Shocking: Frank Coonelly may be a snake

To this point in his tenure, the Pirate employee that Frank Coonelly most reminds me of (in a purely superficial manner) is Dave Littlefield. They're both brash, smooth talking guys that could sell you volcano insurance, if they so desired. Because of just about everyone's description of Coonelly as really, really freaking smart (I'm paraphrasing), I was willing to let that go in the hopes that he knew what he was doing and had a plan to turn the Pirates around. He's said all the right things and he's got a pretty intimate knowledge of how baseball works given his job as labor counsel. I'm now seriously worried, because Charlie has dug up this quote:

"We'll pay attention to the slot, but we'll take the best available player that we believe we have a chance to sign," Coonelly said. "If we think a player's value is over the slot, we'd certainly consider it."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

That modifier, "that we believe we have a chance to sign," completely destroys any other part of that statement. Vlad has a great rundown of Coonelly's stance on the draft, then he goes on to ask Dejan about it, and Dejan more or less indicates that Coonelly was talking about agents doing what Scott Boras did to the Phillies in the JD Drew saga of the mid-90s. Coonelly indicates something similar in a chat at the dot-com.

Keeping in mind that this is a subject that we honestly have no way to judge until the draft itself, I'm split on what to make of these comments. During the Moskos/Wieters fiasco last summer, I indicated in a conversation with my dad that I felt that it was entirely possible that Scott Boras would levy a "No Pirates" stance on a pick like Wieters and let him play in an independent league for a year rather than subject his prospect to career death in the Pirates' minor league system. Obviously I have no evidence to back that speculation up, but if I were a top prospect and I was drafted by the Pirates, I'd be pretty freaking disappointed. It likely wouldn't have been an issue with Wieters since he couldn't afford to lose a year as a college player, but I don't think Rick Porcello would've signed with us for all the tea in China. The thing is, I don't think that would ever happen to us with Coonelly as CEO. He may have left his league post for this job with the Bucs, but you know he's got friends in powerful places and I don't think he's a guy many agents would want to anger.

I find myself wondering if we really learned anything about Coonelly from the statement in the Philly paper that set all this off. Given his history as league counsel, it's certainly been possible right from the start that this guy is here to help the Nutting family line their pockets even further. And all of his statements that the Bucs will take the best player possible in the draft in June hinge upon different people's definitions of who that player may be, which gives him a lot of wiggle room. At the same time, there is some evidence that Nutting wants to turn this ship around and most of everything else Coonelly has said has been right on the mark. This is the problem with trying to judge a front office in its early days; words far outnumber actions right now and until we have some actions to compare to these words, we're mostly grasping at straws.