when he took over 2 years really isn't enough, 3 probably isn't either, but could be if he shows a Dayton Moore level of incompetence regarding MLB talent evaluation/roster construction...
Could these "off with his head now" types at least wait to see if Pedro Alvarez is a MLB player?
Edit: Apparently JPWF and I are thinking along the same lines.
For the record, I haven't seen any evidence of this at all. If anything, he leans too heavily toward hard throwers with no control (Craig Hansen, Tyler Yates, Denny Bautista, etc.).
And the qualms about his trading record are pretty unfounded as well. I think the McLouth trade was not that great, but other than that, he has done OK. The difference is that NH is not Littlefieldian in his interviews after trades... Littlefield was always full of complete crap after trades, underselling what he was giving up and overselling what he was getting. I think NH is much more moderated in his comments, and so it seems like he's bringing in less talent and sending out more, even though the record shows that it's almost certainly the opposite.
None of them are expensive, so even if none pan out, the Pirates are just back where they started.
It honestly kind of creeps me out how compulsively honest he is when talking to the press. Especially after Littlefield.
Plus, the odds are that one or two will pan out.
Minaya does this too, sort of, except he does it with guys in their 30s, who haven't been good in years, he signs 3-4 of them, and low and behold, one of them will actually play well- the problme is that:
1: Yippee Jose Valentin/Fernando Tatis juts had an unexpectedly good year
2: They are 35 and very unlikely to repeat, but he re-signs them
OTOH if one of Huntington's guys pans out he likely has a "keeper"
Actually, they're a year closer to having the kids ready to play in the bigs. There's a certain element of creating a distraction while waiting for them to develop.
It's totally weird, right? It's a completely foreign feeling to read NH's analysis of his own trade and have me thinking in my own mind, "Dude, it's really not that bad. There's some definite upside here." That's why I feel somewhat confident about NH's ability to get the ship righted (even if it's not going to be sailing into the postseason any time soon). He seems to be acutely (and publicly) aware of the mess that the franchise is in right now.
Nonsense!
To make Bob Smizik happy, you sign Pokey Reese. To make Ron Cook happy, you trade for Randall Simon.
What could be easier?
The beat writers represent the vast majority of the fan base, just tell them some crap they want to hear about how Gorky's Hernandez's speed will make him a true leadoff man in the future and keep doing what you're doing.
Over the past decade, Bonifay's Littlefield's love for this rhetoric, and the beat writers' happiness with such rhetoric during spring training, did little to make the fans happy once it became clear, every year by May 15th, that the team stunk. I think that the front office's new and different approach to the media is convincing people that if nothing else, the front office actually has a different plan now. And thus if the Huntington-led team ever has a good season, it won't seem like a fluke.
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