For the most part, I like the Pirates’ front office. I like what they’ve done with their three drafts, I think they’ve done a good job rebuilding the international scouting department (besides the Miguel Angel Sano fiasco), I was impressed by what I saw in Pirate City, I like Neal Huntington’s approach to things, and I like having a guy like Frank Coonelly, who knows baseball and business, running point on the whole show. Keeping the questions about ownershp aside, things are much better run now than they were three years ago.
That said, what in the hell is going on with these guys this week? The Pedro Alvarez situation was terribly managed and honestly, it made me wonder who’s in charge of the team. On Tuesday evening, Huntington was all about Alvarez having more work to do and staying in the minors for at least a little bit longer to work on things like his approach against lefties. According to Dejan Kovacevic, all reports during the game confirmed Huntington’s pregame statements. Then, after the game, Alvarez got the call to come to Pittsburgh and face two left-handed pitchers. I understand Matt Bandi’s point that calling up a top prospect less than 24 hours before his first at-bat is pretty normal, but something just feels weird about this whole thing. Specifically, I’m curious who finally made the call to bring Alvarez up, because it doesn’t seem like a Huntington move. And if it’s not, that’s troublesome.
Yesterday, we get the news that Neal Huntington and John Russell were extended over the winter and they’re now both under contract for 2011. What purpose did holding that news back serve? Were they afraid that people would get upset if the extensions were picked up over the winter because the team has been so bad? Because that would imply that they didn’t see this shipwreck of a season coming and let’s be honest, not seeing the possibility that 2010 was going to be a terrible year for the Pirates would be pretty damn myopic on the part of Frank Coonelly. What kills me about the secrecy of this move is that it’s more or less industry standard to extend the GM and manager prior to their lame duck season, even if the team is thinking about firing them. Almost no one’s ever allowed to go into a lame duck season because there’s almost no good that can come of it.
What really sits uneasily here for me is that in both of these situations, it seems like there was misinformation (potentially deliberate misinformation) in places where not only was it unnecessary, but where the truth was inevitable. Don’t get me wrong; opacity can be a good thing for a front office in some situtations. But to be seemingly incapable of transparency? That worries me.
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