Good morning and welcome to episode 389 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast from

Baseball Prospectus brought to you by Baseball References Play Index. Today we're

talking about the Pittsburgh Pirates as we continue our tour through the league in about 20 minutes

or so Nick will be talking to Travis Sauchick of the Pittsburgh Tribune review but we have with us

Michael Claire a fellow I like a lot the proprietor of old-time family baseball as well as a writer

in various points on the internet and the author of the essay about the Pirates in this year's

annual Michael how are you I'm good how are you guys doing good Ben Ben is here Ben how are you

pretty good I don't know if I'd go very good but I'm all right I'm here excellent so um so Michael

I before well let's just go back before the 2013 season everybody on the Pirates front office

was generally considered to be on the wobbly chair when the owner Bob Nutting brought back

the front office the GM as well as you know pretty much everybody under the GM there was some

hand-ringing in Pittsburgh over his commitment to this group that had not won anything and that had

you know had some some somewhat embarrassing stories written about the way that they were you

know for instance developing prospects etc and so it was not yet accepted that this was like a

genius group of genius people who were gonna lead Pittsburgh into the playoffs do you think that

well have they completely rehabilitated their image was last year convincing and do you feel like

we were all wrong about them or I shouldn't say we were but that the general public was all

wrong about them and Bob Nutting was totally right well that's funny considering that yeah

basically going into the offseason it seemed like Neil Huntington and his staff was gonna be

above reproach they'd brought this magical season the team was you know one very easy win away

from the championship series and then this offseason it seems like Neil Huntington can't do a

single thing right I mean for for people who've been following the pirates and following them

...