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It was an interesting weekend for soundbites as some of the Pittsburgh Pirates regulars made their way into camp as both David Freese and Josh Harrison had a lot to say regarding the front office and other topics.
Freese got things started on Friday and he didn’t hold back.
Here of some of the quotes he told reporters, including the Post Gazette’s Elizabeth Bloom:
“My opinion is I don’t think we lost 87 games because [Starling] Marte wasn’t there or [Jung Ho] Kang wasn’t there,” Freese said. “We lost 87 games because our environment doesn’t allow [winning more]. I think that’s something we have to work on. I think it’s important to focus on the foundational components of what it takes to have a winning culture. I think this place kind of gets ahead of itself.
“They try to keep up with the way analytical stuff and all that is working. But man, you’ve got to have urgency. You’ve got to have accountability. You’ve got to have all these things. I’ve been here for two years, and we just kind of lacked in that department a little bit. We’ve got to pick that up.”
“You have to understand when you walk through the door why we’re here,” Freese said. “It’s to stay out of the red, I guess, a little bit, but it is about winning.”
“You don’t have to make the postseason or this or that, but, at the end of the year, you have to say, ‘We honestly went for it.’”
Plenty of fans and ex-players, including the recently traded Gerrit Cole, agreed with Freese on his comments.
Harrison didn’t back off his offseason trade demand, telling reporters on Sunday:
“That’s something I truly believe in,” Harrison said.
“I want to win. And if that’s not what they want to do here, trade me.”
“At the end of the day there wasn’t anything said or done that I was like ‘Oh, I can breathe easy’
“You want to know what’s expected of you as a team, as a player. Sometimes that gets lost in translation. We all want to win, and when you feel it’s not the main goal of everybody in the clubhouse or dealing with the organization, that’s hard to be a part of.”
Finally, Pirates general manager Neal Huntington chimed in with this beauty:
“We want to win. We have the exact same goals as they do, which is to win a World Series,” Huntington said. “There’s no two ways about it. That’s why we’re here. We made the moves we made to put this team in position to win a World Series.”
At this point, it would probably be wise if Huntington and the rest of the front office just stopped talking.
“No Comment” might be the best answer they can give at this point.
If anything, Freese, Harrison and Huntington have give sports writers and fans plenty to talk about in the next couple of weeks.
Baseball talk on the web
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