Neil Walker and Entitlement

Neil Walker was supposed to be the guy who saved baseball in Pittsburgh when he was drafted in the first round of the 2004 draft out of Pine Richland High School. The hometown kid who made good and got to star for his childhood team. However, it hasn't exactly worked out that way so far....

Instead he has never had a truly "great" year in the minors, and with Pedro Alvarez/Andy Laroche around is staring down the barrel at a long term utility role with the team. Now, just as he starts to really hit at AAA (in his third season there), there are reports of attitude problems (again). From the PG on Monday:

Frank Kremblas, Indianapolis' manager, and Kyle Stark, the Pirates' director of player development, are firm disciplinarians, which is part of the equation. The other, according to the team, is that Walker, in addition to failing to run out a popup last week, has generally reacted poorly when disciplined.

"We're not isolating Neil," Huntington said. "We're challenging a lot of guys, and there are challenges like that across baseball in systems that do it the right way. If you want to coddle and pamper your athletes, then you won't have any issues. But you'll also have underachieving athletes.



This goes hand in hand with Walker last year claiming "Dave Littlefield guys" like Brian Bixler and himself were not getting a fair shot with the current management team. At the time he made that quote, Walker was hitting in the .240s with little power in AAA, and I dare you to find a guy who was worse than Brian Bixler was in his limited MLB time (a 57% strikeout rate!). I am pretty sure Neil Huntington (or any GM) doesn't care where you came from if you can play. Of course a lot of Littlefield players got shipped out or weren't brought up to the majors. Here's the thing though. Most of those guys stunk. Players worth keeping like Andrew McCutchen are here and part of the future. I would be annoyed if Huntington had not cleaned out the dead weight and started over.


Walker's problem seems to be that he feels the organization owes him a spot in the majors because of who is. The problem is that things don't (or at least haven't since Dave Littlefield left) work that way. He has never earned a chance to play everyday in the majors by tearing up the minors. He has always just been ok and advanced because players don't really stay at a level more than a year.  In fact, I think that if  he was a middle round draft pick not from Pittsburgh, very few people would even know his name. 


Walker is still only 24 and based on the way he is hitting in 2010, he could certainly still end up somewhere in the Pirates long plans (maybe at 2B or RF). However, to get there he needs to work hard,  let his play do the talking, and start acting like a true Pittsburgher.....