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With the 2021 season a few weeks behind us, let’s take a look at Ben Cherington’s past year as general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pittsburgh Pirates went into a rebuild on the very last day of the 2019 season when they fired longtime manager Clint Hurdle. That was one of the first major firings the Pirates did throughout the 2019-2020 offseason.
But one of the biggest, and arguably best changes the Pittsburgh Pirates made was firing Neal Huntington and bringing in former Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays front office personnel Ben Cherington.
Before coming to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Cherington had a strong resume. He was one of the main factors to the Red Sox 2013 and 2018 World Series-winning cores and was also there for the development period of Vlad Guerrero Jr., Cavan Biggio, Bo Bichette, drafted some pretty notable names such as Nate Pearson, Jordan Groshans, and Alek Manoah while acquiring Simeon Woods-Richardson and Anthony Kay for Marcus Stroman.
Cherington did a very good job in his first year as general manager acquiring some good talent for Starling Marte and signing some noteworthy international prospects. But how has his last year gone? I’m mainly looking at what he’s done since the start of the 2020-2021 offseason to now, so anything he did in 2019-2020 and throughout the 2020 season won’t be considered for this.