(Seven Springs, PA) Pittsburgh Pirates front office staff members, Neil Huntington and Frank Coonley, hosted a lively question and answer session this morning at the annual Pirates Radio Network affiliate meetings held at Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Champion, PA.   Among other topics discussed were how the team is going to focus on becoming a better hitting ball club at the plate.  Huntington offered: “If you are a bad ball hitter, you are a bad hitter”,  implying that a point of emphasis for the upcoming season was going to be to improve player’s discipline to wait for a good pitch during their at bats.   Coonley and Huntington both stressed how important it is going to be to improve the team’s overall offensive output.

One of the goals the Pirates have this year is to is to bring more people back to the ballpark to watch the games.  In response to last year’s disappointing attendance, Frank Coonley said:  “It’s on me.  We were not able to sell our vision.  I’m not mad at the fans.   We needed to do things and we needed to get better. We traded our best player (this past season) and our best pitcher.  We needed to get back from 78 wins to 82 wins.  We needed to get younger and we needed to get more talented.  Fans were angry with us, even though it’s what we needed to do.”   Huntington and Coonley both agreed and offered that winning fans’ trust, and getting them back to P.N.C. Park was a top priority for this year.

Pirates owner, Bob Nutting,  hosted a dinner and reception in the Matterhorn lounge for all the Pirates Network affiliate stations. The event also served as a chance for all those in attendance to get a final conversation and picture taken with legendary Pirates pitcher and announcer, Steve Blass, who was in attendance as well.  recently it was announced that this upcoming year will be the last before Blass retires from the booth.

Pirates baseball regular season begins on March 28, 2018 at Cincinnati.  WBVP and WMBA will again this year carry Pirates Baseball broadcasts.