Pirates GM Neal Huntington "agreed to a three-year contract extension Sunday with a club option for 2015," according to Bill Brink of the PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE. Huntington's contract "would have expired after this season." Pirates President Frank Coonelly said, "I was confident that Neal was the right person for the job. He's demonstrated that he was the right person. They've done a lot of hard work. Obviously there's a lot of hard work to go." Coonelly added, "The excitement we saw this summer when the team was in contention just redoubled everybody's determination to make that a full summer. I'm confident that Neal and his team are the right people to finish the job and get that accomplished." Huntington, who joined the Pirates in '07, is the 12th GM in team history (PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, 9/12). In Pittsburgh, Rob Biertempfel reports all of Huntington's "top lieutenants ... likely also will be retained." Coonelly said, "They've really rebuilt our system from the ground up and put us in position where we can see winning baseball in the immediate future." Under Huntington's watch, the Pirates have "spent $48 million -- the most in the majors -- to sign draft picks over the past four years" (PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW, 9/12).
FOR THE BIRDS: SI.com's Jon Heyman reported Orioles President of Baseball Operations Andy MacPhail's "expected departure is the latest in a string of blows covering more than a decade for the storied franchise gone south." But the "real question now is the interesting one: Will anyone of stature take such a job?" Three of the "more interesting possibilities -- Cal Ripken Jr., John Hart and Brian Cashman -- look like supreme long shots today." The "word was out long ago that owner Peter Angelos is involved in all the big decisions." Whoever takes the team's top baseball operations job "by now understands that Angelos sometimes makes the biggest calls, even if his calls over the past decade-plus have resulted in one losing year after another" (SI.com, 9/9).
TAKING ON A NEW CHALLENGE? In Chicago, Phil Rogers reports around MLB, there is a belief that Cubs Chair Tom Ricketts "might hit a home run" with his GM hire, "possibly even persuading" Theo Epstein to leave the Red Sox. An MLB exec said, "You have a chance to break a curse that's longer that the one the Red Sox ended. You can distinguish yourself in a ways that aren't available elsewhere" (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 9/12).
