Crow's Nest
By Jim Lachimia

*  I've been directly involved in Major League Baseball since 1986, and here's something I've noticed about the game's most successful executives. They're intelligent men, sure. But more importantly, they have an amazing ability to cut through the crap and concentrate on what's most important. Pirates' GM Neal Huntington is still new here, but he seems to be one of those guys. He's smart, incredibly focused, and a deadly efficient thinker. Maybe not as social a being as his predecessor, Dave Littlefield, but I have all the friends I need.

*  Roger Clemens said he thinks people should give him the benefit of the doubt that he DIDN'T take performance enhancing drugs -- and he's probably right. But I think I deserve to spend an afternoon sipping mojitos with Daisy Fuentes, and that's probably not going to happen either. With all due respect to The Rocket, the term "pipe dream" comes to mind.

*  If one more athlete that signs a lucrative, long-term contract says, "It's not about the money," I may jump out a window. Ian Snell of the Pirates and Ben Roethlisberger of the Steelers are two of the most recent examples. The reason they say that is so people don't accuse them of being greedy, materialistic (insert your own such adjective here). Gents, we're willing to stipulate other factors were involved, but none were bigger than money.

*  Oakland's GM Billy Beane traded away his best pitcher (Dan Haren) and his best position player (Nick Swisher) during the off-season for a total of nine prospects. His reasoning: "If you don't have a chance to do something special, you have to regroup to put yourself in a position where you're moving toward doing something special," he said. "Where you don't want to be is somewhere in the middle." That's where the Pirates have been for too long.

*  In a survey that appears in the Pirates' new media guide, outfielder Nyjer Morgan said the athlete he'd most like to meet is Juan Pierre of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Maybe he should look in the mirror. Both are smallish left-handed hitters who don't have much power but run like the wind, steal a bunch of bases, and can really go get it in the outfield. Morgan could make quite an impact here in Pittsburgh if he can put the bat on the ball nearly as consistently as Pierre, who has four 200-hit seasons in the majors since 2001.

*  On a recent sports talk show, John Perrotto of the Beaver County Times referred to Pirates' Pitching Coach Jeff Andrews as perhaps "the team's most significant upgrade" since last season. It won't surprise me if Perrotto is right, because Andrews is pretty impressive. But the media in general was too rough on Andrews' predecessor, Jim Colborn. They delight in pointing out that Colborn "tinkered" with Zach Duke in 2006, and then we all watched the promising righthander go backwards big time. But what they fail to point out is that Colborn also helped coax 14 wins out of Ian Snell in 2006 and Tom Gorzelanny in 2007, while each was in his first full year in the starting rotation. Not too shabby.