Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Neal Huntington has done a lot of good things during his tenure in Pittsburgh. However with all the positive, building a dormant franchise into one that made three consecutive postseason trips, a general manager is only judged by recent success and failures.
For Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Neal Huntington, that means overseeing a team that saw a drop of 20 wins from 2015 to 2016, but also a team that has once again struggled out of the gate in 2017.
In addition to that, Huntington’s past two offseasons and last year’s trading deadline did not do much to improve a team that won 98 games just two seasons ago. Huntington, and Pirates manage Clint Hurdle, whose situation I will look at later in the week, are signed through this season with club options for 2018.
The big question surrounding Huntington is what needs to happen for him to receive a contract extension.
Not all his fault
The Pirates bench is thin and there are question marks in the bullpen and starting rotation still as we sit here in mid-May, but the situation the Pirates are in at the moment, Huntington couldn’t prepare for in free agency. No one could have predicted in the winter that Starling Marte would be suspended for 80 games and Jung-Ho Kang’s legal trouble would leave him stranded in Korea.
Add Marte and Kang to the Pirates lineup for the entire season and we aren’t seeing Danny Ortiz in left field or John Jaso starting every day. Add in all of the early injuries and that is something that is near impossible for a general manager to prepare for. Being a small market franchise makes it even harder. Then throw in the fact that the club loses ace Jameson Taillon and it is a wonder the Pirates aren’t worse off than 5.5 games out of first at the moment.
Take any teams best starting pitcher and possibly their top two offensive players out of the lineup for most of the season and pretty much every team in the league will struggle.
For that alone, Huntington needs to be cut a little bit of slack.
Trust the young guys
Huntington is tied to Hurdle and the message needs to come down from the top to trust the young guys.
That means Adam Frazier playing every day for the time being and Josh Bell playing a full nine innings. If that means ruffling the feathers of John Jaso and other veterans that aren’t producing then so be it. The right guys need to be on the field and they often aren’t.
We always hear about the Pirates prospects and now, given how thin the roster is at the moment, is the time to lean on some of the younger guys.
That’s a two way sword in itself as some of the Pirates prospects need to start panning out at the major league leave, especially in the starting rotation.
Huntington has always been reluctant to trade prospects. Now some of those prospects have to start winning games.
Andrew McCutchen
Quite simply Andrew McCutchen has to get back to somewhere close to his MVP form.
The Marte, McCutchen, Gregory Polanco outfield was once thought of as the best in baseball. You really can’t make that case now. How the McCutchen situation is handled can go a long way to determining Huntington’s fate.
During the trade deadline and the offseason Huntington did everything in his power to deal McCutchen, but had a very high asking price and rightfully so.
But timing is everything.
Now we are looking at a McCutchen who saw a 63 point drop in OPS from 2014 to 2015. From 2015 to 2016 that number dropped 123 points. Now this season he is hitting .220 with a .689 OPS. You need your superstar to perform like one and that simply hasn’t been the case.
But what happens come July if McCutchen is still struggling?
Does he have any trade value at all?
Huntington may have missed the boat on a McCutchen deal and if he is forced to deal him at the deadline for minimal return it will be just another salary dump. For his sake, Huntington better hope McCutchen heats up.
Improve the team
The Band-Aid approaches haven’t worked the past couple of seasons. If the Pittsburgh Pirates are hanging around come July, then Huntington needs to be able to go out and legitimately improve the team.
Whether that means dealing some prospects for a legitimate arm or middle of the order bat, he is going to have to be aggressive at the deadline. If they are out of it then Huntington is going to have to maximize returns on players such as McCutchen, Tony Watson and others.
The chance to make the right moves will be there. Whether Huntington jumps on them or not is another story.
Just Win Baby
Winning cures everything. Luckily for the Pittsburgh Pirates, given the way they played, they sit only 5.5 games out of first place.
As they start to get healthy they just need to hang within striking distance. Once they get Marte back and start to look like the team Huntington envisioned, they need to reel off wins in the summer months.
Another postseason appearance isn’t out of the question as long as the current group on the field avoids a big losing streak. If it doesn’t happen, with everything that has gone wrong so far, it’s really not fair to judge Huntington solely on wins and losses in terms of a contract extension.
If this team gets back to the playoffs then absolutely, but he should be judged more on the moves he makes (or doesn’t make) to improve this team down the stretch. Between that and the production (or lack thereof) of the youngsters he protected will tell you everything you need to know about whether Huntington should receive an extension.
My gut feeling is he gets one prior to next season, but the next couple of months will tell the story.
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