Is Nutting Being Pushed into the Coonelly Hire?

Evidently Robert Nutting had his man all along and it was just a matter of the timing, as Ken Rosenthal reported late Saturday that Robert Nutting is set to announce MLB labor attorney Francis Coonelly as his new CEO. Coonelly is reportedly in Pittsburgh and an announcement could be made as early as next week.

Coonelly has been Rob Manfred's number one man for years and the two together have been called MLB's henchmen carrying out management's goals. One of those goals has been to reduce escalating player salaries over the years and Coonelly's work has been mentioned numerous times in the same sentence as the "C" word (collusion).

Peter Gammons tried in vein to come to Coonelly's "C" defense late 2003 by saying:

"Is it collusion? Not really, but there are clearly "suggested" guidelines where baseball's chief labor counsel Frank Coonelly and the commissioner's office have steered clubs. How else did Lucchino definitively claim he knew Tejada was going to make $9 million? Why else did so many second-tier outfielders end up with the two-year, $6 million-tastes-like-chicken deals?"

Assuming Nutting indeed makes Coonelly CEO, there's no question he would become an immediate asset to the Pirates ownership group because there isn't anyone, other than perhaps Manfred himself, who understands MLB baseball operations as well as Coonelly does.

What is not known is what the extent of Coonelly's past work will have on his future relationships around the game.

For instance, Coonelly has been on the opposite end of the table in arbitration hearings with players and their agents and has bitterly fought super-agent types like Scott Boras tooth and nail in the press for years.

Further, Coonelly hasn't been exactly buds with the umpires association as his recent skirmish with them seeking background checks suggests.

Lastly, Coonelly has been called loud and combative and his work was called nasty in the same article where at least one MLB team felt like he cost them $1MM after he became uncivil in the hearing and subsequently lost their case.

Yet those same attributes could make Coonelly a boon hire. After all, he understands the game under the table better than anyone lately because he has managed processes like arbitration, the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the old Redbook on organizational player injuries, as well as having testified in front of Congress, all for the Commissioner's Office. Those can be significant tools for the next General Manager to have at his/her disposal, not to mention his contact list.

Some Pirate fans will understandably view the Connelly hire as an extension of ownership's desire to maintain the highest profit margin possible, instead of attempting to field a competitive product. In that regard they might ask - is Nutting throwing up yet another McClatchy Era public relations smoke screen?

He very well could be.

It's virtually impossible to understand all the implications to this hire without some additional inside information, so Bucco Blog has sent out some requests to folks around the game asking for opinions. We'll compile them and report back.

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After Robert Nutting had his press conference Friday afternoon, Bucco Blog contacted Joe Navarro, who is internationally recognized expert in the interpretation of nonverbal behavior (he was the FBI's expert on nonverbal behavior for 25-years and is the author of the fabulous 'Read 'Em and Weep' poker tells book) and asked him to review a thirty-second clip of Nutting and to assess what he could.

(In the clip Nutting talks about his displeasure with the progress and performance of the team, his reasons for the timing in letting David Littlefield go before the season ended, and his desire to find the best talent.)

Mr. Navarro was kind enough to agree and part of that report is below:

"I don't know what this is about, I don't follow sports, but I can tell you that he is under a lot of stress, and where his mouth should be relaxed when he makes a positive statement, it in fact is very tight, a high sign of distress  and discomfort. So all I can say, without the benefit of context, is that if he is excited about his decision, he is not.

I think you can clearly see he is not happy with what has been going on, but even more so you can tell he did not like the timing of this as there is greater stress shown when talking about the decision to do it now and to find the right talent."

Perhaps Mr. Nutting is being pushed along from an external source?

One baseball exec told Bucco Blog that he was "shocked" Nutting dropped Littlefield in-season and, while he understood duties had to be carried out for the rest of the year, he was even more surprised one of Littlefield's lieutenants wasn't made interim GM (he wouldn't mention which one).

Maybe Nutting should back up, head to Alaska for a week of silver salmon fishing, and reevaluate the road he is about to travel down?