First Bad Move?

Late yesterday Neal Huntington made his first real head scratcher of a move with the Pirates. Neal threw away injury prone Sean Burnett in order to acquire another back-up utility infielder. Had it been Littlefield making this move, you would have heard everyone in the media shouting about this.

I may be an idiot, but even I know
more about baseball than Littlefield

Since we are flying the "under new management" banner, management that includes Burnett's former pitching coach Jeff Andrews, I'm going to give Huntington some leeway on this one. They must know his arm is not MLB ready to let him go now. The last two off seasons have shown how important starting pitching is. The Pirates have chosen depth at a bench position they have addressed twice already in free agency over pitching.

That's like breaking up with Blanche so you are available
to date the rest of the bags on the Facts of Life

Burnett was out of options, which meant he had to make the MLB 25 man roster out of spring training or go through waivers to be sent to the minors. By designating him for assignment, the Pirates have chosen now rather than later to try and slide him through waivers. So why wouldn't they wait until the Spring to see if he even needed to be sent down? Why not keep him as the long man coming out of the bull pen?

Why ask why?

Burnett showed great promise in his first 9 MLB starts by posting a 3.40 ERA. His arm was injured, but he gutted out 4 more starts and his ERA ballooned. The next 2 seasons were derailed by arm injuries. Finally in 2007 he came to spring training healthy, and showed little command, but good stats. The command issues forced him to continue his rehab in AAA, but progress was slow. He did have an excellent showing in Winter Ball this offseason, causing optimism for the spring. Such optimism would surely cause the Pirates to want a good look at him in the Spring, if only to increase his trade value, let alone make the club. They had nothing to lose by waiting, except if Burnett was horrible in the Spring. Perhaps they believe they are selling high now???

Like I said, I don't want to judge Huntington based on the precedent set by Littlefield, but this move smells a lot like Matt Herges for Chris Young.
We won't know until the games start to mean something.