PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) - Before the Pittsburgh Pirates wrapped up their series with Milwaukee Sunday afternoon and head into the All Star Break, General Manager Neal Huntington met with the media to discuss where this team is at and what he can do to add a piece or two to this team to help take the next step.
The Pirates have gone 13-7 since June 14 (6-4 in their last 10) and currently sit 3.5 games back in the NL Central and and 3 games back in the NL Wild Card Race, before their game Sunday. The seperation between first place and last place in the NL Central is fewer games (4.5) than the seperation between first and second place in every other division (6 in the NL East is the fewest).
"There's a lot of talent in the division, each of us has our flaws, but there's a very deep level of talent in this division," said Huntington. "You have five teams that their ambition is to make the postseason and that's not the case in some of the other divisions and, that's not criticism, teams cycle in and cycle out, it's a part of the industry, it's a part of the game, it's been a part of the game for decades. It's not a new thing, we just are in a situation where we got five teams that are fighting to make that postseason and that was their goal at the start of the season and we'll see where we are on July 31st and see if there are still five of us fighting to get to the postseason."
The Pirates understand the importance of winning the division after playing in the one game wild card playoff in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Huntington says you have to get into the postseason to win it all, whether wild card or division, but says you want to win the division. How will the closeness and competitiveness in the division effect things down the stretch?
"On the one hand everybody's in it, everybody's two good weeks against the division from flipping the division," said Huntington. "The challenge is it's going to make it that much more difficult to win a second wild card, or maybe even a first wild card, because we're just going to beat each other up all summer and to accumulate that win total, you need some wins somewhere along the way and if there's not an easy team in the division to beat up on there harder to come by which makes the division championship, which is ultimately what you want to do anyway. In our experience it'd be better to win a division instead of facing the one game wild card again, but at the same time playoffs are playoffs and you got to get into the wild card, you got to win the division, you've got to get in to win and that remains the goal."
Where are some areas that the Pirates could add depth to and improve leading up to the trade deadline if the team keeps on winning like this past two week stretch of games?
"There are some relievers that seem to be turning the corner and adding some depth to the leverage innings and options for Clint," said Huntington. "The challenge we've still got to continue to find a way to get more innings out of our starters and again this has been another stretch of time where very few of our starters have gotten very deep into the game and you tax a bullpen and that's where we've had to get creative this weekend to try to get through the weekend in innings and Clint's had to go back to using his bullpen because he has to, not when he wants to, to win games. The position player group, I mean that's a deep group and has a chance to get deeper with Polanco coming back, getting Keone Kela back hopefully, ideally somewhere toward the end of the month will be a couple nice trade acquisitions for us right there and where else can we add, we'll continue to explore."
In Neal Huntington's weekly discussion with the media, he also discusses Jameson Taillon's progression of late, what is Francisco Cervelli's future with the Pirates, the strong team chemistry this team seems to have and more.
Listen to the entire conversation Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington had with the media below:
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