I was watching the Rays beating the Athletics on Wednesday night, and a thought kept coming to mind: How does Neal Huntington still have a job with the Pirates?
The Pirates have fired Clint Hurdle. They’ve parted ways with Ray Searage and Tom Prince. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more changes throughout the organization to come. But Pirates owner Bob Nutting has already said that Huntington will be back.
I’m watching the Rays winning the Wild Card game, winning with Charlie Morton on the mound, Tyler Glasnow available out of the bullpen, and Austin Meadows in the outfield. They won, and now they’ll go up against the Astros, who feature Gerrit Cole doing his best Nolan Ryan impersonation.
Every time I see Glasnow and Meadows on the screen, I think about how that trade might end up being one of the worst trades in MLB history.
I grew up an Orioles fan. I was too young at the time to remember the Glenn Davis trade, which saw the Orioles trade Curt Schilling, Steve Finley, and Pete Harnisch back in return for the one year rental. I was too young when the trade was made, but the good thing about a trade that bad is that the anniversary of the deal gets celebrated for years.
You might be raising a kid right now who will grow up to be a big baseball fan. They might not know who Austin Meadows or Tyler Glasnow are, or that there was a trade involving those players last year. But it’s very possible that years from now, if they somehow grow up liking the Pirates, they’re going to learn about the Meadows/Glasnow/Shane Baz trade and they’re going to have a similar reaction that I had once I learned the business side of the game: What the hell were they thinking?
We know right now what they were thinking. Kind of. The Pirates wanted an established starter who was under team control for several years, and paid the market price for such a starter at the trade deadline. Chris Archer has not worked out at all, and even if he rebounds next year and becomes a good pitcher again, it’s hard to see the Pirates ending up on the best side of this deal.
And I can’t help but think about a variation of a comment that Neal Huntington has made over the years about these types of moves and making decisions on their prospects. It goes along the lines of “The Pirates need to know their own players better than other teams.”
It’s hard to argue that they were anywhere close with Glasnow and Meadows. Because the alternative would be that they did know the upside of both players, and how close they were, which raises even bigger questions about why they made the trade in the first place.
I think that trade is going to haunt the Pirates for years. The same argument could be made for Gerrit Cole. Sure, the Pirates were only giving up two years of Cole. However, they drafted him number one overall, with the hope that he would be one of the top starters in the game. They got good production for a few years, but that production ended in 2016.
The problem with Cole is that the Pirates fell behind on the pitching trends. A big fault there lies with Ray Searage, and the Pirates have handled that. But everything comes back to Huntington, and watching the Rays was really eye opening on how far behind the Pirates have fallen — not just with pitching, but in all aspects of gaining an edge as a small market team.
You’ve got a team with high impact upside prospects who are just starting to show their impact potential. Austin Meadows was a 4 WAR player, which would have made him the Pirates’ MVP this year. Tyler Glasnow is starting to look like a top of the rotation starter.
They had the defensive shifts and other analytically driven strategies to give them an edge. There was a time when the Pirates were among the teams ahead of the pack in this department. The offense is a microcosm of how far behind they’ve fallen. That offense showed big improvements this year and still end up average at best, mostly because the Pirates were playing catchup to the rest of the league with modern hitting philosophies.
Then you’ve got the Charlie Morton factor. I don’t blame the Pirates for trading Morton after 2015. As much as I like him, he was injury prone, making $8 M, and coming off a bad year. This was before he was turned around by Houston, and before the new pitching philosophies took hold.
But what about Charlie Morton in 2019? The guy who is 35 years old and somehow was undervalued. The Rays saw the proper value with Morton and added him, much like the Pirates used to do with guys like Russell Martin.
It doesn’t matter that Morton played for the Pirates in 2015. It doesn’t matter what type of pitcher he was then, or the changes he’s made since. What matters is that he has value in 2019, has already made the changes for that value, and was available for anyone. The Pirates could have easily had Glasnow, Meadows, and Morton in 2019, and they probably would have been better off.
I tweeted the following after the AL Wild Card game:
Rays/Astros is going to be an amazing series.
It's also going to make it easy to imagine a playoff team with Gerrit Cole, Tyler Glasnow, and Charlie Morton in the rotation, Mitch Keller out of the pen, Austin Meadows and Josh Bell in the middle of the lineup, and Brandon Inge.
— Tim Williams (@TimWilliamsP2) October 3, 2019
That tweet led to some debate and some questions (the Brandon Inge part was a joke, but honestly, was it? Brandon Inge would definitely somehow be on that team.) I know exactly why it led to confusion.
Imagining that scenario for the Pirates involves basically imagining an alternate reality.
In that reality, the Pirates are getting good production out of Cole, Glasnow, Meadows, Bell, and Keller because they are able to maximize the value of their prospects. That hasn’t been the case in our reality.
In that reality, the Pirates are a team that is ahead of the pack in analytics, advanced game strategy (shifts), and finding value. We saw that in our reality, but it stopped after 2015.
In that reality, the Pirates would have seen the value of a guy like Morton. It doesn’t matter if they were the ones who got him to that value. What matters is that he’s there in 2019.
And you see the difference in the realities when you see the comments about how the Pirates didn’t know what Morton was capable of, how no one knew, and how the Astros unlocked everything.
Well, someone knew eventually. And that team wasn’t the Pirates. In that alternate reality, the Pirates are with teams like the Astros and Rays, finding out this potential well before other teams catch up.
I see the Rays, and I can’t help but think that the Pirates could have easily been that team. They were on pace to be that team, and then it seems like the entire organization fell behind the rest of the league. The Pirates are now on a downward spiral, but trying to convince themselves that they’re still annual contenders, and that it’s just constant misfortune each year holding them back.
I see all of this, and have no clue how Huntington still has a job. This all falls on him, and nothing about this organization the last few years warrants him sticking around for another shot. The only way it makes sense for Huntington to stick around is if he and Bob Nutting had an epiphany, and suddenly did a complete 180 this offseason.
I say all of this with the same disclaimer that I have for Clint Hurdle and Ray Searage. They were legitimately good during 2013-15, and played big roles in the Pirates being winners. Huntington played the biggest role in building that team and overseeing the strategies that won. But all three have fallen behind, and Huntington is the only one who remains.
Our only choice right now is to see what Huntington and Nutting do different this offseason and for next year. And I think there’s a really good chance that the Pirates end up in the exact same situation next year, missing the playoffs, having a losing season, and not having any hope for the future on the horizon.
Perhaps we all spend this offseason trying to find a way over to the reality where the Pirates are on par with the Astros and Rays.
TODAY’S ARTICLES
We’ll have an article going up this afternoon. We’ll also have the AFL recap and any news that comes out.
SONG OF THE DAY
DAILY QUIZ
I really want to see the new Joker movie. I’m not a huge fan of DC, but love every Joker story I’ve read. The new Black Label comics have been fantastic.
THIS DATE IN PIRATES HISTORY
By John Dreker
Four former Pittsburgh Pirates born on this date, starting with the most recent first:
Joe Boever, pitcher for the 1996 Pirates. At the end of his 12-year career, he made 13 appearances for the Pirates and posted a 5.40 ERA in 15 innings. Boever pitched 516 games in the majors, all of them as a reliever.
Billy Hatcher, 1989 outfielder for the Pirates. Late season acquisition, who hit .244 in 27 games. He was traded prior to the 1990 season. Hatcher played 12 seasons in the majors, just like Boever, who was born on the same day in 1960.
Red Munger, pitcher for the 1952 and 1956 Pirates. He won a total of 229 games in pro ball, but just three of those wins came with the Pirates in the majors. He pitched in the minors between 1953-55 and had a 23-win season.
Jim Gardner, pitcher/infielder for the 1895, 1897-99 Pirates. We posted a bio on him in this link that covers the first ten years in the NL for the Alleghenys/Pirates. Twenty players are covered in that link, besides the ten-year rundown.
On this date in 1903, Deacon Phillippe and the Pirates won 5-4 over the Boston Americans in game four of the World Series. It was the third win of the series for Phillippe. You can read a full recap of the game here.
