GM Neal Huntington Unwilling To Sacrifice Future To Land Quintana
PITTSBURGH (93-7 The Fan) - The offseason is always an important time for any MLB club to try to improve its roster and put themselves in position to win both now and/or in the future.
It is no different for Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington. He's working to put together the 2017 Pirates that will look to bounce back after seeing their three-year steak of winning seasons come to an end.
Huntington took some time to join "The Fan Morning Show" on Friday to discuss why no deal was struck with White Sox pitcher Jose Quintana this winter, after reportedly going after him in a trade.
"It's one of those situations that we are for the mindset that as an organization, the best way to position ourselves to win a World Series is to get to the playoffs consistently and frequently, and we're not of the mindset that the way to do that is to jeopardize your future for your present or to jeopardize your present for your future," said Huntington. "We want to be a good team as consistently and frequently as possible and the only way to do that in a small market is to have a lot of good players, to have a lot of good players in your system and a trade of that magnitude would have been contradictory. We would have either been selling out to the next couple of years at the risk of our future. Instead, we believe we've got a good core in place, a core that was essentially predicted to win 88, 89 games a year ago."
Another big piece of new this offseason was the re-alignment in the outfield, shifting Starling Marte to center field, Gregory Polanco to left field and Andrew McCutchen to right field.
"Without Starling Marte on this roster, we don't make this move," Huntington said. "Andrew McCutchen is in our minds, and certainly in his mind and he still wants to play center field, but out of selflessness and being the true professional that he is, he was willing to move off of center field because Starling Marte is, in our minds, going to be an outstanding centerfielder."
Huntington is also letting the Korean justice system take care of Jung Ho Kang's DUI situation. He was disappointed when found out there were multiple DUIs on Kang's record.
"Things can be hidden, things can be protected," said Huntington. "We felt like we did our due diligence, but obviously we were surprised and disappointed not only with the first offense, but to find out there were other offenses prior to that and we'll take a deep look into how we might have missed that."
Despite another knee injury requiring surgery, Huntington is optimistic that Josh Bell will come back in time to contribute to the team right away.
"We are optimistic that Josh is going to bounce back from this and bounce back from this relatively quickly. We'll see how that goes. We're fortunate, again, that he was in outstanding condition, outstanding shape before the surgery so it wasn't like we've got to build up to get him back to a point where he gets ready for the season. This is just going to be a pause button that we push and he should be ready to go," he said.
You can hear the entire interview with Neal Huntington on "The Fan Morning Show" below.
