9:18am: The Pirates have announced Huntington’s dismissal.
“I greatly appreciate Neal’s dedication to the Pirates organization and our city over the past 12 seasons,” owner Bob Nutting said in a press release. “His time with the Pirates should always be remembered for ending a long stretch of futility and bringing Postseason baseball back to Pittsburgh.”
The Pirates “will pause” their search for a new manager while seeking out a new GM, per Nutting. Assistant general manager Kevan Graves will serve as interim GM while the club looks for a replacement for Huntington.
Mackey further tweets that the decision to move on from Huntington was driven by Nutting (as opposed to incoming president Travis Williams). Nutting informed Huntington of the decision yesterday.
8:15am: The Pirates have already dismissed their manager and two of their coaches in addition to parting ways with team president Frank Coonelly, but they’re not done with changes yet. Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Pittsburgh will also announce the dismissal of general manager Neal Huntington later today (Twitter link).
Huntington, 50, is one of the sport’s longest-tenured executives, having been hired at the conclusion of the 2007 season. His ousting represents perhaps the final step in a total overhaul of the organization that began when manager Clint Hurdle was fired on the final day of the season. Like Hurdle, Huntington had two years remaining on his contract.
The parallels between Hurdle’s firing and today’s firing of Huntington don’t stop with the pair’s contractual status, however. Both dismissals were preceded by public assertions to the contrary; Hurdle told The Athletic’s Rob Biertempfel that he’d received assurance of his 2020 return just days before being let go, and Huntington is now out the door a month later despite a clear vote of confidence from owner Bob Nutting.
“While we felt it was time to make a change at the managerial level, I strongly believe that Neal Huntington and the leadership team that he has assembled are the right people to continue to lead our baseball operations department,” Nutting said in a press release announcing the decision to move on from Hurdle. The extent to which Huntington’s departure is tied to incoming president Travis Williams isn’t clear, but the move is nevertheless a glaring contradiction to Nutting’s end-of-season assessment of his front office.
That the move comes with the organization’s managerial search now well underway is all the more confusing; one would imagine that an incoming GM would want say over who’s writing out the lineup card on a daily basis, but unless the plan is to put that search on hold, the Pirates are much further along in that process than in the process of naming a new GM. And, presumably, Huntington has been involved in all of the interviews conducted to this point.
Huntington took over the Pirates at a time when Jason Bay, Freddy Sanchez and Adam LaRoche were among the club’s most notable names and ushered in a new era at PNC Park, turning over the roster and developing stars such as Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte and Gerrit Cole. But despite qualifying for three consecutive postseasons (2013-15), Huntington and his staff never saw the club win an NL Central title or advance beyond the National League Division series. It’s now been four full seasons since the Pirates’ last playoff berth, and the 2019 season was a particularly disheartening year. Pittsburgh finished with a 69-93 record, falling to last place in the division.
There’s been no shortage of criticism over recent moves made by the Pirates, with the trade that brought right-hander Chris Archer to Pittsburgh among the more widely panned deals in recent memory. Huntington agreed to part with longtime top prospects Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow in addition to highly regarded pitching prospect Shane Baz. The move was designed to bring an affordable, high-end starter with three-and-a-half seasons of club control to Pittsburgh, but Archer has struggled in the Steel City while Glasnow and Meadows now look like foundational pieces for the Tampa Bay organization.
Of course, the very fact that Archer is so affordable could very well be what prompted him to hold such appeal to Huntington and his staff in the first place. Pirates ownership has only thrice green-lighted a payroll north of $90MM, constantly leaving the front office scrambling to find bargains and patch together rosters with rebound candidates and the leftovers of the free-agent market. Without the type of annual payroll constraints they face, perhaps Huntington & Co. wouldn’t have been so drawn to Archer in the first place. There’s no way to know for sure, however, and the end result still speaks loudest of all.
Other recent moves have been more of a mixed bag. The trade that sent McCutchen to San Francisco brought Rookie of the Year candidate Bryan Reynolds and reliever Kyle Crick to Pittsburgh. The trade of Cole to Houston in that same 2017-18 offseason netted six years of a useful rotation piece in Joe Musgrove, but the others in that swap (Colin Moran, Michael Feliz and Jason Martin) have yet to bring much value to the Pirates. As with the Archer trade, finances were a major consideration in both the McCutchen and Cole trades; it was clear at the time of the moves that neither would fit into the Pittsburgh budget any longer despite a lack of additional spending.
Pittsburgh’s reluctance to spend, in fact, was concerning enough to the union that the MLBPA brought their concerns to the Commissioner’s Office and requested an investigation of how the team allotted its funds from revenue sharing. The league responded with a statement that it had no such concerns regarding the Pirates organization.
Such payroll restrictions will persist for whoever is hired to run the club’s baseball operations outfit moving forward. Owner Bob Nutting has never indicated any plans to sell the team. The Pirates recently extended their television contract with AT&T SportsNet, but terms of the deal remain unclear. Their previous agreement was one of the least-lucrative contracts in the game, though, and whatever increases in annual rights fees are included in the new deal will be baked into the contract in the form of gradual increases. In other words, a payroll hike in the near future doesn’t seem likely.
To the contrary, it feels more likely that the Bucs will instead be looking to shed payroll this winter. As I noted in previewing the club’s offseason a few days ago, this seems like the ideal time to market Marte to other clubs, and it’s worth wondering whether the Pirates would look to deal Archer as well after a disappointing season and a half (and with an increase in his salary looming). Problematic setup man Keone Kela is also a candidate to be shipped out.
All of those roster decisions will be at the forefront of the offseason questions facing whoever takes over Huntington’s now-vacant chair at the PNC Park offices. For the time being, Nutting and Williams will be frantically trying to assemble a new front-office staff and field staff as they look to usher in a new era of Pirates baseball. That process will very likely linger into the offseason, although with the Pirates unlikely to play for any notable free agents anyhow, perhaps a late entry into the market won’t really be an issue.
House= cleaned
swamp = drained
Not quite. They haven’t fired the owner yet and he deserves it.
That’s the exact correct response. Players can only contribute within the team that surrounds them and the leadership provided by coaches and managers. Managers and coaches can only provide results based on the team given them by GM’s and team presidents. GM’s and team presidents can only work within the constraints allowed them by ownership. It all starts with ownership. The pirates failure to compete consistently over long seasons isn’t the fault of anyone but ownership who tried to penny pinch as much as possible even when trade deadline acquisitions could have put them over a couple times.
Brew- good post,but I have to disagree with the last part.
Nutting approved additions for the three years that the Pirates were highly competitive.He also Ok’d Extensions for Pirate players and not only the young ones.
He just did not want to compete in the free agent market to improve the team.
Not until Nutting is gone. Neil Huttington wasn’t too bad of a GM. He was too payroll limited.
Overall he was better than decent.
NH has had a bad year or two but five or six good ones previously.
Their organization was not that bad.Their team was clearly mismanaged this year.
He could not spend any money on outside players.
Significant changes needed to occur.
But doing this causes the organization to have to start completely anew with absolutely no guarantee of improvement.
NH was one of the best traders in the ML.
This tells me that Nutting is clueless.Also,dishonest as you do not tell someone that his job is safe then change your mind.
I hate to be a yinzer but it tells me that Nutting really should fire himself.
You can’t call the GM who traded for Archer one of the best traders in MLB. I think he gets slammed for that more than he should, but calling him one of the best is unrealistic.
Granted that it was a stupid trade on several counts.
But he has made ten very good trades in the last six years or so.
I will take that ratio even if this trade was horrible.
I am sorry but in baseball one is not judged on their last at bat, one is judged by the body of their work. Over the years, Huntington has been above average in his trades. The naysayers like to cite the Archer trade, which has turned out to be a terrible trade. However, they forget that the fans were screaming for Huntington to make a trade so the Pirates could make a pennant run. They forget that the blogs around baseball were saying that Archer was one of the gems out there on the market. They forget that Glasnow had failed to perform despite repeated opportunities (i think he was misused by Searage). They forget that Huntington caved into the pressure and made a trade which was out of his m.o. They also forget all those other trades such as the McCutchen trade, the Melancon trades, the Wilson-Cervelli trade, the 2018 Dickerson trade, etc.
Huntiongton’s biggest problem in my view wasn’t his trading but his inability to find the right coaches. He stuck with Ray Searage way too long. Searage was good at rehab, but his focus on making all pitchers pitch to contact was disasterous for the talent the Pirates drafted. Until this year, his inability to find a decent hitting coach hindered the team. His inability to see that Hurdle mismanaged the game dynamics repeatedly and cost the Pirates countless wins.
Oh, by the way, i was against the Archer trade from the very beginning. I was against it regardless of what the Pirates gave up, because i did not believe that the Pirates needed “one more piece” to compete.
Did he get enough for Gerrit Cole?
No, but…was that his fault or the other 29 GM’s? He can only take what was offered.
Give them time machines and I bet they’d make better offers this time around instead of trying to lowball him knowing he couldn’t afford to keep him.
Skeptical has it right, Neal was actually pretty good at his own job…the baseball part of it, but he put together a weak organization around him (likely due to budget) especially in regards to development and never understood the PR aspects of the job.
I agree 100% with you, skeptical
Nobody was saying Archer was a gem. Plus the fact he was way over the top in his offer. Baz too?
Skeptical and Josh-Thank you for lending intelligent observations.
Let’s break this down:
1. All things aside, the development at every level under Huntington/Stark has been horrendous.
2. While swapping some bodies, Huntington did a good job with some trades.. however his 3 biggest most meaningful trades might be the 3 worst trades in history any sport (Cole, Bay, Archer) Also Cole had 2 years of control left.. if the offers weren’t there then wait a few months or a year , couldn’t have got a worse return.
3. Nutting stalled the contending when he did not approve funds to bring back AJ, Byrd and Morneau after 2012.
4. Huntington now had to rebuild his own roster through, keyword, DEVELOPMENT..
Which leads us to this past season where the pirates were a minor league team, and anyone who left became incarnates of Sandy Koufax.
I award him no credit, and may God have mercy on our Pirates soul.
Francisco Liriano trade to Toronto wasn’t a favorable one either.
Special thanks for Jose Bautista too.
What would you give up for a pitcher who was 25-27 in his last 2-1/2 years in Pittsburgh? Cole’s return could have been better, but 28 other GMs passed because nobody thought he was worth more than the Astros were offering, especially with only two years before free agency, which will land the golden boy surfer in 2020 the only place he has wanted to be from the start: Southern California.
Freddy H-your post is stupid and offensive.
Anyone who talks in absolutes like you has an agenda but does not know what he is talking about.
You are no better than a troll.
(1)below average maybe even poor,but horrendous?
2)you are clearly not a Pirate fan if you do not remember all of the very fine trades that he made
the three worst trades in history in any sport?Give me a break.That alone tells me that you have no clue.
3)get your year straight.It was 2013.Do you think that it was easy being a GM with Nutting to work with!
4If they were minor league how come they did not have nearly the worst record in the ML
Posters like you waste everyone’s time.
The nightmare is almost over owner next
Not until Bob Nutting calls a press conference and does what Budd Dwyer did.
I remember that.
Yikes. Grim.
probably not gonna happen. if he doesn’t own a gun, hed have to buy one…..
THIS POST FROM FORESTCORALCOBRA IS OFFENSIVE. IT REFERS TO THE LIVE TV PRESS CONFERENCE IN JANUARY OF 1987 WHEN THE PA STATE TREASURER TOOK HIS LIFE.
WE’RE ONLY TALKING ABOUT A GAME HERE, FOLKS
Bottom Line Bob has become Backstabbin’ Bob.
About time
About=time. C’mon man. You dropped the ball
Lol
About time. Made no sense why he got a free pass. The Rays trade he made set the franchise back 5 years probably
Will go down as one of the worst trades in the last 20 years.
The worst trade since the Indians got Brandon Phillips, Cliff Lee, and Grady Sizemore for Bartolo Colon.
Said the day the trade was made that it would cost Huntington his job.
Apparently he was not the only one.
The Pirates have developed many many great players that have been traded, and are thriving on other teams. Someone had to go.
worst trade since Neal Walker for Jon Niese and the subsequent trade for Antonio B.
(hind sight 20/20)
That was a doozy of a deal. Funny thing about that is Bartolo outlasted them all!
I can’t help but recall the Phillies trading Curt Schilling to Arizona for Omar Daal, Travis Lee, Vincente Padilla and Nelson Figueroa. Ouch
Yes…..
At least Colon went on to have some decent seasons.
Archer on the other hand is a #4-5 pitcher (and anyone could see that at the time the trade was made) that – like Danny Duffy of the Royals – will get the ball when his turn comes up in the rotation because he has a contract. So every time he has a few good games the “he’s back” nonsense will start….until he heads south again. Next stop – “Maybe we can use him out of the bullpen”, as well as “He’s a great example for the young pitchers on how to prepare”.
Joe-Walker made $36M over the next three years and could only play 2/3 of the time.That equates to $18M per year.
His back was a serious problem and that is why the small market team traded him with a year left on his contract.
Niece at that point was the most consistent #4 pitcher in baseball.He then soon developed physical problems like almost all pitchers do.
You are correct,hindsight is always 20-20,and that is how people are judging the Cole trade which was mediocre but not terrible at the time.
Agreed. Clearly on the decline
That trade set them back years
Funny thing about that Colon for Sizemore, Lee, and Phillips deal . . . Huntington was Cleveland’s assistant GM. Just saying . . .
Too late though, Bloom was already hired
You act like the pirates had a chance. I wouldn’t see that a promotion from rays to pirates
don’t know if they had a chance at hiring him, obviously boston is a more desirable spot, but the best candidate is gone now. so either way, they are not getting the best person.
Plenty of guys out there. If the leaders of the pirates are worth anything that can find a replacement
The Pirates at this point will not be able to get the best and brightest for any of their positions.Bloom would not have come under any circumstance.
It will be a mishmash.Williams is not even a baseball person.
Gm openings will occur in San Diego and Philadelphia next year at the very least.
The Pirates one hope is that Showalter swallows his pride and agrees to manage,but they have evidently not been smart enough to include him on the list of candidates.
We can’t get new owner, but at least BMTIB received a sweet kick in a butt. Maybe the Pirates will finally see some hope.
About time…..
But why weeks after the manager and pitching coach?
Maybe it is kind of like how Dean Wormer operated on Animal House. First came “double secret probation” (Hurdle, Prince, and Searage).
Then Coonelly. Finally Huntington. It took a while to revoke Delta House’s charter. And it happened only way too late, long after the damage was done.
Open for business
Full rebuild will be under way
Marte to the Braves !!!
Make it happen AA
Don’t they need a GM to make a trade first? Unless Nutting puts out a press release reassuring fans Marte will not be traded.
SBN-Aren’t you the one who wants to give up Ender,Touki,and a lower level minor leaguer for the best player on the Pirates?
Now you might get your wish.
I would not put it past them now to make such a ridiculous trade.
Josh Bell says hello.
2 years of Marte at great price. I would imagine they could get someone better than Touki, possibly Wright?
Run-I like Josh but us Pirate fans know he had a historic May,a fine April,and hit 223 the rest of the year.
He also had 18 errors which is very difficult to do.
That,after a year hitting 12 home runs.
I will stick with Marte.
And the suggested trades on this site are usually quite hilarious.
You got Charlie Morton from us and let him turn into close-to-an-ace elsewhere. Lightning can strike twice.
Charlie has finally been healthy after many years of not.
The others in the trade are the immortals Jeff Locke and Nate McLouth.
But all in all one of the many very good trades by NH.
That would be me. You get a cheaper replacement for a position of need, a pitcher with upside that’s a top 100 prospect, and 2 lower level minor Leaguers, meaning young and cheap, not necessarily bad, for a team that won’t spend money. That’s all the pirates owner cares about is money. This was obviously a starting point, as the Touki could be replaced with anyone not names Ian Anderson.
But that is one of the problems.The good teams want to poach the best players off the not so good teams.
The Pirates need a catcher and pitching.Keep in mind that many minor leaguers do not become good major leaguers.
That is why NH did not trade Vasquez to the Dodgers.He may have been gun shy from the Archer trade,but the Dodgers could have used Vasquez instead of Joe Kelly in the fifth game of their series.
No not me at all
I try not to put out ridiculous trade proposals out there although some ppl knock my proposals down
My proposal for Marte would be Wright, Touki & Jenista actually
Sorry.Yours at least makes some sense for all I know as I do not have much knowledge of the young players from other teams..
But the Pirates will be looking for a catcher in the deal.
Maybe Marte can return one of their young pitchers. Soroka? Wright?
hmm… this comes as a huge shock if true. Given the pirates payroll budget was likely larger than what they spent it would make some sense they would make a move.
Next they need to clean out the scouting staff. them along with MLB development seemed to be the bigger problem in recent years.
Surprising that he lasted as long as he did, most years they didn’t even pretend to be putting together a real, competitive MLB team. Hopefully they get someone else in who can get them moving in the right direction.
Stan-Do you really think that that was NH or Nutting not willing to spend money unless they were competitive for a division title.
The reason that he lasted was that he was willing to toe the line and not complain and it also made his job easier by not trying to pick the best free agents to sign.
Other teams with the low-payroll type model have been able to put together competitive teams more often than the Pirates. There are GMs capable of operating under this model. Just take a look across the division at the Brewers.
You can complain all you want about the owner not spending, but if the team is run intelligently from the GMs office, this should not be a complete road block to success. The Pirates have vastly under-performed relative to other teams that operate similarly, and that is largely on Huntington’s shoulders. He knew what the payroll was like going into that roll.
Stan-Vastly underperformed
Did the Brewers ever win 280 games over a three year period?
How many of your small market teams have won a World Series since 1991?One,
The Pirates have been as competitive as any of the small market teams over the last eight years after a very long period of losing.
You dwell on the last four years when some of the small market teams have had good years.
The Pirates haven’t been good in four years, which is fine. But their farm system does not even come close to reflecting what four years of bad baseball should look like. The last four years should have been spent stockpiling minor league talent and building up the farm system for a push, but that hasn’t happened. That reflects a bad GM, not owner. The Brewers have done a much better job of retooling in their down years, that’s the reason for their success now and the reason that they are going to have more good years than the Pirates for the foreseeable future. The Pirates failed at winning and now they are failing at tanking. You don’t give up your top prospects for an ace (which is what Archer was supposed to be) when you don’t have a team to put around him.
They have been mediocre for the first three years of the four so they have been picking in the middle of the pack.
Their scouting and development personnel have been at best mediocre.
For a small market team that is not good.
They have never tanked to their credit.If you want tanking,move to Detroit or Baltimore or Toronto or Miami or Kansas City.
By the way,the difference between the best and worst teams in the draft is just the first choice.
NH tried to complete the team with the Archer trade and he made a bad decision.He wanted to make the playoffs last year and the 11 game win streak stoked his aspirations.He did poor scouting of Archer and almost everyone has glommed onto that particular trade while ignoring his dozen excellent trades over the last six years.
If you say he should have been fired for the lack of player selection and development and the maintaining of coaches and the manager past their usefulness, then fine.
But his trades have been some of the best in baseball.
That is a particular shade of rose you’ve got on your glasses my friend. I personally think that Huntington has done a very poor job in getting adequate returns for what he has traded away, and has been especially bad with the trades that he DIDN’T make when it was fairly obvious that he should have. But hey, to each their own.
As a fan of another team in the Central, another 20 year post season absence for them wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, so if they want to stick to the same type of GM, then hey go for it.
Melancon for Handrahan.Vasquez for Melancon.Reynolds and Crick for Cutch.Cervelli for Wilson.Diclerson for Hudson.Nova for no one.Snider for Brault.Williams for no one.Burnett for no one.Locke and Morton for McLouth
Martin Liraiano twice,Joyce free agents.
Stan-please get a new pair 9f glasses if you do not think that these were not all excellent trades and signings
He was very good a few years ago but just like an over the hill ballplayer he lost his skills and needs to be replaced.
Hope they get some one who can help Nutting open his wallet instead of hearing him crying how he’s in a poor market.He claims he uses it to develop talent but if that is the case why does he give it (the talent)away? How long do we have to pay to watch minor league ball in Pittsburgh?
Excellent!
No longer than one chooses to open the wallet and pay to see the product. There is no “must.” The only compulsion is that which one chooses to accept.
But I see your point. Pittsburgh Pirates baseball looks like a big mess and could stay that way for a while.
Josh Bell can be the Kevin Young for a new generation of awful teams.
It’s not unusual, given the results this past year, to dismiss everybody involved. But the timing is a bit strange…it’s like trickling down terminations.
Aggressive teams are already formulating their roster for 2020…right about now, you call the Pirates’ office and won’t find anybody above the window washer.
Just weird the way they are doing it.
Bob- Not weird if you are dysfunctional in the first place.
Meanwhile, the ticket office has called my phone every day for the past 2 weeks. I have not answered. Fooled me once on partial season tickets from 1999 to 2017….. won’t fool me again! I can sense 20 years of losing baseball with sub-par rosters when I see it.
Pittsburgh would be crazy not to off their President of Baseball Operations job opening to the Cardinals John Mozeliak!!!!!
why would mo leave being the pbo in stl where he in short of him going brain dead has the job for life and go to pit where there owner is ruining baseball for the city and have a working budget of a kids piggy bank
Jim Benedict was quietly crucial and under-appreciated in Pittsburgh.
+1 defiantly. He found the players Ray could work with. Once Jim left, rays magic went away
Completely agree with this!
Who will be the GM now? And how will this have influence on hiring a field manager? Good gosh. Talk about dysfunctional!
Wow. Fire the coach first, fire the prez second, replace the prez with an hockey arena guru and now fire the GM? All while having been interviewing replacement coaches?
If they are going to do it right I hope they let the new prez handle off field agenda, hire a baseball operations prez, then a gm and then a manager
Hopefully, the President has some input in finding good baseball men to surround himself and allow them to run the team. Owner meddling going forward will produce similar results.
Clemente-Thanks for the post.You make sense.
This could be as big of a fiasco now as Preller with San Diego.
The timing of everything since the last day of the season has not made sense.
I have to agree now with the negative nabobs that this is a disfunctional organization that falls at Nutting’s feet.
If it was not the new presidents decision why didn’t Nutting make it a month ago?
He clearly does not know baseball.Nor does the new president.
What good manager and gm in their right mind would want to come to Pittsburgh now?
Keeping NH for another year or two would have lent a thread of consistency to this organization.
The tragedy of the Pirates has been poor ownership groups for the last thirty years.
Bring back John Galbreath and Joe Brown.They would be appreciated now even more than they were then.
Why keep NH when you already fired the prez and manager just to fire him a year or two from now? Now is when you start your consistency. Start from the top and let the posts hire their reports. I’m really believing we will end up with Bannister or Svuem. Our luck Nutting will bring back Dave Littlefield
Because you are starting from scratch for the entire organization.
This is not easy to do.
The Pirates will now be on the same track that Baltimore,Detroit,Kansas City,and Miami has been on for several years.
Do you think that that will be a fun time and be a winner like Houston turned out to be?
No,they will just be really really bad teams for a number of years.
It may very well ruin baseball forever in Pittsburgh.
No you are right it would be better to keep an incompetent GM for another 2 years while everyone gets comfortable.
Does no longer being able to turn chicken blank into chicken salad after years of turning chicken blank into chicken salad = incompetence?
The entirety of his regime reeks of incompetence. Just because you have a good run of 3 or 4 seasons, and get lucky with a couple trades does little to prove his value as a GM. The years the team was poised he choked and settled for guys like Morneau and Byrd. The years they struggle he goes out and guts the team from the inside with the trade of Cutch and Cole. Then he finally grows balls and swings and misses on Archer. The archer trade was an aggressive team just to stay relevant, not one that would have bolstered their playoff roster.
Add those with his complete botching of last off season with his FA signings, his unwillingness to sell high on Vazquez who was never going to be around to close a playoff game even before his arrest and the total disfunction of the clubhouse itself. He even openly admitted to dropping the ball when there were no pitchers in the system that could fill in for injuries like they had. And the bobbling of the firing of hurdle himself. It’s the last game of the year and you fire him on Steve Blass day? It was bush league. The train came off the tracks for him a few seasons ago. There are other GMs out there that take chicken blank and at least know how to handle the culture of constantly rebuilding even when winning. He choked when he had the world in his hands and tried to play catch-up there after.
Uh, Byrd was their best player down the stretch that year and Morneau was a former MVP.
It’s not his fault Vazquez is a perv.
Pick a side…
If you fault him for not getting enough for Cole, you can’t fault him for holding onto Vazquez.
If you fault him for holding onto Vazquez, you can’t fault him for taking the best offer instead of holding onto Cole.
And anyone who paid attention to his career knows the Archer move wasn’t his idea, it was everything he opposed his entire tenure.
To say that Huntingdon failed means that Nutting gave him the tools to succeed and he fell short…
Would you say that Nutting gave him the tools to succeed?
Does Oakland, Tampa and Minnesota give their gms the tools?
You are right that Byrd was their best player down the stretch but he wasn’t enough. And you really want to congratulate him on morneau who WAS a former MVP. Hurdle WAS a former manager of the year. Gee maybe the Pirates should go after Arietta and Kuechel, they both won some awards.
And yes you can fault him for not holding onto Cole while faulting him for not dealing vazquez. It’s apples and oranges
You can fault him for the Ebola virus and world hunger like DavidKoreshOnPittsburghSports, if you like, so I guess you can fault him for doing A and not B and then B and not A, too.
And you think the next GM will be trading for all stars down the stretch? On whose dime?
But, OK, you think Nutting is a fine owner who was let down by this bum, Huntingdon. So be it.
Meet the new boss…
Nope I never said Nutting was a fine owner, he hired people that could not replicate the same success that has been achieved in other small markets.
TJ-NH was hardly incompetent.
Incompetents do not last twelve years in a highly competitive industry and turn a franchise around for at least a few years.
He worked well within serious constraints.
Those of us who really are competent realize this.NH had his weaknesses and perhaps it is time for him to go,but he was hardly an incompetent individual.
I cannot say the same thing for those posters who think that he was.
Nutting certainly has a unique way of implementing an FO to run the team. Piecemeal seems rather stupid of a way to go into the off season. Of course now, Nutting will cry poor over having to pay both Hurdle and Huntington while hiring replacements.
Wonder if MLB is ready to reinstate Coppy
Seems like the perfect place for him to have a chance at redemption
Sbn-That is the most ridiculous statement that I have seen on here.
That has as much chance as Vasquez has of pitching this year.
I was just playing
In all honesty I would like to see Kim Ng get her shot
Maybe you will.
2 years out of the league? Can we move on from this guy? It’s enough we have to watch Hart on MLB Network acting like he had no part.
Yeah a whole 2 years! Let’s reinstate him! Haha. Still don’t believe for a moment that Hart knew nothing. Sounds like a german officer at the Nuremberg trials.
Only one more person to fire, then we can call this a rebuild: Bob f’ing Nutting, the owner himself.
Wow. On his first day, Travis Williams did something that Coonelly and Huntington couldn’t over the past ten years. He contradicted Nutting by firing Huntington a week after Nutting said that he was a good leader for this organization. Already better than Coonelly in my book.
Gray-You better hope that Travis Williams knows what he is doing.
This euphoria won’t last when they do a full rebuild and win 55 games for three years straight.
Poster Josh Bell may be correct in his continued assertion that they will be moving to Las Vegas.
Moe and the Stooges would have done a better job with this transformation than Nutting.
Clueless.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk! Heeebeebeebee!
Actually,Moe was the smart one.
Too bad that he is no longer living.
He probably would have done a better job with this outfit than whoever they have or will hire.
Soytenlee! (Certainly!)
It’s more frustrating as a fan to know that your team thinks it can compete, only to continually fail. They need to undergo a full rebuild, and fans should be okay with that, because a rebuild with a light at the end of the tunnel is more promising than continually going in circles with no hope of ever getting out of mediocrity.
Unless the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.
Now all they have to do is get rid of the team name before any actual pirates get offended and they’ll be set!
Careful, careful!
I hear MLB is looking good get rid of all names, team colors and mascots and just go by Team 1, Team 2, Team 3 etc.
Can anyone confirm?
Check with the brain trust of the Cleveland baseball team.
League cannot start calling them Team 1, Team 2 etc etc.- that has an implied bias to a ranking system and thus could trigger players on a higher number team. Not to mention what to do with Team 13 and its reference to bad luck. To avoid all issues teams will be simply designated by the longitude and latitude coordinates for its home field pitchers mound.
Actually Gotham, I believe the order goes: Yankees, Red Sox, Team 3, Team 4, …
It was certainly time for a new voice, but the odd thing is that the part of his job Huntington was best at–overseeing a tear-down and the subsequent rebuild–are the skills his successor will need the most.
Take Dave Littlefield back…………….. Please!
Make way for the young analytical Ivy League GM’s and Presidents. Gone are the days of Huntington and Dombrowski trading like a mildly interested fantasy team owner.
The disfunctional one is the owner.
He has let the new president outvote him in keeping NH.
This is putting all of the power into one person who has never had anything to do with baseball.
They will have a first time GM along with the manager.
This could very well be a baseball tragedy for Pittsburgh.
The last twenty-five years have been a baseball tragedy for Pittsburgh. Twenty years without a winning season, they finally have a team that can do damage in 2013, and they stagnate in the playoffs, and then they fail to do anything to keep that winning team together. It’s time for a new generation to step in, and if that new generation fails, it won’t be anything new to Pirate fans.
Now all Bob Nutting has to do is firing himself and October 28, 2019 instantly will become a local holiday in and around Pittsburgh.
And for Neal Huntington, who gets paid for the next two years NOT to deal with a fubar mess any more.
Lf-Bingo!
NH may be the lucky one in all of this.
I cannot imagine that he was happy with not spending any money.
Then again it did make his job easier.
Maybe if he put his 89 year old father in charge it would not be so screwed up.
welcome to Pittsburgh Dave Dombrowski, here are the keys to your new office.
Dombrowski certainly left the Detroit Tigers a mess for years to come with some of the contracts he issued there (to Miggy and others). Be careful about what you wish for.
I do not know much about the Tigers but it seems to me that like Moreno and Montgomery the worst long term contracts(Miggy,Hamilton,Pujols,and Howard) are driven solely by the owners and the GMs have to agree.
That might be the case. Well, you won’t see ridiculously long and expensive contracts in Pittsburgh no matter who the GM will be!
No way. The way this is playing out we will see NH assistant promoted to GM, and Bannister the new manager
Word on the street is the job is Dave Drombrowski. Big trades and victories are around the corner.
Ask the Detroit Tigers fans about the condition in which DD left their team.
Gotham-Funny that you should say that without knowing what you are talking about.
Four times I have listed NH trades over the last seven years over the last two weeks and have been met with crickets.
They are easily some of the best in baseball.
The new GM needs to know like NH that they have no money to spend.
What a shame Huntington never had a chance to trade for Derek Bell.
Until they get a new owner, nothing else they do matters.
Big-unfortunately,I have come to the same conclusion.
Yinzers-Better watch what you wish for since you may get it.
I wonder if they have any Bombshell candidates like the Mets??
It is close to Halloween. Maybe they are trying to channel the ghost of Branch Rickey.
Rickey was a very smart baseball man.
Nutting,not so much.
Met-I think that it was Joe Brady who said that the Met’s bombshell candidate is Heidi Watley.
I liked his answer.
I wish that it would apply to the Pirates.
The Pirates are one of the biggest jokes in all of baseball. Here is their philosophy “we don’t want you to spend any money, keep our payroll in the bottom three of the league. But, when you don’t win we’re going to fire you“.
Nutting is one of the biggest jokes in baseball,not the Pirates.
Calm down folks. No need to speculate on who the next manager or GM will be, because there won’t be one.
Bob Nutting is just planning to attack the 2020 season without a manager or General Manager. You see, that’s at least $2M of cost savings right there.
There will be a new Buccos app (with a $1.99 monthly fee), where each of the three remaining Pirate fans can vote on lineup changes and trades. One lucky app user will get a 10% discount coupon off of ski rental fees at Seven Springs (valid on Tuesday afternoons in April only).
I think that they should name Julio Franco general manager.
Pirate fans are going to need a huge sense of humor for the next five years.
Honest Question:
If the Pirates did $1 Night, where every ticket in the whole place was $1 and every beer and food item was also a $1, would they sell more than 20,000 tickets?
My guess is no. That’s how bad Bob Nutting is hated in that town.
I don’t think that’s true at all. When they were playing well up to the all star break they drew fans. Sellouts…no. But it wasn’t an empty park
They actually do show up for fireworks night.
I think that it is like the old time drive in theaters,a novelty,and people respond to it.
What made Nutting think of these changes has little to do with baseball but a lot to do with the embarrassment of seeing 827 fans attend each of two of the three Marlins night games.
curious to see if this is just to satisfy the fans or indicative of real change. my money is on the former, but then again, i also thought Huntington was staying for those exact reasons.
And based on how the prez was fired and quickly replaced I would not be shocked if they don’t already have someone from an nba team ready to take over as GM.
Just in-LeBron James is their new GM!
He needs a new hill to climb.
I asked this question before and honestly think it would be a great idea for baseball:
Why not trade two entire franchises and ownership groups for each other? Send Bob Nutting and the Pirates to Tampa and send the Rays and their ownership group to Pittsburgh.
Bob Nutting would love it, because Tropicana Field is right near his team’s Spring Training home in Bradenton, so hey, huge cost savings there! And Tampa would have both the Bucs and Pirates united together in that city.
And the Rays organization gets a gorgeous, almost new ballpark that is probably the best in baseball. Win/win all the way around. (Well for people living in Pittsburgh anyway).
Great!! Let’s do it. Ok..it’s not up to me but being a Bucco and a Rays fan forced to go to that Trop dump, I’d love to see PNC more often. May even be enough to move back to the Burgh.
This is exactly what happens with A’s Billy Beane. All the talent in the world but not enough resources coming from ownership (Billy is a minority owner, whatever that means)…
First three calls should go to Jean Afterman, AGM Yankees, James Crick, VP Baseball Ops Rays, and Keith Woolner, Principal Data Scientist Indians. Not saying they’d take the job, but I’d at least gauge interest.
timing is certainly weird but the right call. Pirates needed a complete overhaul. considering the owner’s not going to sell the team,the only thing left to do is overhaul the on-field product
After the third wild card it seems like most of his moves failed. He could orchestrate a big trade. Failed to move Cutch and FV. Trades of Bay, Walker, and Cole garnered little.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hal-le-lu-jah!
Cole—>Moran, Musgrove, Feliz, Martin
Archer—>Meadows, Glasnow, Baz
Of any criticism that can be leveled against NH, these two trades were a culmination of all of it. Enough said.
One mediocre and one bad trade do not offset ten excellent ones.
Enough said.
“His time with the Pirates should always be remembered for ending a long stretch of futility and bringing Postseason baseball back to Pittsburgh.”
And then ushering another long stretch of futility.
No doubt, Nutting will deploy the necessary resources to hire a superior successor and provide them with the tools they need to succeed, right?
Tony LaCava, come on down.
As much as I hate to see NH go, it maybe best for the organization to part ways. Now if Nutting would just sell the franchise, Christmas came early.