As I've argued here a number of times, I think Neal Huntington can be kind of a dick. Not in the sense that pretty much all high level executives are dicks, but in the sense that he can be petulant and make bad baseball decisions as a result. The Salomon Torres trade was the first instance, in which a useful, even valuable, player was traded for the proverbial bag of balls because he'd had trouble with the previous FO (an FO that everyone agrees was stupid and mendacious, I would add). There are other examples (one being the way that the Wilson/Sanchez extensions were handled), but I do admit that the case is hardly definitive.

Still, DK has evidently noticed this trend so strongly that he writes about it preemptively in this morning's links post. Apparently GFJones is saying he thinks he's more than a platoon player, and DK expects that the FO will take this badly, using the history of Jose Bautista for evidence. We all agree that his current production was unforeseeable (DK says this as well), but, from having talked to the FO at the time of the events in question, Dejan feels quite strongly that JB was traded for, essentially, nothing of value because NH was offended by some pretty damned mild remarks.

The primary issue with the trade, as I saw it then and continue to see it, was that the Pirates reacted rashly to a rather innocuous situation and cost themselves an asset for that reason alone.

He goes on to discuss Walker, and I'm not particularly on board with that, both because I think NW was wrong in his statements and because I don't think the FO "punished" him for them. If they treated him as no more than a UT, it's because they misevaluated him (or even wanted to challenge him), not due to petulance. But I do think that there's a definite tendency on NH's part to allow his emotions to affect his personnel decisions, and it's not a good thing.