Bob Smizik: It's same old, same old

Neal Huntington

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pirates' much-maligned motto of "We Will" has been around for a long time and the subject of many jokes. It's time for a change. Here's the perfect replacement.

"Business As Usual."

It's short, snappy and, more important, it sums up the philosophy of the organization that is winding down its 15th consecutive losing season.

With the announcement yesterday that Neal Huntington will succeed Dave Littlefield as general manager, the face of top management totally has changed in the past nine months. Unfortunately, the policies of management have not.

It's business as usual for the Pirates. It's still baseball on the cheap, no matter how it is spun or who's doing the spinning.

The elevation of Bob Nutting to principal owner in January, the naming of Frank Coonelly as president earlier this month and now the hiring of Huntington has placed new men at the top of the organization, but nothing more.

This is not a criticism, it's a fact.

Coonelly was hired by Nutting to implement what appears to be the identical philosophy the club has operated under for much of the past 12 seasons or since Kevin McClatchy, with considerable help from G. Ogden Nutting, bought the team in 1996. Huntington, who previously had served as an assistant general manager with the Cleveland Indians, was talking pretty much the same game Littlefield did when he took over in July 2001.

We know it's all about player development. We know it's important to get a strong foothold in Latin America. We know the Pacific Rim is teeming with talent. And we know that other small markets -- Cleveland, Minnesota and Oakland, to name three -- have been successful.

Oh, that it were so easy.

It's entirely possible that as Coonelly and Huntington met with Post-Gazette reporters yesterday they thought they were preaching a new gospel. After all, they haven't been around for these 15 losing seasons. But there was nothing new in their spin. It was the same old, same old.

What ails the Pirates is not so minor that it can be cured by replacing McClatchy with Coonelly and Littlefield with Huntington. There need to be major changes in the club's spending policies. It's easy to remember Littlefield for a serious list of major blunders and hard to remember that he, too, once was a bright, young star.

Littlefield's resume was spectacular. He had a background both in scouting and player development. He had worked in small markets, Miami and Montreal, and, of real significance, he had been mentored by Dave Dombrowski, the certified genius who took a downtrodden Florida franchise to a World Series victory in 2003 and who took an even more downtrodden Detroit franchise to the American League pennant last year.

Of Littlefield, Dombrowski said, "He really assisted me in everything. There wasn't anything -- not an area -- he was not exposed to. He's a very intelligent individual, well-rounded, extremely personable. He has progressed so much more quickly than you'd expect."

It's easy to say Littlefield failed in Pittsburgh. It's just as easy to say he, like Cam Bonifay before him, was defeated by the broken system that has kept the Pirates on the bottom.

Huntington appears to a bright guy and well versed in the ways of baseball. But he comes with a lesser pedigree than Littlefield. What's more, his resume reads like he was demoted from the inner circle of Cleveland general manager Mark Shapiro. His most recent duties have been advance scouting on the major-league level, not usually a position of high influence in an organization.

Huntington strenuously maintained otherwise. "I never lost any role in terms of strategic planning or long- or short-term decision making," he said.

Just as Coonelly said on the day he was hired, Huntington insisted the Pirates can win with a Bob Nutting-payroll, which is the lowest in the National League Central this season.

"I have full conviction and full commitment from Bob and Frank that the resources I believe are necessary to do what we want to do in scouting and to do what we want to do in development will be there."

But will the resources be there when the time comes -- and it has to if a team ever threatens to be good -- when salaries will dramatically escalate?

None of this is to suggest the Coonelly and Huntington might not be the people to end this losing. Maybe their player-personnel decisions, their draft choices, their free-agent signings will trend toward being successful instead of too often catastrophic. Most certainly, the Pirates' luck on such matters is due for a change.

But let no one forget this: Despite the new faces, for the Pirates it's business as usual.

First published on September 26, 2007 at 12:00 am
Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com.

Bob Smizik, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Peabody High School, began his journalism career at The Pittsburgh Press in 1969. He covered high school sports for two years, the Penguins for one year, the Pirates for six years and Pitt football and basketball for five years before becoming a columnist in 1983. He joined the Post-Gazette in 1993 as a columnist.