Fake Neal Huntington

So by now you’ve probably heard about my boss’s ill-advised comments regarding “the next Pirates dynasty” starting. I’d like us to take a minute and step back and think about this for a second.

I’m not going to pretend he didn’t say it. He did and it was probably a mistake given the obviously ridiculous recent history of the team. I mean, let’s win a couple more games than we lose there first, Franky baby.

That aside, the media has taken hold of this and turned it into some kind of important debate. 93.7 the Fan was ridiculing Frank the Tank the whole morning, causing him to take a few minutes from his morning tan to call in and try to do some damage control. There, they got him to agree that he said what he said and, perhaps, it was not the best choice of words. NAILED!

It probably should have ended there. But Bob Smizik continues this talking point, calling the Fan’s interview with Franko – the one in which they simply got him to confirm he said what he said in the quote – “a major scoop.”

So sue Frankington for being a little overzealous about the direction of his organization. In the scope of things, his comments don’t matter at all.  If he didn’t believe in what we were doing, he wouldn’t be doing his job.

Back in the world of reality, maybe El Pointo should have called his colleague Dejan Kovacevic’s (an actual journalist) work “a ginormous scoop.” You know, the one in which he built trust with our management team and a history of presenting facts fairly enough that we entrusted him by giving him an unprecedented look into the books of a private company in order to try to show that while, yes, the Pirates were making a profit, that money was all being funneled back into the team in various ways and not lining the pockets of Mr. Bob Nutting. Except for the Corvette he bought each of us, of course.

But that doesn’t help make it easy to make a really tired and simple joke about the Pirates, does it?

Or maybe the story about the Florida Marlins getting dinged by Major League Baseball for not using their revenue sharing money enough to help build a competitive team. And even though MLB has complete access to the Pirates books and even though the Commissioner of Freaking Baseball says the Pirates have done nothing wrong, the rumor persists that somehow we should be concerned that “we’re next.” I’m still waiting for that phone call from the league.

But, again, that doesn’t really help make a really simple talking point for viewers that the Pirates suck, always will suck, no matter who is in charge or what they do.

Or possibly the fact that we’ve spent top 5 money in the draft the past two seasons – the only two in which we have been in charge of – and shed an underperforming core of players who weren’t really even that good all to begin with (see record) and were set to become free agents at once into some half-decent assets that can help us in the future. Or a recommitment to international signings. Or, as basically any real baseball person will tell you, following the blueprint set by other smaller-payroll teams that still manage to be competitive by building teams from within.

Shockingly, this “build from within” strategy is not new to Pittsburgh. It’s just new to the Pirates. (Thanks, Dave!) The other two teams in town, you know, the successful ones – you might be surprised to hear that they do a masterful job of building from within. Crosby, Malkin, Staal, Fleury, Orpik, Talbot and others? Drafted by the Pens, after several crap seasons, I might add. Roethlisberger, Ward, Polamalu, Woodley, Hampton, Smith, Holmes, Miller, Mendenhall, and others? Drafted by the Steelers. The core of these teams was built in the draft. They wouldn’t have won without them.

It’s understandable. The Pirates organization has been talking about rebuilding for years. The simple fact is they’ve missed. Each and every draft year, they missed. And when you miss several years in a row, just about every year, when a monkey throwing a dart at the draft board could have had more success than your actual draft history, you’re going to have issues. People see the Yankees throwing around money to free agents like it’s the Publisher’s Clearinghouse, bringing in all-star free agent after all-star free agent. And then they wonder why we can’t just do the same instead of hoping “some kids” will make a difference? The trouble is, the kids we’ve been hoping for just weren’t that good to begin with.

There is a paranoia about the Pirates. It is not unreasonable. But it is perpetuated by talk sports radio and op-ed sports writers in this town, who cherry pick low bearing fruit to keep blasting the Pirates organization. ‘Cause its easy. Yes, it does ultimately come down to wins and losses at the big league level and not just money spent. But the organization is larger than just the Major League team. And thanks to past management, there just wasn’t much going on at any level of this team besides Mr. McCutchen.

And Frankazoid? Keep being handsome.