Saturday, October 20, 2007

Huntington is ready to look for a manager

If anyone doubted that Neal Huntington was looking at someone involved in the ALCS to fill the vacant manager's spot, today's story in the PG should pretty much take care of that.

"We're through the 'gathering' [information] process," the Pirate general manager said yesterday. "We're into the 'action' process."

Thing is, the American League Championship Series didn't end Thursday evening. And won't end until tonight at the earliest.

That impacts Huntington being able to take action.

"It sure does," he said. "Our hands are a little tied."

Everyone assumes that this probably means John Farrell is going to get an interview and it may mean Joel Skinner is getting a look. I found this passage interesting:

A team can ask for permission to interview a job candidate with another team and be granted a window of two to seven days to do that. Huntington, however, has an ethical aversion to interviewing a person who's with a team that's still playing.
What a bizarre choice of words, "an ethical aversion" to interviewing guys still in the playoffs.
If that means he's after a guy on the Indians, that also means that Huntington's priorities are misplaced. He's the GM of the Pirates now and accordingly, his loyalties should lie with the Pirates and the Pirates alone. Being the nice guy and not talking to guys that are in the playoffs seems harmless enough, but while he's stalling to talk to his favorite candidates, other managers and coaches are being taken off of the market. So what if talking to Farrell or Skinner screws with the Indians or Red Sox in the playoffs? Huntington works for neither of those organizations now.