The mind of Neal Huntington

If you haven't read today's minicamp report from Dejan, I strongly suggest you do so. There's lots of stuff in there from Huntington about the off-season and his plans for 2008. Let's break down some of his quotes:

"I would say there is a pretty good nucleus in place with the major-league roster, particularly the rotation. I would argue, too, that, if you go around the diamond with our everyday players, there are as many as five who underachieved last year. If just three of those five meet or exceed expectations, those 68 wins become greater."

This is one of the most dangerous assumptions that the GM of a team like the Pirates can make. We can probably actually call it "The Dave Littlefield Fallacy." Going into last year the mantra was, "Well, with LaRoche in place and a full season of a decent Duffy and a full season of Nady, we've got to be better than 67 wins." Even if Bay and, say Paulino and Nady improve in 2008, we're probably looking at a step back for Jack Wilson, Freddy Sanchez, and Nate McLouth. Counting on a baseline performance from a bad team is never a good idea. And that's not even talking about about the rotation, which I'll probably get into in the coming weeks.

But then Huntington goes on to make statements that lead me to believe he should know all the things I just said.

At the same time, we're realistic," Huntington continued. "We know this team lost 94 games last year, and we don't want to bury our heads in the sand and say, well, things are just going to get better. We have to think not just about the 2008 club but also the 2009 club, the 2010 club. That's what we need to be talking about here, the whole organization getting better, not just the major-league club. We want to be a championship-caliber organization."

Then, why have the Pirates not committed to a total rebuilding, similar to that the Oakland Athletics now are employing with the recent trades of pitcher Dan Haren and outfielder Nick Swisher for a bounty of prospects?

"It's a great question," Huntington replied. "Quite frankly, you can't really rebuild and compete at the same time. But I also don't think we're really in the position to just blow it up, and that's probably the fine line we're walking right now. We can't pull the plug just because this team lost 94 games. The fact is, we haven't been presented with an organizational-changing trade."

He then goes on to indicate that the reason he's not rebuilding now is that no one wants any of the pieces he's selling.With absolutely no insight into the mind of Huntington and the admittance that I still can't get a handle on him after more than three months, I'll venture a guess as to where he's at right now with this team.

I'm guessing that Huntington probably planned to ride in on his white horse and trade Bay and/or Nady for prospects and restock the system and quickly found out that things wouldn't be so easy. Not only are the pieces he has to trade already damaged, but I can't imagine things go over well when a new GM calls you and asks for your three best prospects. For at least a little while, everyone's going to assume they can rip Huntington off. Now we're almost four months into Huntington's tenure and he's finding himself with no choice but to hope some of these guys step it up so he can trade them. That's what leads to the first quote. Maybe he'll get lucky and these guys will step it up and give him an opening, but that's not very likely. That means it's probably back to the drawing board for Huntington.