PITTSBURGH — Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington was a guest on MLB Network radio this morning. Here are a few quotes from what was discussed.
On trading All-Star outfielder Andrew McCutchen:
“Once it gets reported in the media, then the GM’s have to do their due diligence and they reach out and, ‘hey. I just wanted to put our name on your list if you’re talking about him.’ While no player is untouchable, we’re in a very different stage as to where we were when we got here. When we got here, it was all about inquiring talent, trying to accumulate as much as we could. We didn’t have very many good players. We needed to take a chance and see how many we could put together. We’re in a different stage. We’re in a stage where we are looking to take this team and turn it into a winning team. Then try to take that and make it as consistent as we possibly can. So the motivation is very different. Never say never. If somebody wants to back up the truck and give us one of those organizational altering deals, it’s something we would have to listen to. But there are some players on our club that are extremely difficult to move and it would have to be a dramatic overpay on the part of the other club. We’ve got some guys that were are looking to build a club around as we go forward. We’ve got Andrew McCutchen under contract for the Pirates for four more seasons, and we expect to do some damage here during that time frame.”
On addressing offseason needs and making it a longer season:
“We worked to address it this season by adding some veteran leadership that’s been in some big games, that’s been around some big games. We tried to add some legitimate free agents. Clint Barmes in our books, was probably the third-best shortstop on the market, Rod Barajas was one of the top two free agent catchers, Erik Bedard, certainty one of the top 10 free agent starting pitchers in our mind. We went out and added some guys that can play, but also some guys that have been around.”
One aspect of the team that needs improvement:
“Well the reality is the core of the group that got us to a first place tie on July 26th, when things kind of fell apart for us in Milwaukee, when they went on their incredible run, the core of that production is still here. The young players in McCutchen and [Neil] Walker, it’s the young starters in [James] McDonald and [Charlie] Morton, it’s Joel Hanrahan out of the bullpen, it’s the handful of arms that did a heck of a job for us. We get Jose Tabata healthy, we get Alex Presley for a full season, we add Bedard, we get [Kevin] Correia healthy and back to where he was in the first half. Jeff Karstens continues to grow and develop and use his baseball intelligence to get hitters out. No question we need Pedro Alvarez to step up, and be the guy that we expect he can be, but we’ve given our self some protection if he can’t. Then here comes Casey McGehee. We need Garrett Jones to take a step forward. We need to be healthy first and foremost. Any team in a market size as ours, health is probably the biggest predictor of success. Then there’s no question we need our young players to continue to take steps forward. Whether it’s Walker, McCutchen, just continue to get better, Pedro rebound to where he is, Charlie Morton get healthy, James McDonald take that step forward, if they do that, we can make life very interesting in the central this year.”
Huntington on the 19 consecutive losing seasons:
“We hear that all the time, the 19 years. The fans are tired of being patient. They want a winning team on the field now. I think they showed that last summer, they came out in waves last summer when we were playing pretty solid baseball. We know we got a long ways to go but our belief is what we’ve begun to show the tangible benefits, the tangible results of the four years of planning, the four years of executing.”
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