Cook: Huntington should act fast on Alvarez
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If I'm Pirates general manager Neal Huntington, I'm promoting hotshot prospect Pedro Alvarez from the minors today, putting him in the lineup at third base tonight against the Chicago White Sox at PNC Park and praying like crazy he does something to help me save my job. Next month might be too late. Heck, next week could be too late.
Huntington has to be running out of time. He's in the final season of a three-year contract and management has given no indication it plans on extending him. There's a good reason for that. Overall, he hasn't done a very good job.
Huntington can pat himself on the back for rebuilding the Pirates' minor league system, through the draft if nothing else. It's not so much that he and his scouts picked Alvarez No. 2 in the 2008 draft. That was a no-brainer. What's more impressive is that baseball people have praised the Pirates' overall drafts under Huntington. Good for him and his people.
But what about the big league club?
While Huntington has been off overseeing the minor leaguers, it has become a joke, even worse than when he took over from previous general manager Dave Littlefield.
The proof is the eight-game losing streak and 23-40 record the Pirates will take into the game tonight. Only the woeful Baltimore Orioles are worse. It's hard to remember a worse Pirates lineup, the pitching is the second worst in baseball and the defense significantly has worsened.
Other than that, everything is just great.
Huntington has to take the blame for this mess. His trades have been mostly failures, although it's still too soon to pronounce final judgment on some. The Xavier Nady-Damaso Marte deal, which brought Jose Tabata, Ross Ohlendorf, Jeff Karstens and Daniel McCutchen, was a really good one. But the rest? At least to this point, they range from bad to awful.
Robinson Diaz for Jose Bautista, who had 18 home runs through Sunday for the Toronto Blue Jays? Andy LaRoche, Brandon Moss, Bryan Morris and Craig Hansen for Jason Bay? Bad as those deals were, sending Jack Wilson and $3.3 million to Seattle to get Jeff Clement as the key acquisition was worse. Clement was given the first-base job in the spring and hit .189 before being sent, finally, to the minors Wednesday. Then, there was the Aki Iwamura fiasco. Huntington traded to get him in the offseason when the Tampa Bay Rays were ready to release him and took on his $4.85 million salary, which is highest on the Pirates. Iwamura is hitting .177 and has no range in the field because of a bad knee. If you count Iwamura's salary with the money the Pirates sent to Seattle for Clement and the $2 million the team ate to release Ramon Vazquez in the spring, that's more than $10 million wasted dollars for a franchise that can't afford it.
First Published June 15, 2010 12:00 am
