Neal Huntington
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Neal Huntington (b. 1969) is the 12th person to serve as General Manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates Major League Baseball organization. He was named to the position on September 25, 2007 by new Pirates President Frank Coonelly.[1]
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[edit] Background
A native of Amherst, New Hampshire, Huntington is a graduate of Milford High School and Amherst College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in psychology in 1991. At Amherst, Huntington played baseball for four years; he was named a Division III second-team All-American first baseman and first-team All New England first baseman after his senior season.[2] He earned a Master's Degree in sport management from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
[edit] Career
[edit] Montreal and Cleveland
Huntington spent 16 seasons in professional baseball prior to joining the Pirates. He became assistant director of player development with the Montreal Expos in 1995. He later moved to the Cleveland Indians, for whom he was employed for 10 seasons, serving first as the assistant director of Minor League operations before becoming director of player development (in 1998), assistant general manager (2002-2004), and finally special assistant to the general manager (2006-2007).[3]
[edit] Pittsburgh
Within two weeks of assuming the Pirates GM position, Huntington made several decisive moves on October 5, 2007: field manager Jim Tracy was fired; the remaining coaching staff was given notice that their contracts would likely not be renewed; and the senior director of player development, the scouting director, and the director of baseball operations were also let go.[4][5] These moves cleared the decks to introduce a wholly fresh approach to scouting, player development, and field management in the Pirates organization.
On November 2, 2007, in a statement that must have warmed the cockles of the hearts of sabermetricians everywhere, Huntington made clear that he was going to take a very different approach to player selection and evaluation in Pittsburgh:
We are going to utilize several objective measures of player performance to evaluate and develop players. We'll rely on the more traditional objective evaluations: OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) , WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), Runs Created, ERC (Component ERA), GB/FB (ground ball to fly ball ratio), K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings), K/BB (strikeouts to walks ratio), BB%, etc., but we'll also look to rely on some of the more recent variations: VORP (value over replacement player), Relative Performance, EqAve (equivalent average), EqOBP (equivalent on base percentage), EqSLG (equivalent slugging percentage), BIP% (balls put into play percentage), wOBA (weighted on base average), Range Factor, PMR (probabilistic model of range) and Zone Rating.
That said, we will continue to stress the importance of our subjective evaluations. Succinctly stated, we believe that a combination of quality objective and subjective analysis will allow us to maximize our probability of success and to make the best possible decisions.[6]
A few days later, on November 5, he named John Russell as the new field manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. On November 7 he announced Greg Smith as the new scouting director, Kyle Stark as director of player development, and Bryan Minniti as director of baseball operations.[7]
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070925&content_id=2228919&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
- ^ http://www.wpxi.com/news/14199085/detail.html
- ^ http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/execdb/showperson.php?idx=HuntiNe01&fname=Neal&lname=Huntington
- ^ http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3050460.
- ^ http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071005&content_id=2251628&vkey=news_pit&fext=.jsp&c_id=pit
- ^ http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071101&content_id=2290860&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
- ^ http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071107&content_id=2294983&vkey=news_pit&fext=.jsp&c_id=pit
| Preceded by Dave Littlefield | Pittsburgh Pirates General Manager 2007– | Succeeded by incumbent |
| Current Major League Baseball General Managers | ||
|---|---|---|
| AMERICAN LEAGUE | ||
| EAST DIVISION
Flanagan (Baltimore) | CENTRAL DIVISION
Williams (Chi. White Sox) | WEST DIVISION
Reagins (L.A. Angels) |
| NATIONAL LEAGUE | ||
| EAST DIVISION
Wren (Atlanta) | CENTRAL DIVISION
Hendry (Chi. Cubs) 1 interim general manager | WEST DIVISION
Byrnes (Arizona) |
