They got exactly what they wanted.
The Pirates' trade haul for Gerrit Cole?
Eh, time will tell. And it would be beyond unfair to assess their four acquisitions Saturday from the Astros -- relievers Joe Musgrove and Michael Feliz, third baseman Colin Moran, and outfielder Jason Martin -- for a good while to come. On one hand, there's an excellent chance Houston will get more out of Cole. On the other, all of the incoming players are young enough to have years to grow.
None of them rated among Houston's top few prospects, and the early national reviews weren't exactly raves from the Pittsburgh perspective ...
The Houston Astros managed to bolster their pitching staff without giving anything of real value back to the Pirates.@zachkram:https://t.co/tHn8f0KydU
— The Ringer (@ringer) January 14, 2018
The Pirates seemingly had a choice between a deal with more serviceable volume (HOU) and a smaller deal built around talent with a higher ceiling (NYY).
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) January 14, 2018
And for that matter, the early reviews from the Pittsburgh clubhouse weren't a whole lot hotter ...
Pumped for Cole. What a great situation to be in. Lives in Newport, CA. Gets to watch and learn from Verlander everyday. Chance to repeat. Excited for him to experience something new. Astros are champs and still want more a season later... that’s a good feeling to be a part of.
— David Freese (@david23freese) January 14, 2018
... but hey, one never knows.
Still, no, that's not what I mean when I say the Pirates got exactly what they wanted.
What I mean, of course, is that the front-office triumvirate of Bob Nutting, Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington got yet another chance to kick their by-now-badly-dented can further down the road. And man, do those guys love when they can do that. It's their very reason for being.
Think about it: They had three years of making the playoffs, including a 98-win season in 2015. And from that, they mindbogglingly entered the following spring training with a rotation of -- repeat after me -- Ryan Vogelsong, Jeff Locke, Jon Niese, Francisco Liriano, converted reliever Juan Nicasio and Cole. They prioritized the payroll over adding to a group with a legit chance. They illustrated, more powerfully and painfully than at any point of their decade in charge, that they weren't remotely serious about even trying to win a World Series. Only the most gullible could possibly have not seen it right then and there.
Well, here we are now, less than two years removed from that 98-win season, and the plunger's been pushed again.
Make no mistake: That's what's happened here. This is what management's been hinting for weeks, and this is only the precursor for others to go, including Andrew McCutchen. Maybe not right away. Maybe it'll be after the team looks like it'll fall short in June or July, when the visual of shipping out Pittsburgh's generational baseball talent will be friendlier to some in the fan base. But it'll happen. Josh Harrison, too. And others making money.
For anyone new to my stance on this front office, this isn't the standard public screed about them being cheap, even if Nutting is notoriously so. Because that's only part of the problem, not all of it, as so many incorrectly portray.
The real problem is that all concerned -- Nutting, Coonelly and Huntington -- have always worked from exactly the same page of the manual in one regard: Keep avoiding accountability.
And that applies to all three in different ways ...
From Nutting's perspective, primarily, that means never having to spend above and beyond. Again, the man is cheap. He can never so much as glance at the incredible value the franchise has gained under his watch and consider that meaningful. He simply counts the coins at the end of the evening, like a convenience store clerk. And if he's a quarter short, he stocks one less pack of bubblegum for the following morning.
Kicking the can means keeping profitable without ever having to run a risk that -- gasp -- maybe more people would pay for tickets or watch games on TV or buttress business support for stadium naming rights and the like.
From Coonelly's perspective, it means never having to be embarrassed -- at least not in his mind -- in front of his outside baseball peers who have long been his obsession, going back to his time working in the commissioner's office. If his system has something coming along in the pipeline, real or perceived, he can always couch any failures by pointing toward the latest Baseball America rankings. If the stadium isn't full, it's because Pittsburghers are just too stupid to understand all the brilliant prospects knocking on the door.
Kicking the can does the trick. None of it's his fault now.
From Huntington's perspective, it means ... well, hell, it means four more years. It means he gets a 14-year tenure -- already the longest in the National League at just 10! -- to try again and again and again to show that he, Kyle Stark, Greg Smith and company can finally produce their own internal talent so that they don't have to part with a No. 1 overall pick to take the talent from the infinitely smarter Astros.
Kicking the can allows the people who think they're even a fraction as smart as the Astros to feel smart all over again.
And hey, if winning happens along the way, awesome. If not, awesome. There's no accountability because all three have each other's backs.
Enough about them. They know what they are and, increasingly, so do the team's few remaining hardy fans.
I'd be remiss if I didn't close by recognizing Cole as a consummate professional, on and off the mound. He was a no-brainer No. 1 overall pick, but not everyone selects the no-brainer, so full credit to Huntington's staff for at least not blowing that much. Beyond that, Cole established himself as a solid, sometimes more-than-solid big-league starter, and he conducted himself magnificently in all walks.
He'll be missed, and probably more in the baseball sense than most will now realize.
I'll remind here that the Astros were the team that took Charlie Morton, who the Pirates for years had confused and confounded with all manner of pitch-to-contact nonsense -- that's preached from way over the heads of Clint Hurdle and Ray Searage, by the way -- and told him to basically throw the ball as hard as he could. Morton did that all the way through winning Game 7 of the World Series.
Think it's a coincidence that the Astros and Yankees, two teams in bandbox ballparks, were the primary suitors for Cole?
Even though Cole had coughed up 31 home runs in 2017?
Wonder if maybe both weren't planning on adding that 100-mph arm and coaching him up a little differently?
What a franchise. Even when they execute a trade that might be a good one, the stench of their motives and many mishaps along the way somehow still rises above.
