Neal Huntington To Helm Pirates

Now they just need to hire away the Indians medical staff so their draft picks can stop getting injured.

not only is espn.com one of the larger websites on the web, its owned by Disney ffs.. I don't think they're really hurting for cash..

as for Huntington, the draft aspect of the bucs look to be a much improved area under him. I hope it helps get them to become a respectable organization again.

Ugh...the draft has killed the pirates. Everyone in baseball knows that your first round draft picks don't always pan out. I also learned this the hard way through the art of collecting baseball cards as a kid and gobbling up first round draft picks believing they were buried treasure. But that being said, the Pirates have picked in the top ten almost every year under Littlefield and Bonifay....so they should have had 40%-50% of these picks be legit.

Money was an issue at the time of many of these draft selections, but I highly question the ineptitude of paying guys like burnitz, matt morris, and derek bell instead of picking the best overall draft pick.(obvious desperation tactics by both Gms and in many regards after so many years of losing in some degree can understand why they dumped most of the money allotted into the major league product. Finally, the biggest deterrent to the pirates has been trading aramis rameriez(traded because of financial restraints) and chris young(no clue why he was traded???) for nothing. You put these two players into the pirates lineup, the Pirates are the 2007 NL central champs hands down. But here’s to the have and the have nots in life.

The Pirates' "logic" in dealing Chris Young years ago was that he was a big guy, but he didn't throw hard and didn't throw strikes. So naturally they dealt him for Matt Herges, who at times has been respectable, only they of course cut Herges and kept Dennys Reyes, who was released by the end of that April. Yet another of the eight-billion blunders of the Bonifay/Littlefield back-to-back eras of doom. I just hope this Huntington guy is given some freedom to completely overhaul the scouting system, and the minor league coaching staffs, and the medical staffs, and... the dude will be busy. But anything to end this string of losing. I turn 30 next year, and the last time the Pirates won anything I was a freshman in high school. I've got cousins in Pittsburgh who can't even remember back that far, and they're in college now. As a wise man once said, "Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue."

I have heard a similar notion about Chris Young. But where I fault the Pirates is that A. they signed the guy to a million dollar bonus not to play basketball. So if they felt he couldn't throw that hard, shouldn't they have maybe picked up on this a year or so before giving him the huge signing bonus. So obviously they felt he had some worth and value to the team. B. I don't have a huge problem with the fact they traded Young and Rameriez, it is just the fact they got absolutely nothing in return for them. Young is the best pitcher in the NL and Rameriez is one of the top 15 players in the NL.