I love Neal Huntington

I hear a lot of people talk $h!t about the Pirates, but since they've hired Neal Huntington in 2007, they've been moving in the right direction.

On a day that the contending teams are supposed to be the most active, the Pirates were buying just as much as selling. Today they've ended up with a new starting Catcher, a AAA ShortStop, $3M cash, 2 AAA Outfielders (John Bowker I like a whole lot), and a young big league reliever. All for spare parts they had no use for next season.

Getting Catcher Chris Snyder was especially deft as they've struggled for several years to keep their own Ryan Doumit on the field healthy. Doumit was horrible defensively anyhow, really struggling to throw out runners, but is a very solid bat from both sides of the plate. If they can't move him in a trade, look for him to start at 1B for this team next year.

For the Pirates, the reputation as a team that always sells off their talent is an unfair reality. Aramis Ramirez was traded before Huntington came on board. The trades of Xavier Nady, Demaso Marte, Jason Bay, and Nate McLouth all brought back decent value for guys that weren't going to be in the long-term plans of the organization. Did they all work out, no. Are they better off for having made the moves, yes.

Nady and Marte brought back Jeff Karstens (an okay starter) and Jose Tabata, who has shown himself to be a promising star outfielder. Tabata, McCutcheon, Walker, Alvarez and Snyder should form a nice core of position players for awhile. Karstens still has the potential to be a top to middle of the rotation guy, for them. He'd be a #4 or #5 for most other teams.

The Jason Bay deal is probably the one to be most critical about. The only valuable thing the Pirates got out that deal was two marginally average years of 3B from Andy LaRoche. At the time, the Pirates needed warm bodies on the big league club and that's about all they got. I liked LaRoche and thought a change of scenery would allow him to develop into a solid player, but it never happened.

The McLouth deal was almost addition by subtraction. McLouth really isn't a centerfielder, isn't really a leadoff guy, and isn't really a power guy. Yet he was trying to be all three for Pittsburgh. Worse yet, he was blocking Andrew McCutcheon, who is better at all three than McLouth. The fact that they freed AM up AND got some prospects in the deal made it worthwhile. Pitcher Charlie Morton hasn't been able to do much except lose at the big league level and that brings me to the one big criticism of Huntington.

Neal Huntington has really struggled to acquire good, young starting pitching. They've done a nice job of drafting or acquiring good position players, but pitching is another story. If Paul Maholm and Zach Duke are your best starters, you're not a very good team. No wonder the Pirates have some of the worst starting pitching numbers in the bigs in 2010.

At least they aren't going out and overpaying for crappy veterans like Matt Morris anymore. If you're going to be crappy, be young, cheap and crappy. The future still doesn't look very bright for the rotation. Brad Lincoln has shown some promise, but probably isn't a top of the rotation type guy. There don't appear to be any top pitching guys in the system behind him. That's going to have to change if this team is going to start winning.

As I said, I think this organization is moving in the right direction, but there's a long way to go when you're at the bottom. It's still better to be a Pirates fan than to be an Astros fan these days. I take Neal Huntington over most GM's in the game, and I'd certainly take him over Ed Wade.