For those of you that think that it is going to take a long time to rebuild the Pirates, you should have heard Colin Cowherd talking about Bill Parcells today on ESPN Radio.

On five different occasions, Parcells has taken over a franchise and completely turned them around in his first year.

Oh, but you say that the NFL is different than MLB because every team operates under the same salary cap?

Bullpucky! Bill Parcells is a great, no-nonsense talent evaluator who makes things happen fast.

I am not a big Bill Parcells fan, but I also do not argue with success.

Pirates' ownership needs to turn the operation of the franchise over to people who have "fire in their belly" and who know what they are doing.

Things will turnaround quickly!

The "In Defense Of The Jason Bay Trade" thread stimulated many thoughtful posts, making me realize that of all the Pirate-related blogs that I am familiar with, Bucs Dugout is clearly the finest.

Though I am often critical of the way that the Pirate franchise is operated, I do not feel that it can be blamed on the Nutting family and their supposed unwillingness to open their wallets. No, THE REAL PROBLEM is that the Nuttings know absolutely nothing about baseball or how to operate a major league franchise. Neither did MCClatchy who was really a part of the Nutting regime for many of his years.

The PROBLEM boils down to this: the most important thing in running the "on-field" side of a baseball franchise is that thre must be ONE talent evaluator who makes the final key personnel decisions, within a given budget, after hearing input from his trusted underlings.

The Nuttings' mistake was hiring Coonelly, a bright fellow who understands the inner workings of the commissioner's office, franchise economics and the CBA. However, Coonelly is NOT a talent evaluator. Coonelly then hired Huntington and, while I will give Huntington the benefit of the doubt on his two major pre-deadline 2008 moves, I am not enamored with much of what I have seen. But I will wait until mid-August 2009 to make a final decision.

As far as I am concerned, Huntingtons' credentials are no better than Littlefields were at the time that Littlefield was hired. If you go back to 2001, McClatchy said that Littlefield was one of the bright, up and coming executives in baseball and the Pittsburgh media generally bought into and supported this belief for DL's first three or four years

You people can argue about what free agents we whould sign, whom we should draft, whom Rene Gayo should sign in Latin America, whether we should be more active in India, Japan or points East, what trades we should or should not make and argue about the merits of sabermetrics and how ballpark configurations affect statistics... but there is really only ONE thing that matters.

THERE MUST BE A GREAT TALENT EVALUATOR DECIDING WHO CAN PLAY AND WHO CAN'T!!!

I strongly agree with WTM that adding $30 million to the 2009 payroll will add very little to the 2009 W-L record. First of all, there would have to be more like a $90-$100 million commitment made to sign three top free agents because any good free agent is going to want at least a three year deal at close to $10 million per year.

Personally, I would not even consider going after names like Dunn, Rivera and Sheets because I simply don't think the value is there nor do I think they would make a significant difference in the 2009 record.

A good talent evaluator will sign, AND THEN OVERSEE THE DEVELOPMENT, of the right players. I believe that Tabata may be the number one prospect and the only true impact player, in the farm system right now. I have seen Andrew McCutchen play several times, and I believe that he is ready to make a solid, though not an impact, contribution to Pittsburgh right now.

I don't think that losing Kyle Bloom will create major problems, but I still believe that Bloom should have been protected on the 40 man roster over other players who were kept on the roster. I did not think Bloom would be selected, and I still think that he will be returned by next June. Thinking that we might lose Romak or Corley in the Rule 5 draft was preposterous.

Remember, like they say on mlb.com telecasts .... "Keep watching" ... the evaluation skills in the Pirate front office which basically boil  down to Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington. I would imagine that the final decision in player evaluation rests primarily with Coonelly, but I doubt that he is going to overrule Huntington unless there are major economic concerns related to the decision.

Remember, Coonelly and Huntington might turn this around. I'm giving them another eight plus months. But remember, McClatchy had about 15 years and Littlefield had six.

And look where we are now!