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Latest On Pirates’ Front Office Hiring Search

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While the rest of the sport has turned much of its attention to roster decisions and other offseason business, the Pirates are still working to nail down their baseball operations leadership. It seems the process of replacing dismissed GM Neal Huntington is now reaching a culmination.

That said, there is a new name in play that hadn’t previously been known to be under consideration. Astros assistant general manager of player development Pete Putila has been involved in the search, per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand (via Twitter). Previously considered by the Giants in their GM search, Putila currently stands as one of the top lieutenants of Houston GM Jeff Luhnow.

Whether Putila is a strong candidate to take the top ops job isn’t known. It’d certainly be a big step up for an executive that had only recently ascended to an AGM title. It is at least theoretically possible he could be considered for a GM title if the Pittsburgh organization ends up hiring a top-level decisionmaker who functions as a president of baseball ops or chief baseball officer.

Most observers appear to see this as a two-horse race. Former Red Sox GM and current Blue Jays exec Ben Cherington is believed to be holding his second-round sit-down today, per Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Twitter link). And it appears Brewers AGM Matt Arnold will do the same tomorrow; Robert Murray had tweeted that Arnold would get another interview.

But that’s hardly certain. Internal candidate Kevan Graves, who is currently serving as interim GM, joins Putila as additional possibilities. Graves was believed to be preparing for his own second interview at some point this week, Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic tweeted yesterday. Graves also joined Putila as a candidate for the Giants job that ultimately went to Scott Harris.

Whoever takes the helm will need to get right to work. The Bucs have loads of needs and some very big questions to answer. In particular, the organization will have to gauge trade interest in star center fielder Starling Marte, who figures to be in quite some demand and could be cashed in as part of a retooling effort.

Latest On Pirates' GM, Managerial Searches

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Blue Jays vice president of baseball operations Ben Cherington and Brewers assistant general manager Matt Arnold will get second interviews this week for the Pirates’ GM vacancy, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network and reporter Robert Murray. Cherington and Arnold are reportedly two of three finalists to take over in Pittsburgh. Pirates assistant GM Kevan Graves seems to be competing with them, as Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic tweets that he also appears likely to receive another interview. Meanwhile, even though the Pirates technically don’t have a GM right now, they’re also carrying on their search for a manager. Twins bench coach Derek Shelton has been particularly impressive to the club thus far, Heyman relays.

Pirates’ GM Search Reportedly Down To Three Finalists

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Since the exit of longtime GM Neal Huntington on Oct 28, the Pirates have been connected to a number of respected front office figures in their search for a new head of baseball operations. Two names, Blue Jays VP of baseball operations/former Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington and Brewers assistant GM Matt Arnold, have been identified as two of three finalists for the position in a report from Joel Sherman of the New York Post (link).

Pirates assistant GM and current acting general manager Kevan Graves was named as a candidate in a separate report from Thursday, but it is unclear if he represents the third finalist, as Sherman only names Cherington and Arnold in his report. Blue Jays senior VP of player personnel Tony LaCava and former Red Sox and Orioles GM Dan Duquette have previously been mentioned as potential hires, but it appears that Pittsburgh has begun to narrow its scope.

Arnold had been reported as a speculative fit, but this is the first time he has been definitively placed in the running. A former director of player personnel with the Rays, Arnold has been working alongside Brewers GM David Stearns in his current role since October of 2015. Both he, 40, and Cherington, 45, would represent relatively youthful-yet-experienced additions to the Pittsburgh front office, in keeping with industry-wide trends.

As noted in our Offseason Outlook piece on Pittsburgh’s club, one of these finalists will face a challenging winter when they ultimately assume control of operations. After a 69-93 season that saw the club wrought with internal tension, it remains to be seen if the new Pirates exec will opt toward a full-scale rebuild via trades involving players like Starling Marte and Chris Archer, or if a more moderate re-tooling will be attempted in search of a postseason return.

Pirates Considering Ben Cherington As Baseball Operations Head

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Blue Jays VP of baseball operations and former Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington is a candidate to be the Pirates’ next head of baseball operations, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports (Twitter link).  Cherington has worked for Toronto for the last three-plus seasons, after taking a little over a year away from baseball after being fired by the Sox in August 2015.

Cherington joins Pirates assistant GM and current acting general manager Kevan Graves as the only known candidates to take over the Pittsburgh front office.  Other notable names have already been mentioned as potential candidates, including another name from the Jays in senior VP of player personnel Tony LaCava, and another former Red Sox GM (and Orioles GM) in Dan Duquette.  Interviews with potential candidates were expected to begin this week, though there isn’t yet any indication that Cherington has officially sat down with Pirates top brass.

The Pirates cleaned house after 69-93 season that was disastrous on and off the field, as the club parted ways with manager Clint Hurdle, team president Frank Coonelly, and GM Neal Huntington, though all in somewhat staggered fashion over the course of a month.  Travis Williams has already stepped in as the new team president, though the managerial search that was already weeks old was put on pause while Huntington’s replacement was found.

After Theo Epstein departed the Red Sox following the 2011, Cherington (following 13 years in various role in Boston’s front office) took over as general manager.  His tenure with the club saw the Sox finish in last place in the AL East in 2012, 2014, and 2015, yet win the World Series in 2013, giving him one of the most unusual resumes of any top executive in recent memory.  While several mid-tier acquisitions were key to the 2013 championship, Cherington was hampered by bigger-ticket signings that didn’t pan out, most notably Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval.  Cherington was credited, however, with the development of such young starts as Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Rafael Devers, and Eduardo Rodriguez, all of whom were either drafted or largely developed during Cherington’s time as general manager.

Multiple teams have had interest in hiring Cherington for GM openings in recent years, though he declined interviews last year, with Rosenthal reporting at the time that Cherington was mostly interested in a situation that would allow him to completely rebuild a team.  The Pirates could represent such a situation, as while the team has talent on hand, an argument could be made that a revamp could be necessary before the Bucs are able to again be truly competitive in the tough NL Central.

Kevan Graves, Pete Putila Under Consideration In Giants’ GM Search

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10:38am: San Francisco has also considered Pirates assistant general manager Kevan Graves for the GM post, Rosenthal tweets. Graves is currently serving as the Pirates’ GM on an interim basis after the firing of longtime general manager Neal Huntington late last month, however, and Rosenthal notes that he’s a candidate for both positions.

8:33am: The Giants are considering Pete Putila in their search for a general manager to serve under president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). Putila presently serves as the Astros’ director of player development.

Putila becomes at least the second known candidate for the opening, though it’s possible to surmise at least one more. As Rosenthal reported yesterday, and we discussed here, Cubs assistant GM Scott Harris is known to bee under consideration. And it appears likely that Athletics AGM Billy Owens has at least been contemplated in some manner, though the current status there is not known.

It remains entirely unclear when a hiring decision will be made. As noted yesterday, the Giants are likely planning to do so before long, given that the offseason market is now open for business. At the same time, the team doesn’t face much pressure from the executive market since most other teams are not hiring a #2 baseball ops exec at the moment. (The Pirates are still engaged in a search for their top job, which certainly could have an impact.)

Putila has helmed the Astros’ farm system for over three years now, overseeing a key component of one of the game’s most recently successful organizations. He brought a varied background to that role after five prior seasons with the Houston club. Whether or not Putila is picked up by the Giants, his involvement in this process makes him only the latest of many Astros executives to draw interest from other outfits.

Pirates Exercise Options Over Archer, Marte; Outright Four Players

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The Pirates announced a series of roster moves today. In addition to exercising club options over Chris Archer and Starling Marte — moves that were all but a given — the club has outrighted four players. James Marvel, Alex McRae, Yefry Ramirez and Wei-Chung Wang were all dropped from the Pittsburgh 40-man roster.

The Pirates don’t have a general manager at the moment — assistant GM Kevan Graves is filling that role on an interim basis — though it was still undoubtedly easy for their front office to pick up Archer and Marte at their 2020 tabs. Archer has been surprisingly below average since the Pirates acquired him from the Rays in a July 2018 trade that’s looking like one of the most regrettable deals in Pittsburgh history. Nevertheless, as someone who’s due an affordable $9MM in 2020, it’s worth keeping Archer around and hoping for a bounce-back season or trying to shop him during the winter.

Marte, who’s owed $11.5MM next year, looks like an even more obvious trade candidate than Archer. The 31-year-old Marte’s fresh off yet another strong campaign, one in which he totaled at least 3.0 fWAR for the sixth time since his first full season since he debuted in 2013. However, Marte’s down to his last two years of team control, so if the Pirates don’t expect to push for contention during that span, putting him on the block may make sense. That’s all the more true when considering the lack of appealing center field alternatives on the free-agent market.

Of the players the Pirates outrighted, Wang worked the largest slate of innings in 2019. While he only tossed four frames for the Buccos, the 27-year-old logged another 27 innings with Oakland prior to landing in Pittsburgh. On the season overall, Wang posted a solid 3.77 ERA, though he did so with a grisly 18-to-14 K/BB ratio in those 31 innings of relief. He held lefties to a lowly .220/.298/.280 batting line through 57 plate appearances but was tagged for an .823 OPS by righties. Wang, McRae and Ramirez will all have the option to elect free agency.

Pirates To Exercise Chris Archer’s 2020 Option

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The Pirates will pick up right-hander Chris Archer’s $9MM club option for the 2020 season, Nubyjas Wilborn of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tweets. Pittsburgh could have paid Archer a $1.75MM buyout but will now have him locked in for the upcoming season. His contract also contains an $11MM option (with a $250K buyout) for the 2021 campaign.

Archer, 31, simply hasn’t panned out as hoped in Pittsburgh. The Buccos shipped prospects Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows and Shane Baz to Tampa Bay in order to acquire three and a half cost-controlled seasons of Archer in what now looks like one of the more regrettable deals in recent memory. Both Glasnow and Meadows have flourished with the Rays, while Archer has given the Pirates a combined 172 innings of 4.92 ERA ball in his season and a half wearing black and yellow.

Archer was long seen as a pitcher with some yet-untapped upside, and the friendly nature of his contract surely made him all the more appealing for recently fired general manager Neal Huntington and a Pirates front office that is regularly working under some of the game’s tightest payroll restrictions. Whether the Bucs would’ve been so motivated to acquire Archer with more financial support from ownership can’t be known — just as it’s impossible to tell whether Glasnow and/or Meadows would’ve broken out to the same extent in Pittsburgh as they did in St. Petersburg. The bottom-line result, however, is a trade that has paid major dividends for the Tampa Bay organization but not for Pittsburgh. The ill-fated swap surely contributed to owner Bob Nutting’s recent organizational shakeup, which saw Huntington dismissed and assistant GM Kevan Graves tabbed as interim general manager.

The Pirates initially pushed Archer to dust off a two-seam fastball that he’d shelved years ago with the Rays, and the results weren’t pretty. The right-hander eventually scrapped that pitch over the summer and returned to a four-seam-heavy approach with his heater, though the results weren’t exactly encouraging. Archer pitched to a 4.65 ERA in 12 starts (60 innings) after ditching that pitch, although his strikeout rate (31.4 percent) and swinging-strike rate (13.6 percent) upon changing his pitch selection were markedly better than they were with the two-seamer. A shoulder injury, however, halted Archer’s season in late August.

Given his average velocity in that time (94.4 mph) and those encouraging swinging-strike trends, Archer could yet appeal to clubs who hope to coax better results out of the right-hander. Moving him now would clearly be selling low and would net a much lesser return than what the Pirates initially surrendered, but trade options for contenders seeking rotation help this winter are limited. If the Bucs opt to hold onto him in hopes of building some value in the season’s first half, Archer would likely emerge as a trade candidate next summer, so long as he proves healthy.

Pirates Notes: GM And Manager Search

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The Pirates found themselves in an awkward position when the organization fired general manager Neal Huntington, who had already begun his search for the team’s next manager after Clint Hurdle was fired on the last day of the season. The staggered firings halted the managerial search while introducing the possibility that the next GM would want to take the search in a new direction.

Since a number of candidates have already interviewed to be Hurdle’s replacement, the team won’t necessarily be starting over once a new GM is hired, but the new head of baseball ops will seemingly be somewhat limited in his or her capacity to drive the hiring process. With all that said, Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette suggests that of the group that has already interviewed, Derek Shelton, Mark Kotsay, and Jeff Banister had emerged as the favorites, though it’s hard to tab anyone a real frontrunner at this point without a GM steering the ship.

Nine names have been linked to the Pirates’ search thus far, though beyond the organization’s change of direction, at least some of these candidates could already be out of consideration.  Astros bench coach Joe Espada is reportedly one of the finalists to be the Giants’ next skipper, while the Athletics have already announced that bench coach Ryan Christenson and quality control coach Kotsay will be back on next season’s staff.  While that announcement wouldn’t preclude Christenson or Kotsay from a future Pirates hiring, it was noted that Kotsay was no longer a candidate for the Giants’ job.

Interviews with GM candidates will begin this week, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports (Twitter link), and we should soon start to hear concrete details about names under consideration.  The likes of former Red Sox and Orioles GM Dan Duquette, Brewers assistant GM Matt Arnold, Blue Jays senior VP Tony LaCava, Yankees scout Marc DelPiano have already been mentioned as speculative candidates.

Angels Acquire Parker Markel

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The Angels announced that right-hander Parker Markel has been acquired from the Pirates in exchange for cash considerations.

The 29-year-old Markel will change teams for the second time in 2019, after first going from the Mariners to the Pirates on a waiver claim back in July.  It made for a particularly busy first Major League season for Markel, who posted a 7.77 ERA over 22 combined innings for Seattle and Pittsburgh in his first taste of the Show.

It marked the culmination of a long road to the majors for Markel, who was originally a 39th-round draft pick for the Rays in 2010.  His ten-year pro career has included brief stints in independent ball and South Korea’s KBO League, as well as time away from the sport due to anxiety issues.  Through it all, Markel has managed some solid minor league stats, with a 3.81 ERA, 2.23 K/BB rate, and 8.0 K/9 over 508 innings, pitching almost exclusively as a reliever since 2014.

He’ll now join an Angels team that is looking for pitching depth.  While the Halos have a more glaring need in the rotation than in the bullpen, Markel and his 95.6 mph average fastball velocity could certainly become part of the conversation as the Angels consider their relief options come Spring Training.

Pirates Claim Sam Howard

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The Pirates have claimed left-handed reliever Sam Howard off waivers from the Rockies, per an announcement from Colorado. Howard, 26, had spent his whole career with the Rockies after they selected him in the third round in 2014.

A slider specialist, Howard made his MLB debut in 2018 but got his first significant big league action in 2019. He tossed 19 innings in 20 relief appearances with a strong 25.3% strikeout rate, but problems with walks and home runs contributed to a 6.63 ERA. Howard showed better in 42 relief appearances in Triple-A Albuquerque, working out of the bullpen full-time for the first time in his minor-league career.

Howard comes with another option season, so he’ll give the club a flexible lefty relief piece with swing-and-miss stuff so long as he sticks on the 40-man roster throughout the winter.

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