Blame Game

The Blame Game is an annual event within the Pirate organization, usually with three standard players: Dave Littlefield, Kevin McClatchy, and Ogden Nutting.

This offseason, Dave was well in front with all of the public railing over at first not doing anything, then finally trying and failing to acquire Adam LaRoche from the Atlanta Braves.

There was a lot of he said-she said during the discussion of these events, but I personally am going to absolve DL of any immediate blame on this one. There were a lot of swirling rumors and double talk all over the place, enough so that the plain old "Dave Littlefield screwed up a golden opportunity" story doesn't fly with me.

The rumor I believe most is that he was being strung along by John Schuerholz, the Braves' GM, in the event that the deal he was working with Seattle fell through - it was his plan B (or so I assume. I would hope any smart GM would file "solid 1B prospect for setup reliever" as a secondary option to "back of the rotation starter for setup reliever").

Some said that Schuerholz created the Pirates deal to light a fire under Seattle GM Bill Bavasi to get that deal done, but that seems silly considering how potentially lopsided the deal is.

Now, there is some blame to be given to Dave Littlefield, since at the very least his reputation as a GM who could be unwittingly strung along is his own doing, and I don't think it says a lot when his inaction at the winter meetings is considered an improvement.

Let's just hope for continued marginal improvement, then maybe we'll actually get somewhere.