First impressions of Coonelly

I know it's early and that Frank Coonelly has done absolutely nothing as the new Pirates' president, but it's hard not to like the first impression he's making.

From his letter to the fans:

Our immediate priority will be to find the right general manager who will work hard to build on the baseball foundation by broadening our talent base, improving our player development systems and making the international market a true priority. We must develop a system that regularly feeds premier talent to the Major League level, while at the same time putting our current group of young players in the best possible position to succeed.

From another Pirates.com article:

"From my judgment, resources haven't been allocated effectively or efficiently," Coonelly said. "There has been too much spending in areas that were not effective and not enough spending in areas that are effective. Moving forward, we're going to allocate those resources in a manner that I believe is far more effective."

From agent Jay Reisinger (quoted in the PG):

"This is a tremendous hire for the Pirates," Reisinger said. "He's an extremely bright and driven person. He takes great pride in winning. He works very, very hard and cares a great deal about his work.

"I can honestly say Frank and I have never agreed on one single thing, but I know he'll be a tremendous help to the Pirates. I have the utmost respect for him. I think he'll be a tremendous asset."

Clearly, it's hard to judge anything until he actually does something on the job (like, say, hire a GM), but the more I've been reading about Coonelly, the more I've been liking. The fact that he gets an endorsement from an agent is a huge thing, I think, because his job before was basically to squash agents in their tracks. If they've got respect for him, I think it indicates that he was more than just a lapdog for Selig who will take the commissioner's office agenda to Federal Street. At least that's what I hope it means.