Dealing McCuthen not an easy decision
plus prospects.
Huntington has not tipped his hand publicly about whether he is searching for a trade partner, but multiple sources told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the Pirates have engaged several teams — including the Washington Nationals, Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers — regarding McCutchen this offseason. Several reports Monday said the Nationals have balked at the Pirates’ asking price, while word from MLB.com’s Jon Morosi is the Los Angeles Dodgers have shown recent interest.
Not to mention the mystery team.
When considering a potential trade of a big chip such as McCutchen — a superstar-caliber player being exchanged for players to shore up the roster now and in the future — the move might appear counterintuitive in the short-term, Huntington said. The job of a general manager, he said, is to make “logical and rational decisions” to better the organization overall.
“Sometimes those decisions are going to be really hard,” Huntington said. “Sometimes that decision is to hold the player that’s being talked about in trade rumors incessantly. Sometimes the decision is to hold the player and let him walk via free agency. … Sometimes the best decision for the organization, we believe, is one that we trade the player midseason.
“Sometimes it’s with one season left. Sometimes it’s with two seasons left. There is no script for it.”
Asked whether he has spoken with McCutchen, Huntington said the Pirates “work to over-communicate with players,” but given the volume of speculation that has emerged surrounding McCutchen, “we would spend a lot of time chasing our tails if we chased every rumor that came about.”
It can’t be easy for players to hear their names bandied about for months, Huntington mused.
“As an industry, we have lost touch of the human element that these players have,” he said. “They have families. They have wives. They have moms and dads. They have comfort level in a given city. It’s a rare industry that we can just uproot them and say, ‘All right, you’re going somewhere else.’ The NHL can do it. The NFL can do it. The NBA can do it. I don’t know if Microsoft can trade one programmer for another.
“They have huge benefits, but there are also some human elements that sometimes we miss.”
In non-trade news Monday, it was announced McCutchen will play for Team USA in the 2017 World Baseball Classic. He is one of 30 players confirmed to be participating.
Huntington said the Pirates have had “a lot of internal discussion” but no decision about whether to move McCutchen from center field, where advanced metrics have long frowned on his defensive play, to one of the corner outfield spots. While McCutchen is “not unaware of the process,” Huntington said, “we have not had the ultimate decision, the ultimate discussion.”
For now, the bigger decision is which team McCutchen, mysterious or not, will play for in 2017.
“We make decisions that we think are the right moves for us for the right reasons,” Huntington said. “That’s our focus. Our goal is to bring a World Series championship back to Pittsburgh. We recognize that it’s hard. We recognize that one team a year gets to do it. We recognize that 29 other teams go back to the drawing board to do it the next year when it [doesn’t] happen.”