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Pirates General Manager & Senior VP Neal Huntington during workouts at Pirates City in Bradenton, Fla.
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Neal Huntington: Taking his place with the Pirates

Peter Diana/Post-Gazette

Neal Huntington: Taking his place with the Pirates

There are many things in life -- and baseball -- that a man cannot alter. But Neal Huntington learned long ago that a strong work ethic can certainly put a dent in a few of them.

BRADENTON, Fla. -- The small office where Neal Huntington sat did not exist last spring, nor did the upgraded McKechnie Field clubhouse to which it was attached. As Pirates general manager, the man in charge of baseball operations, Huntington oversaw the project, but that description understates it; he oversaw the design of the new clubhouse the way an author oversees his prose.

This is how Huntington operates. He pays attention to details. When attempting to turn a perennial loser into a playoff contender on a small-market budget, one must traffic in details. One must also possess the traits that current and former colleagues ascribe to Huntington: relentless, competitive, not to be outworked.

Huntington, 46, would prefer the credit go elsewhere. But when the team for which he happens to be GM ends a 20-season losing streak and reaches the postseason in two consecutive years, there is only so much he can do to avoid it.

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"[He] grew up on a dairy farm, you know," said Boston Red Sox GM Ben Cherington, a friend of Huntington's whom Huntington helped get an internship 17 years ago. "Wake up in the morning and do your job."

Barney Dreyfuss
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The men who've called the shots for the Pirates

A complete overhaul

Huntington's first roster rebuild didn't take hold. Eight days after taking the job Sept. 25, 2007, he cleaned house, firing manager Jim Tracy and some front-office staff. Cleaning house on the field would take longer. From December 2007 to the 2010 trade deadline, Huntington reshaped the roster, parting with nearly every player of value. Few of the returns from those trades contributed to the playoff runs, with three exceptions: Charlie Morton, Jeff Locke and Josh Harrison.

Huntington's efforts gained traction after a 57-105 record in 2010. He replaced the quiet John Russell with the gregarious Clint Hurdle as manager. His free-agent acquisitions (Russell Martin, Francisco Liriano, Edinson Volquez) and trades (A.J. Burnett, Mark Melancon) turned into more hits than misses. The amateur talent he and his staff identified -- Pedro Alvarez, Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco, Gerrit Cole -- began to contribute.

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It is imperative to point out that Huntington also inherited Andrew McCutchen and Neil Walker, a talented tandem around which to construct a roster. Even as the team's record began to improve, two falls from playoff contention to under .500 in 2011-12 caused principal owner Bob Nutting to consider firing Huntington.

"Had Bob or [club president] Frank [Coonelly] not had as much patience as they've had, which we're incredibly appreciative that they had the patience that they had, [The front office] would have walked out the door very proud that we had put us in a better situation than we inherited," Huntington said.

Less than a year after Nutting announced the front office would stay, players were pouring champagne on Huntington's head in the visitor's clubhouse at Wrigley Field. The Pirates earned playoff berths in 2013 and 2014, advancing to the NLDS the first year and losing the wild-card game in the second. The first playoff appearance ended the streak of 20 consecutive losing seasons.

"The fans were discouraged and here comes young Neal Huntington in with more of the same: We're going to grow it, we're going to build it from within, we're going to succeed," said Atlanta Braves president of baseball operations John Hart, who was the Indians GM when Huntington worked in Cleveland's front office. "At some point they get a little tired of hearing it. To Neal's credit, he stayed the course."

Huntington's first job in baseball demanded attention to detail. In January of his senior year of college, in 1991, Huntington got an internship with the Montreal Expos that required him to enter scouting reports into a computer. This taught Huntington two valuable lessons: How to write a good report and how to communicate with scouts who don't. After another intern backed out late, Huntington again worked for the Expos, this time as assistant GM of their short-season minor league affiliate in Jamestown, N.Y.

Eventually, Expos GM Dan Duquette hired Huntington full time. His title was administrative assistant of minor league operations, but in a small front office, he also served as the video advance scout.

PG graphic: Rebirth of a team
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Advance scouts work a series or two ahead, watching the teams their employer will play in the coming days and weeks. They look for tendencies, trends, injuries -- who isn't getting around on inside fastballs, pitchers their players can run on. Huntington had done some advance scouting as an assistant coach for Amherst College, his alma mater, but serving as the Expos video advance scout in 1994, Huntington said, "was a great foundation piece."

"I think a lot of people, that's a natural talent, to be able to identify what people are good at, and Neal has it," said Duquette, now executive vice president for baseball operations of the Orioles.

Huntington eventually became the assistant minor league director in Montreal before joining the Indians in 1998 in a similar capacity, and eventually was promoted to farm director. He would sometimes accompany scouting director John Mirabelli to scout amateur players, the better to inform his role in player development. While there, he didn't miss a pitch.

"He'd come back with some reports on some guys that I had seen and I was like, 'Man, he saw some stuff that I hadn't seen,' " said Mirabelli, now the Indians' senior director of scouting operations.

When Hart gave way to Mark Shapiro in November 2001, Huntington became an assistant GM, but later shifted roles. His background was in scouting and talent evaluation, in the scout seats behind home plate rather than in an office, so he became a special assistant to the GM and advance scout.

"When he and I sat down and talked about, what are the areas that he feels passionate about, what did he feel his strengths were, no matter what he did, he always came back to really enjoying evaluating players," said Shapiro, now the Indians' president.

Said Huntington: "It's probably the best thing that ever happened to me."

Huntington's attention to detail remained, regardless of the role.

"I remember there were times when Neal and I were with the Indians and we'd get an email from Mark Shapiro, 'Would you consider doing this trade,' " said Steve Lubratich, currently a special assistant to the GM for the Indians and the director of player personnel when Huntington was there. "I'd reply to the email about three sentences. Two hours later, Neal would have two pages."

Though Huntington's background was in scouting and player development, he picked up the rest of the information a GM needs -- negotiating with agents, contracts, trades -- along the way. As one of only four or five full-time employees in the Expos front office, Huntington dabbled in everything from the upkeep of the roster boards to minor league free-agent negotiations and arbitration. He negotiated minor league contracts as the minor league director in Cleveland, and assisted with arbitration and major league contracts.

"He was right in the middle of when we traded Bartolo Colon for Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and Cliff Lee," Lubratich said. "He was involved heavily in that. All our trades, Neal had his handprint on."

A solid foundation

The full trace of Huntington's approach to his job begins at 4:30 a.m. in Newbury, Vt. That's when Huntington's father, Linwood, in his late 70s and with two knee replacements, heads to the barn every day on the family owned dairy farm. Huntington's mother, Florrie, made sure Huntington, the youngest of three boys, wasn't in the barn at daybreak, but he often had to leave the hay field for a game or rush home from practice to help with the chores.

"My dad never had a bad day," Huntington said. "Tough days, challenging days, but never had a bad day. And I remember at a very young age, thinking that dairy farming wasn't for me, but that I wanted to find something that I loved as much as my dad loved farming."

Huntington's brother, Dana, older by four years, catalyzed Neal's competitiveness and love of sports. Huntington also played soccer and basketball -- he describes himself as a 1980s Aaron Craft, all assists and defense -- and would have loved to play hockey or football, but couldn't because of his obligations at the farm.

The family farm is in Vermont now, but when Huntington grew up it was in Amherst, N.H. The Milford High School shortstop broke his thumb during Huntington's senior year, so Huntington, a first baseman, played eight to 10 games at short -- an unnatural fit for a player who throws left-handed. It was during this span that Amherst College coach Bill Thurston came to scout him.

"I had pitched the day before Coach came and my arm was dead and I was absolutely hanging, and I was just praying the ball wasn't going to be hit to me because I knew it was going to hurt if I had to throw," Huntington said.

He fielded two pop-ups and had two hits. As Thurston told it to Amherst Magazine, those two hits were home runs. Huntington played four years for Amherst, where he still holds the Massachusetts school's single-season batting average and RBI records.

"I was overmatched as a freshman academically," Huntington said. "Just completely overmatched. But battled through it."

Huntington graduated with a degree in psychology, and later earned a master's degree in science in sport management from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. While an undergraduate he met Becca Anderson, now his wife. They have three children; his oldest, Connor, is going to Vanderbilt next year.

As good as Huntington was in college, 5-foot-9 first basemen do not project well in professional ball. He thought he would teach and coach the game.

"I had an opportunity to play semi- or professionally in Canada," he said. "Talked to some people that I respected a ton. They told me it was time to put on pleated pants and take off the uniform."

All in, all the time

McKechnie Field's new clubhouse isn't the first product of Huntington dabbling in design and construction. Shapiro needed someone to oversee the Indians' move of their spring training facility from Winter Haven, Fla. to Goodyear, Ariz., and Huntington was his man.

"There's no halfway with him," said Pirates assistant GM Kyle Stark, who also worked with Huntington in Cleveland. "If he's going to do it, he's going to do it good."

Huntington visited every facility in the Cactus League, then interviewed everyone in the organization whom the new facility would affect. The results went into a large Excel spreadsheet, where he reconciled the needs of his players and coaches with the square footage and dollars available.

"Perfect world, what would you want?" Huntington would ask, according to Shapiro.

Identifying the ideal, then figuring out how to get there with the resources available: the job of a GM writ large.

Bill Brink: bbrink@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrinkPG.

First Published: April 5, 2015, 4:00 a.m.

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