The news that Bob Nutting wants to keep Neal Huntington as Pirates general manager and Clint Hurdle as manager did not come as a surprise. Huntington is well-regarded around baseball and has done fine work here. He deserves his four-year contract extension through the 2021 season. So does Hurdle. No less than Jim Leyland has called him "a terrific game manager."
The surprise is that Huntington and Hurdle want to continue to work for Nutting. There aren't many more difficult spots in all of sports. Huntington and Hurdle would have a better chance of winning a championship with just about any other organization in baseball. I have no doubt they could get a much better job if they wanted.
Credit to Huntington and to Hurdle for doing a lot with very little and somehow giving the Pirates a legitimate chance to win a championship in 2015. They built and managed a team that won 98 games. Unfortunately for the Pirates, that was the season in which the St. Louis Cardinals won 100 games. The Pirates had to play in the wild-card game and ran into the Chicago Cubs' Jake Arrieta, who was virtually unbeatable at the time.
It's hard to think Huntington, Hurdle and the Pirates will be in that position again.
You generally get what you pay for in this life. Nutting doesn't spend. The Pirates' payroll this season _ $108.6 million, as of Tuesday, according to spotrac.com _ ranks 25th out of 30 big-league clubs. Only the Chicago White Sox, Tampa Bay, San Diego, Oakland and Milwaukee are paying less.
Nutting did nothing to add to that 2015 team. Instead, he made it worse by holding payroll steady. Huntington was forced to trade Neil Walker in a salary dump. The 2016 team won just 78 games. It's a tribute to Hurdle's managing this season that the Pirates are 66-72 going into Tuesday night's home game against the Cubs. The year was sabotaged before it even began because of the Jung Ho Kang mess in South Korea and then all but destroyed by Starling Marte's performance-enhancing drug suspension in April.
Andrew McCutchen probably will be the next significant piece to go. Huntington almost certainly will trade him in the offseason for what he can get back rather than lose him for nothing as a free agent after next season. There is little if any chance Nutting will approve a contract extension for McCutchen. Seventy-one players are making more this season than McCutchen's $14.2 million, according to spotrac.com. Thirty-eight players are making $20 million or more. Can you see Nutting putting McCutchen in that group with an extension? I can't, either.
It's a shame. The Pirates need to keep McCutchen to have a decent chance next season. They need to add a starting pitcher even though their young guys _ Jameson Taillon, Trevor Williams and Chad Kuhl _ are progressing nicely and Tyler Glasnow still could develop into a quality starter. They also need to add a third baseman with power if they can't get Kang back into this country.
I'm not holding my breath, of course.
Starting pitchers and third basemen with pop cost a lot of money.
Too much for Nutting, no doubt.
Give the man credit, though, for keeping Huntington and Hurdle for the long haul. He might be tight, but he is no fool. He doesn't just know that Huntington and Hurdle resurrected the Pirates franchise from the dead after 20 years of losing and led it to three consecutive playoffs from 2013-15. He also knows he couldn't find better people willing to work for him.
