For what is likely the final time this season, Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Neal Huntington met with reporters to discuss a myriad of topics relating to the past, present and future. Here’s an edited transcript of what was said.
On pitcher Gerrit Cole’s routine: “Really, his offseason routine has been a good one. We had the challenge in January (right rib inflammation) that we’ll address, but he was working. It’s hard to fault a guy for working when he got off track. Essentially knocked his whole season off-kilter. We had some wobbles this year, but the challenges are ones that we believe will be confined to this year and will be fine with rest. We’ll identify strengths and challenges, like we do with all players. We’ll put him in position to have a great 2017.”
On injuries piling up: “It’s something we’re talking about. … Anytime we have soft-tissue injuries, tightness or strains or pulls, it drives (athletic trainer Todd Tomczyk) crazy. He takes a ton of pride in keeping these guys on the field. That’s one of the unheralded parts of a performance team’s impact, is them getting guys back on the field and keeping them on the field. It’s something we’ll dig into in the offseason. Having to play every game with your playoff life on the line for an extended period of time, it can put additional stress on guys. We’ve had an odd schedule this year, with no off days for a long stretch of time because of rainouts, then four off days in the second half of July. A lot of travel. We’ll evaluate and see if there are some things that we can do better.”
On adding Tyler Glasnow to the rotation: “Love the way Steve Brault competes and love what he can become. Tyler learned some incredible lessons from three of four outings in the bullpen: aggressiveness, simplify the approach, simplify the process and attack. We want to see how he could translate that back into the rotation, which is what he did in the minor leagues. For some reason, at the major-league level, he backed off and, instead of attacking, tried to ‘pitch’ more than we needed him to. In Brault’s case, maybe we get that mentality back in him, because he’d been successful at the minor-league level in terms of attacking the bottom half, top half of the zone, changing speeds. Whereas here, there were times he was trying to make the perfect pitch. The benefit we believe Tyler obtained in the bullpen, we believe Steven might be able to do the same thing. We feel both are starters down the road, but we also felt Tyler gave us the best chance to win games and also gain some experience over these last two games.”
On center fielder Andrew McCutchen’s defense: “Our internal metrics are a little bit different than the publicly available metrics. At times, Andrew has played as good a centerfield as he has played since he’s been here. Going gap-to-gap continues to be a strength for him. There seems to be more balls hit over his head this year. Some of those aren’t his fault. Some of them are mine, based on the pitchers we’ve had on the mound. It has been an interesting year for Andrew. We look forward to helping him have a great offseason and come back ready to be ‘Andrew McCutchen’ again. Offensively, these last two months, he’s been Andrew again, and that’s fun to see. We’ve yet to sit down and evaluate a lot of things. There were some things that went well. We have to figure out how to continue those. There’s been more than we were hoping of things that haven’t gone well. We’ve got to figure out a way to put more on the positive side than the negative side next year.”
On whether minor league pitcher Nick Kingham is ready to go: “At times. And, at other times, the command would wander, which is very typical of guys with Tommy John. He had some great outings. He had some outings in which it was great at times and not so great at other times. And he had some outings where it was a challenge for him. Fairly standard, coming back from Tommy John. As we look at 2017, we do fully see Nick in our picture at some point in time. We’ll see how he is coming into spring training. I think it’s more realistic to expect some time at the upper levels to get going, but we do anticipate he’ll help us late next year or sometime during the summer.”
On if Sean Rodriguez fits with the other utility options already in place: “Sean’s just done a remarkable job. … The offensive numbers certainly weren’t where they are this year, but the defensive versatility and the impact, it’s hard to measure. It’s hard to quantify because he’s at each position so limited that it’s hard to truly value and understand what he can do defensively. And then offensively, the approach change and the impact that he’s made (for) us this year is terrific. Again, we’d love to have Sean remain in a Pirate uniform. Given what he’s done this year, we fully anticipate there’s going to be quite a market out there for him. He’s going to have a pretty good opportunity to do some things.”
On if the team will be active in the veteran starting pitching market: “It’s going to be important for us to have eight starters that we feel good about. It continues to get reinforced to us that it’s not a five-man rotation, it’s a seven- or eight-man rotation. In an ideal world, you’d like to have a veteran, but if you have good enough young pitching, good enough young starting pitching, (putting) a veteran in there just to have a veteran in there doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If that veteran is one of your best five and is one that can take down innings and anchor a staff, that’s a good situation. If we end up with five young starters because that’s what we believe to be our best rotation with three guys in Triple-A, that’s where we’ll end up. But we’ll certainly explore, via trade, via free agency, if there’s someone that we think makes our rotation better.”
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