It's tough to say if Huntington was a victim of Coonelly or Nutting wanting him to perform miracles to remain competitive or if it was his own stubbornness. Either way, the previous front office obviously refused to accept that their hopes of remaining competitive died when Cutch regressed.
If they had accepted that and gone all-in on a rebuild, who knows. Maybe they still clean house in the minors and update their approach to development.
It's all depressing speculation
Yeah, I don't know exactly where I'd draw the line, but I think the problems were more of a "both/and" type of thing than an "either/or". My probably unhinged speculation is that Coonelly was the driver of the Archer trade. But setting aside those things, I think the organizational strategies are where we really got lapped. What had once been major advantages and undergirding reasons we were able to be competitive soon became either weaknesses (sinkers, the lower and inner part of the strike zone) or redundant (strong defensive catchers).
Huntington was able to cobble together winning teams from various sources and had a knack for making trades that were received in a middling to poor way but turned out great – I would put the Hanrahan, Melancon, Watson, and Luplow/Moroff trades in this bucket, at least. He actually fumbled moving some of his better pieces in a way that we/everyone is assuming Cherington hasn't, but in terms of brutal reality, it's quite possible that Peguero and Malone won't amount to much, etc. I hope not, but it's too early to say.
Where I hope Cherington can step things up is not just in developing the high end talent, but also in supplementing the roster with home grown players. We'll see how things play out here. For example, maybe Evans can turn into more than a short-term marvel, maybe Alford or Fowler turns it around, etc. But also hopefully he takes some shots in the draft. I'm not projecting this because I have no clue who any of the 2021 players are outside of a handful, but maybe he can target some specific skills in a college bat somewhere in the top-5 rounds and that player goes on to provide good depth and a strong side platoon, or something along those lines.
I think at the end of the day, Huntington probably could have done an all-in rebuild, but without overhauling the approach to player development, and specifically the organizational one-size-fits-all approach to pitcher development, it would have been somewhat moot. I like the early moves from Cherington for the most part, and I guess I'll remain curmudgeonly about how Huntington is dissed by many.
One last note, I know there was a lot of discussion about Keller recently and that most seem to be out on him, either to a great extent or just permanently. This is more speculation, but I have to wonder if his entire development was predicated on filling up the whole strike zone with his flat fastball, rather than getting comfortable taking the approach that lets it play the best. I say this because he clearly can beat hitters with it up in the zone and above it, whereas if he pitches lower, they can tee off on it and he also seems to not control it as well.
I think this was a particularly telling outcome from the other night which is extremely encouraging:
He also noticeably was throwing it only at the top of the zone or above it, only missing a handful of times. He needs to just keep leaning into that and hopefully continue to have success, so that he can pitch with aggressiveness and confidence. If he came up having a fastball that he could move around wherever, and nasty enough secondary stuff to have minor league hitters doubly twisted up, then the transition to needing to repeat the mechanics and pitch to specific locations probably explains a lot of the wildness and random hard hit balls, despite the fact that his stuff overall seems dominant.
tldr; I am now more optimistic than ever that Marin is helping him to unlock the right gameplan and mechanics to have success with his stuff. That would never have happened under Huntington/Searage.
