Neal Huntington's Resume

Robinson Diaz, Tyler Yates, Sal Torres and Jesse Chavez are involved in 4 of the 6 losses and are such inconsequential moves that they don’t even merit listing.

Same applies to Bautista.

I’m still steamed about the Capps move and that both pitchers that we acquired from the Cubs unfortunately fell apart but any grade other than “Incomplete” is just premature.

How can you call Chavez for Iwamura a loss already? Chavez isn’t even pitching for the team we traded him to and we’re 24 games into the season. Calm down. And how can you call free agent signings a draw? Who did we “draw” with?

Also, you’re selectively choosing the people in trades to focus on. For instance, the trade was McLouth (someone else, too, I think) for Morton, Hernandez, and Locke. Keep picking and choosing.

with many of your grades.
ill start with chavez for aki. ill call that a win seeing aki starting at 2B and chavez not even playing. next is #15 AND #16 your list. harrison looks like a decent prospect and hart is injured so thats whatever but seeing how grabow would not be back with us regardless and gorzo is just bad, i would call getting harrison a win. as for the trade with seattle that is also a win. we have a potential 1B, and SS in the deal and got rid of a head case in snell. yes we lost j.wilson but we also got 3 young pitchers for a SS that is average at best, how can that be anything less than a win!!!

Do you even know where I stand with NH?

Did I call for his head?

I think NH has a very good idea of evaluating younger talent, mainly in the draft and in the Rule V. However, I think either NH or his team have a flawed system for evaluating players that are more advanced. We’ve hit on some of the younger guys, Morris turning it around, Meek turning into a plus reliever, Veal improving, etc.

I simply started a post to start dialogue. If you don’t like, then don’t comment. If you don’t agree, then state your case, that’s how dialogue works.

The actual winning and losing part. – I mean afterall, that is the objective of professional sports:

Bonifay———— 616 – 775 = .442 %
Littlefield——— 442 – 581 = .432 %
Huntington—- -139 – 209 = .399 %

Reminds of this Smizik bog entry from March.

What were the Pirates supposed to get for Salomon Torres, Jose Bautista and Ronny Paulino? Salomon Torres benefited a lot from going to a team with a better defense, because if you look at his strikeout and walk rates, they were worse in Milwaukee than Pittsburgh. Ronny Paulino is a career back up catcher. Jose Bautista is lucky to have played on bad teams and get a starting job in Pittsburgh and Toronto.

Now where exactly did I put that “Do NOT Feed The Trolls” sign?

All trades are taken at a moment when the value of what each team is receiving is greater than what a team is giving up. However, that might not be measured in the exact value of those players exchanged.

You call Adam LaRoche for Argenis Diaz a draw. Obviously, Adam is a much better player than Diaz, is a better 1B than we currently have playing, and Diaz has only a slim chance of providing much value to the big league club. So, how can this be labeled a draw using any criteria that evaluates the players themselves?

Adam was traded because ultimately it was decided that he was not the answer we were looking for and it didn’t warrant spending a good chunk of money on him. We could probably have signed him for $10M a year for 3 years and “solved” the 1B question.

The problem with doing that is we wanted to find a better 1B in order to make the club more competitive in the future. If we had kept all the “good enough” solutions like Adam, Freddy and Jack, then the team wouldn’t have a chance to try out other solutions – one of which MIGHT be better. Not all the guys trying out will be better than Adam, of course. We’re just trying to find ONE which is. Pearce, Clement, Jones and even possibly Pedro could cycle through there in search of someone better. None of these guys would get the chance if Adam were manning 1B for the next 3 years.

This is similar to my post about how I felt Nyjer for Milledge was a mistake, but still understood the reasoning behind it. If you decide that Nyjer is not the answer you want to accept, then you might as well trade him for someone who MIGHT be the answer but probably isn’t.

getting Jesus (more than a bag of balls) Brito for Brian Bixler?

A few points:

1) Why are you only including certain transactions? You’ve got Garrett Jones on your list, so you’re obviously considering some free agent signings, and you’ve got some bullpen-related moves on there, so you obviously think that relievers are important enough to be considered for the purpose of your analysis, and yet none of this offseason’s free agent relief acquisitions are on your list. No Dotel, no Donnelly, no Carraso, etc.

2) Your analysis of the moves that ARE on the list seems pretty arbitrary. For instance, you’ve got Yates-for-Redmond down as a loss. Yates was no great shakes with us, to be sure, but Redmond was outrighted off the Braves’ 40-man roster over the offseason. Nobody even wanted him enough to use a waiver claim on him. As such, why is the trade a loss for us? We traded one commodity that ultimately had no value for another commodity that ultimately had no value.

3) An analysis of a GM’s methods will tell you little unless you separate the process-oriented elements from the results-oriented elements. You may know whether a given move succeeded or failed, but you won’t know why it succeeded or failed, and the latter is much more important from an analytical perspective.

Trades are probably not the #1 thing to look at when rating the GM of the Pirates. The reason being that the road to prosperity for the Pirates lies in the development system, draft and international amateur free agent market.

Probably the number 1 thing that will help the Pirates is to get the most out of every player in the system. The Pirates must be better at teaching than other clubs.

On this most important point, there are some encouraging signs, but we won’t have the full picture for some more years.