The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Neal Huntington

Would you rather have A.) Maholm for $9 mil next year B.)extend him for say 3 years at over $6-7 mil a year or C.) trade him and get value back, possible good value if Maholm stays consistent come deadline?

I liked the Dotel trade, but it’s not looking quite so lopsided right now.

1.) I agree that saves are a silly stat that are show more of an ability to pitch under pressure verses ability, but I digress.
2.) My point regarding Resop and Veras obviously hinges on both continuing to perform at the level they currently are. Veras will be valuable with his ability to get the strikeout, 36Ks in 31 innings this year. Resop has been streaky so far so we will see what happens with his value. But I still expct them to be gone. Relievers are always a hot commodity at the deadline.
3.) True, but its not too far out of the realm to think that maybe Neal realized this or saw the dysfunction in LA to offer a deal like this.

Huntington has shown the ability to build a bullpen out of free agency so if we get any value out of trading them, I think they should be seriously considered…Thanks for your opinion!

Veras has one save, silly!

Haha, thank you. I knew something looked wrong about it…

Yeah, for a first post, I didn’t proofread at all or check my facts…will have more time to moving forward though

I definitely appreciate the kind words. Look forward to checking out your posts as well

Maybe this article was ill timed as a lot of my opinions are based off of solid productivity or consistency come trade deadline. For every team come trade deadline, they have to make a decision regarding whether to try and compete for a playoff spot or to sell, call up your young players, and try to obtain value for your players that have affordable (short) contracts that you can’t sign or don’t see a future for on your team. If the Pirates try and compete this year, they will end up like the 76ers of the MLB world. Always on the cusp or outside of the playoffs, but not far enough outside to acquire talent through the draft to significantly improve the team. Will the Pirates resign Maholm? I don’t know. He has been mediocre and I just don’t see the rationalization of picking up his $9 Mil extention. Brad Lincoln and or Rudy Owens should be ready by next year, not saying both are better than Maholm, but that $9 mil could be spent in other avenues to improve the team. I honestly think the right move to become a contender (under the current ownership) is to continue to play good baseball and acquire young talent with the value you have (that is not in the future plans). So eventually we will have the ability to trade the talent in our system for a bat or an arm come playoff time, when we have a realistic chance of making the playoffs.

I’m speaking more to the point of being a consistent starter. Obviously their paths have been different with Karstens coming from NYY and Duke through the system. Karstens has made spot starts since he got to Pittsburgh until Ohlendorf got hurt this year. Now he is starting and excelling at it (Top Ten ERA). If I was a betting man, I wouldn’t expect this to continue into next year. Duke, excelled for one year, never the same again.

Bay was never really that "great".

Bay had a 6.1 WAR year in 2005, a 5.4 WAR year in 2006, and after a bad (and injury plagued) 2007 was rebounding quite nicely. At the time we traded him, he had a 1.9 WAR, a .282/.375/.515 triple slash, a .388 wOBA, and still had the ability to steal double-digit bases every year. Factor in the miniscule LF in Fenway and his defensive shortcomings were limited in Boston, as evidenced by the 5 WAR season he put up there in 2009 while hitting .267/.384/.537. Factor in FURTHER the fact that he wasn’t just a rental, but a great hitter with another full year on his contract at a low price, and yeah, I’d say it’s fair to call the trade “ugly.”

To say that Bay was “never really that great” is a disingenuous rewriting of history that I find a lot of people on here like to do because the trade didn’t work out. He WAS great. 5 and 6 WAR players don’t grow on trees. Andrew McCutchen is on pace to have a 5 or 6 (maybe 7) WAR season this year and all we can say is how great he is.

When you have a trade piece like Bay, it hurts even more when nothing pans out. Bay was our best player for the years he was in Pittsburgh (and performed very well in Boston) so it’s tough to swallow that trade when 2 of the pieces are already out of our system and one is just returning from injury. I will even defend him a little bit on Craig Hanson because of his weird nerve problem that arose. But Brandon Moss was a huge flop.

Let’s not forget that the Pirates were very much in the running for Carl Pavano and Jorge De La Rosa (thank god we didn’t sign him) last year. Pavano wanted to play for a contender ( I believe)) and I don’t know what La Rosa’s deal was. But the point is I can’t let Neal slide on that signing. The guy only pitched in 11 games last year and had an era above 5.5…The fact the guy could never get healthy makes you scratch your head even more…

they can trade for prospects if they like, but then in a most likely cause-effect manuever they will have to turn right back around and package some roster crunch guys together and ship them off to get something of value back and in less quantity

other than Lincoln, whom else is ready? wilson could probably do okay.

i can see NH going after another midpriced starting pitching in the off season just like a Correia

That is definitely a stain on NH’s record, but this came near the beginning of NH’s tenure with the Pirates. The failure with Bautista was more a failure to get everything out of the player that could be gotten. So it was a development issue first and foremost.

Any new GM (like Huntington was at the time) needs a certain amount of time to get his program in place, work out the kinks, get the system working, etc. We’ve seen it with Kerrigan, Russel, etc. Sometimes you don’t get the right people the first time. A good GM is going to recognize problems and change the people and eventually find the right people that are going to execute the plan correctly.

Now, let’s say Pedro Alvarez can’t overcome his problems and he is traded and blossoms with another team like Bautista did. That would be a lot more worrisome and telling than anything the Bautista trade can tell us right now.

Again, Jon Daniels traded away Adrian Gonzalez and Chris Young for nothing when he first became GM of the Rangers. He learned from that and has done pretty well since then. Huntington has shown an excellent ability to learn on the job and get better with time. That’s the most important reason Huntington should be extended. People shouldn’t be fired for making mistakes if there is a serious plan to learn from those mistakes and avoid them in the future. Changing the GM now would likely mean you would just have a new GM going through all those initial growing pains all over again.

Remember how NH couldn’t build a bullpen his first seasons, and then he suddenly became very good at it? That’s a credit to his learning process.

Real nice. Sale the civility.