Neal Huntington previous relationship with Clint Hurdle-Interview

This is part three of my interview with Neal Huntington;

WHYGAVS: Did you have any previous relationship with Clint Hurdle before hiring him? He seemed to come off of the radar a bit during the search.

Neal Huntington: I did not. I know a lot of people that either worked with or know Clint, but no, I didn't have any prior relationship with him. Obviously the things he was able to do in Colorado speak for themselves in terms of taking a young team and leading it out of some dark days and putting it together and getting to the World Series. He's had success as a coach, both in Colorado prior to managing and in Texas this past year. He's been through a lot as a player. He was the stud prospect that everyone talked about and went through some adversity and he battled back through that to become a role player. Now he's worked his way through the minor leagues as a manager and a hitting coordinator and obviously brings a ton of experience to the table. He's got tremendous energy, enthusiasm, knowledge, and passion. Passion for the game, passion for teaching, passion for leading and communicating.

As we went through the process, we didn't just want to throw this thing in reverse and shift our philosophy. We have a pretty strong core philosophy in place as to how we scout, sign, and develop players. We talked from day one that that alignment from top to bottom is crucial to us. Clint is going to add to that dynamic. We're aligned philosophically. We're not always going to agree or see eye to eye, but our belief is that we'll be able to communicate through our differences and he's going to bring a ton to this organization. He already has and will continue to do so. He didn't have to come here and he chose to. I think that's a strong statement on his willingness to accept the challenge and also his belief in what we're doing. He's been up front about that; he's talked about the impression that he had from Greg Smith, Tyrone Brooks, Kyle Stark, the work that he did on us behind the scenes and how we go about things and he wanted to be a big part of the turnaround.

In talking with him and hearing him speak, yes, he'd done a lot of work on us. He asked challenging questions. He wanted to know our conviction of doing this the right way, our conviction of building this to where we believe it's going and based on the fact that he's here he must've liked the answers that he got.