Pirates extend contracts for Russell, Huntington
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Left to right, manager John Russell, general manager Neal Huntington, president Frank Coonelly.
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The timing hardly could have been worse for Frank Coonelly, the Pirates' president, to disclose Thursday afternoon that he quietly gave general manager Neal Huntington and manager John Russell one-year extensions last October.
The team was in a 10-game losing streak with the National League's worst record, with some of its recent trades and signings exposed as robustly unproductive, with its fundamental play hitting a low the previous night with a six-error mess.
But, when a report was published on FoxSports.com Thursday morning quoting a Major League Baseball source that Huntington had been extended, Coonelly ended months of vague answers on the topic to acknowledge he had added a year to Huntington's three-year contract that was set to expire this fall and that he exercised the 2011 option on Russell's contract.
And Coonelly did so in a half-hour meeting with Pittsburgh writers in which he never offered any significant praise for Huntington or Russell, nor anything close to a guarantee that either would serve the full term of those extensions.
"As we've demonstrated in the past, the fact that a person has a contract for another year or two isn't going to change the decision we make as to whether they are performing up to expectations," Coonelly said. "If we every conclude someone is not, that person will no longer be with the organization, even if that means we have to eat a year or two of their contact."
Asked why he offered the extensions fresh off a 62-99 season, Coonelly offered no endorsements.
"We sit down at the end of every season and discuss what went right, what went wrong, what were the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, where do we need to improve and how are we performing. We made the decision understanding that this turnaround is not something anyone believed we could do quickly."
And on the team's especially poor play of late: "The level of disappointment is so high I can't accurately give you a word for it. I'm extraordinarily disappointed and frustrated by the play."
First Published June 18, 2010 12:00 am
