Several hours before the Pittsburgh Pirates resumed their dream season in Houston Friday night, I asked their manager, Clint Hurdle, if he could explain the team’s winning first half in the wake of a major league record 18 successive losing seasons. Specifically, I asked him to explain this “radical development.”
“Radical development,” he repeated. “I’m a big fan of radical development. I’ve heard our first half described in a lot of ways, but that’s the best.’’
At the time of our telephone conversation, the perennial losers, with a 47-43 record. were a game behind the first-place St. Louis Cardinals. The last time the Pirates had been that close to the top of their division was 14 years earlier, according to Elias Sports Bureau, July 19, 1997. They had a 48-48 record, second to the Astros’ 50-48 record.
What did it feel like reaching the All-Star break a mere game out of first?
“It doesn’t strike me the way it seems to strike a lot of people,” said Hurdle, who managed the Colorado Rockies for seven seasons. “I’ve had lots of things thrown at me in this game. I’ve challenged these guys into thinking one thing – bringing what they need to bring to win today’s game and nobody gets credit when you see we’re one game out. You say o.k., we can play at this level, we can compete at this level and we’re starting to show we belong at this level.”
Later in the day, general manager Neal Huntington, asked the same question, said, “It shows that we’ve come a long way, but the reality is we have a long way to go. You can say we’re in a pennant race, but it’s early and a little more than half way. I will say that winning baseball is a lot more enjoyable than losing baseball.”
By the end of that evening, the Pirates (48-43) were tied with the Cardinals for the National League Central lead, a radical development if there ever was one. The next night, Saturday, the Pirates lost and the Cardinals won, but the Pirates had sent their message to the rest of the league loud and clear.
“We believe we’re beginning to see signs of the plan we put in place four years ago,” said Huntington, whose hiring in September 2007 was part of the Pirates’ newest plan.
The Pirates had gone through a succession of general managers and managers when Bob Nutting, the new principal owner, initiated what seemed to be a series of bizarre moves.
Nutting himself had no experience in baseball, and he hired as his president Frank Coonelly, who had never worked in a baseball front office but had been a labor lawyer in the commissioner’s office. Twelve days after he was hired, Coonelly selected Huntington as his general manager despite his lack of front office experience.
Was this any way to rescue the Pirates from the muck and mire of 15 consecutive losing seasons? Except for the men themselves, no one thought so.
When Huntington hired his first manager, John Russell, who had no major league experience and a reputation as a mediocre minor league manager, the chorus of critics and skeptics grew deafeningly louder, my voice among them.
The Pirates traded away their best and highest-paid players. Nutting was suspected of pocketing the Pirates’ revenue-sharing money that was supposed to go to improving the team. And now, slightly more than halfway through the fourth year of the Nutting-Coonelly-Huntington regime, the Pirates emerged from their first game after the All-Star game tied for first place.
“There’s a multitude of issues,” Huntington said, “a good group of young players maturing at the major league level, players bouncing back and having good seasons, Clint Hurdle and his staff.”
Hurdle seems to be the key to the Pirates’ radical development. A manager needs productive players and effective pitchers, but some managers induce players to rise above the level of their talent and Hurdle has done that with the Pirates.
Hurdle, who will turn 54 July 30, managed for six seasons in the New York Mets’ minor league system before joining the Colorado organization as a hitting instructor, first in the minors, then with the Rockies. Less than a month into the 2002 season, Hurdle replaced Buddy Bell as the team’s manager, and he held the job until he was fired 46 games into the 2009 season.
The highlight of that tenure came in 2007 when the Rockies reached the World Series by winning 21 of 22 games at the end of the season and in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
“We went into the process looking for the right fit,” Huntington said of the decision to hire Hurdle, “looking for a guy who brought a ton of things to the organization and being in tune with what we put in effect four years ago.”
That man turned out to be Hurdle.
“He has incredible communication, he’s a tremendous leader, a guy who brings first-hand experience to our process,” Huntington said. “He’s a guy who led a team to what we’re trying to get to.”
Managers’ jobs are at such a premium that they are rarely rejected, but occasionally a candidate doesn’t like getting into a losing situation. Hurdle, however, took no time deciding to grab it when the Pirates offered him the job.
“I looked at it as the greatest coaching opportunity in professional sports,” Hurdle said. “I wanted a rich baseball tradition, and Pittsburgh certainly has that. During two days of meetings, I asked some challenging questions.”
Satisfied with the answers, when the job was offered Hurdle accepted. What magic has he worked for the Pirates to play as well as they have?
For one thing, Hurdle has done a good job of getting the players to believe they can win. “These guys have an understanding that they can beat anybody,” he said. “The players had a lot to learn. This shows up when the student is ready to learn.”
Then there are the individual elements of the team’s rise.
“We’re pitching extremely well,” the manager said. “The middle of our defense has been very good. We went the entire month of May without an error from shortstop and second base, and McCutchen has his own highlight reel with what he’s done defensively.”
Hurdle was talking about center fielder Andrew McCutchen, whose .286 batting average leads the team’s hitters.
Oh yes, the team’s hitting. “It’s been put together with chicken wire, duct tape and spit,” Hurdle said. “We have embraced scoring one more run than the other team.”
The Pirates have played most of the season without their young third baseman, Pedro Alvarez, whose strong finish last season (.311, 5 homers, 26 r.b.i. in 29 September games) gave reason to expect good things this year. But he didn’t hit when he played early in the season (.208 in 36 games), and he was on the disabled list with a strained quad from May 20 to July 9. Now he’s playing in the minors.
“He’s playing every day in Triple A, working hard on both sides of the ball,” Hurdle said. “He’s getting in the best baseball shape he can get in. The league punched back after he finished strong in 2010 and he wasn’t able to adjust and started out in a hole. There’s no timetable in place for his return.”
The Pirates’ other young infielder, second baseman Neil Walker, has played in all but two games, has made only 4 errors and is hitting .271 with 9 home runs.
The Pirates have had some interesting pitching developments. One is Kevin Correia, whom they signed as a free agent and who has an 11-7 record and 4.01 earned run average. The Pirates signed Correia despite his 36-43 career record and 4.57 e.r.a. with San Francisco and San Diego.
His 11 victories are the most by any free agent who was signed last winter.
“We signed him based on our subjective and objective analysis,” Huntington said, referring to the scouts’ opinion of the 30-year-old right-hander and what Correia’s statistics told them about him. “We thought he could bounce back. Objectively there were some things we saw in his track record, like strikeouts to walks ratio and contact rate. We thought he was a guy who could come in and eat some innings for us.”
The Pirates signed Correia to a reasonable two-year, $8 million contract. Under previous regimes, they squandered what free-agent money they were willing to spend.
The Pirates had hoped for big comebacks from two pitchers who were big disappointments last season. Jeff Karstens (3-10, 4.92) has an 8-4 record and 2.34 e.r.a., but Ross Ohlendorf (1-11, 4.07) has been able to make only two starts because of a strained shoulder.
Not to be overlooked in the Pirates’ radical development is Joel Hanrahan, the closer, who has a 1.34 e.r.a. and 26 saves in 26 save opportunities. The Pirates acquired the 29-year-old right-hander two years ago from Washington in a trade for outfielder Nyjer Morgan. It was one of the trades that incurred widespread criticism.
Hurdle wasn’t around for the criticism, but he said, “One of the greatest things is knowing how much skepticism and cynicism was out there. Who wouldn’t be skeptical and cynical, but some of our players were 4 years old when this started.”
And what comes next for them?
“We’ve got to do more of the same,” Hurdle said. “We have talked to our players about what we need to be at a championship level. There’s not a day that goes by where that’s not talked about: first-pitch strikes, first-batter outs’ how many times do our leadoff hitters get on, how many times did we score with a runner at third.”
If the Pirates attain a championship level under Hurdle, I told him, they would probably rename the Pirates’ home field Hurdle Park. No thanks, he said, laughing. “I like PNC Park.”
CLEMENS COULD STRIKE OUT
Normally, if a judge declares a mistrial, the defendant benefits because he is free and clear unless a new trial is ordered. In Roger Clemens’ case, however, the mistrial the judge declared last week in his perjury trial does the former pitcher no good.
Yes, he avoids the possibility of his being convicted and going to prison, but it doesn’t do what Clemens wanted when he began the whole mess.
The trial is a direct outgrowth of the boisterous noise Clemens made in criticizing the Mitchell report that named him a user of performance-enhancing drugs and denied ever using them.
He was so intent on showing that his former trainer, Brian McNamee, had lied when he said that he injected the pitcher that Clemens rejected an opportunity not to testify at the Congressional hearing, where he allegedly lied.
Clemens’ only hope to clear himself is to have a trial and be acquitted. Otherwise the Mitchell report and McNamee’s allegation stand forever and taint Clemens’ reputation and his chance for the Hall of Fame.
There was talk after the mistrial was declared that double jeopardy could attach, meaning that the seven-time Cy Young award winner could not be tried since the first trial had begun. If they haven’t done so already, Clemens needs to have his lawyers file a petition with Judge Reggie Walton asking for a retrial now, if not yesterday.
The incompetence of the government prosecutors, which rivals the poor job the prosecutors did in the Barry Bonds’ perjury trial, will not wash away the McNamee/Mitchell allegations and cleanse Clemens.
Clemens screamed so loud to bring on the perjury charge that he should be screaming now to have his day in court to make it go away.
CELEBRATING AN ANNIVERSARY
Excuse the personal note, but this column, No. 350, marks the start of the fourth year of murraychass.com. The first column appeared July 15, 2008. As has long been said, time flies when you’re having fun. Or is that when you’re getting older?
Needless to say, I appreciate the continued support of the readers of the site.