Some thoughts about Huntington

Since it looks pretty certain that tomorrow is going to be the day that Huntington is introduced as our GM, let's take a look at some pros and cons of the guy, at least from what I can tell thus far.

Pros

• If I were to pick an organization for the Pirates to model themselves after, it would probably be the Indians. I mean, you could pick the A's or the Twins or maybe even the Padres or D'Backs, but the Indians are certainly one of the top choices as far as I can see it. Besides Mark Shapiro, I'd assume the guy that's been there for 12 years knows how it's run.
  
• The Pirates interviewed some good people for this position and this is who Coonelly and Nutting picked. Neither of them is stupid.
  
• A huge chunk of Coonelly's past job dealt with dealing with GMs. If he doesn't know what makes a good GM, well, either he's stupid or no one does. Like I said, he's not stupid.
  
• I think his youth is a good thing. Maybe it's just that I'd rather see a 37-year old new face as our GM than, say, Ed Wade.

Cons

• Man, that demotion within the Indians organization this year from Assistant GM to Special Assistant to the GM/Advanced Scout sure is suspicious, isn't it?
  
• He really is an unknown and when his name came up, everyone everywhere seemed genuinely surprised. If he really is such a great candidate, why didn't anyone think of him before he got the job?
• The guys we passed over for the job, La Cava, Zduriencik, Bernarzard, Heyer, etc. seemed to be pretty good candidates and we know a lot more about them.

Unknowns

• Nutting and Coonelly aren't stupid, but what is their motivation here? To build a winning baseball team or to keep the pockets of ownership lined? Certainly, it's fair to question that at this point.
  
• Why was Huntington demoted? Maybe Shapiro wanted to give someone a better job to keep them in the organization and Huntington agreed to help him out. Maybe something a lot more ugly happened. We just don't know.
  
• What did our interest in Antonetti have to do with us ending up with Huntington? Was Coonelly's goal from day 1 to model his Pirates after the Indians? Did we ask about Antonetti and get referred to Huntington?
  

As with anything along these lines, it's pretty impossible to judge how this hire is going to turn out right now. It certainly good be a good hire and there is some evidence to support that. It could be a bad hire, and there's evidence to support that, too. The good news is that Huntington has a lot of work to do this off-season and I think we're going to get a good idea of what kind of GM he's going to make pretty fast.