2013 GM Meetings Live Blog Day One: Big Moment for Pirates Neal Huntington?

Major League Baseball’s General Manager and Owners Meetings are now happening in Orlando and all eyes should be focused on Neal Huntington and the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Huntington is a candidate for Executive of the Year.  It’s quite a turnaround for a man that Pittsburgh was ready to run out of town as recently as ten months ago.

The meetings conclude Wednesday and there will be a lot of action around the baseball Hot Stove season.  We will pop those rumors, news, and general info on this post for you as we update throughout the day.  It’s obvious that the Pirates are looking for help at first base and right field.

On the RumBunter podcast, Huntington mentioned that the Pirates could look to move a reliever this offseason, so the buzz should be starting about the Bucs “position of strength” shark tank becoming a bit lighter this offseason.

4:00pm  Another year, another Rick Porcello to the Pirates rumor forthcoming this offseason?  I think the 25-(in a few days)-year old righty is coming off his best season ever although the basic numbers aren’t overwhelming.   The 3.19xFIP along with the 7.2 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9 over 177 innings would look awful nice, although I would love a lefty more.

2:00pm   Huntington on Neil Walker extension?

Um…no news on A.J. Burnett

But an update on that shortstop the Cards are looking for this off-season—according to this, it’s not Tulo….

10:50am:  Jed Weisberger of MLB.com tweets that from what he gathers the Bucs have no interest in Ike Davis.  Whew….

9:45am:  The Nats are going to chase Jeff ‘Pirates Killer’ Samardzija according to the  Washington Post.

8:00am:  Looking specifically at the NL Central, we have to wonder what the Cubs are going to do now that their new skipper is in place.  A big time free agent like Curtis Granderson maybe?

Would Milwaukee be willing to resign Corey Hart, what about moving Ryan Braun?  The Reds have a new skipper too and are talking about trading Brandon Phillips so that might be coming out over the next two days as GMs go face-to-face.

The big rumors are going to be around the Cardinals who have a mass of talent and are rumored to be looking for Tulo to be their shortstop.   Troy Tulowitzki isn’t getting younger, but damn that would be a tough out in their lineup.

The Pirates issued no Qualifying Offers, so the 5pm deadline doesn’t mean much.   But it does if you think the Bucs might be interested in one of the players that did:  Ervin Santana, Kendrys Morales,  Jacoby Ellsbury, Robinson Cano, Mike Napoli, Stephen Drew, Hiroki Kuroda, Curtis Granderson, Nelson Cruz, Ubaldo Jimenez, Carlos Beltran, Shin-Soo Choo, and Brian McCann.

One of those players is going to cost teams a pick, so seeing the Bucs involved in any of those players seems the longest of long shots.