Two very good, thoughtful opposing viewpoints have been written on the issue, one by Pat at WHYGAVS, one by dtoddwin at Bucs Dugout.

As for me? I think Russell should go.

Look, I understand that Russell is just the manager, and that no matter who was managing this ball club they were going to be terrible. I don’t think any manager is the solution for the problems of the 2010 Pirates. Until more talent trickles into the Major League level, they’re going to be bad. It’s as simple as that.

I think if you’re not in the clubhouse every day, you don’t have any idea what the atmosphere is like in there and how the players feel about their manager, and thus you shouldn’t comment on it.

I know that the players on this team outside the McCutchen/Walker/Tabata/Alvarez core have either been disappointing or just were never very good to begin with.

However, I agree that Russell doesn’t hold his players accountable.

In all the examples Pat listed of Russell and his accountability, the only examples I count that have to do with him directly are firing his coaches and benching Ronny Cedeno. The rest is mostly player promotion/demotion, and while I’m sure the manager gets some kind of say in that sort of thing, it’s ultimately up to the GM.

Everyone knew that Pedro Alvarez was coming up this year and that if Andy LaRoche didn’t perform well above expectations he was going to hit the bench. Everyone knew when Walker came up as a second baseman that Aki Iwamura’s days were limited, and it still took a demotion to get him out of the lineup.

How long did it take Russell to realize Ryan Church wasn’t very good? And when he finally gave Lastings Milledge reps, how many times did Milledge make some kind of horrible fundamental mistake, then go out and do it again later in the week? How many times has Ryan Doumit failed at the most basic levels of being a catcher this season, and how many reps does he get behind the plate even now that we have a competent catcher in Chris Snyder?

I understand what Pat means when he says that this is a lose-lose situation in some ways. Milledge, Doumit and Delwyn Young are all bad outfielders, and none of them are going to make John Russell look good when he plugs them in right.

My problem is that day after day, series after series, you’ll see somebody make a fundamental mistake – whether it’s one of Milledge’s boneheaded baserunning outs or Ryan Doumit failing to block the plate again – and they’ll be out there again the next day, making more mistakes. Those players need to hit the bench the next game, even when the bench player is somehow worse than they are. If they’re not going to be benched, they’d better at least straighten up their fundamentals. We’ve seen no progress in that regard at all this season, and I have to believe at least some of that comes down to coaching.

I understand John Russell is only human. I understand he’s probably working as hard as he can, and I understand that I shouldn’t expect him to turn straw into gold. I don’t say this lightly, but: when the team makes this many mistakes on a day to day basis and you don’t so much as read a blurb in the paper to the effect of “Lastings Milledge spent time working with his coaches today on his baserunning” or “Ryan Doumit took extra practice to work on pretty much every aspect of being a catcher,” that’s a manager not holding players accountable for their mistakes. That’s dangerous on a team full of veterans, let alone on a team with an incredibly young core. John Russell has to go.

While Milledge has mostly been a disappointment in terms of him being the player scouts thought he would be when he was a top prospect, he’s also 25 years old and had been hitting better than Church.

To boot: Milledge’s line on the season has been .276/.347/.392. While the slugging is underwhelming, he’s finally been hitting for power in limited duty, hitting three homers, seven doubles and a triple over his last 100 plate appearances. His slugging percentage in those plate appearances has been a respectable .470. Combine this with a decreased strikeout rate and an increased walk rate, and two of the biggest knocks on Milledge in his career thus far seem to have righted themselves: he’s hitting for power and showing a disciplined approach at the plate.

Church, meanwhile, has a .186/.240/.321 line on the season and unlike Milledge has yet to put up a solid month, much less a solid month and a half.

It’s quite possible that Milledge could regress when given the starting role and be the same disappointing player he’s been since coming to the Majors. He was only facing left-handed pitchers while Church was stealing his playing time, and while he’s never mashed left handed pitchers like he has since the end of May, he’s always hit better against them.

However, a team in the Pirates’ position owes it to themselves to find out if Milledge is just a platoon player or not. And, if it turns out Milledge is a platoon player after all, the Pirates need to find a better hitter against righties to take over the majority of the platoon than Ryan Church.

Now, if I could just get one more wish regarding Milledge, I’d want him to hit at the top of the order so the team can move Jose Tabata to the bottom of the order and take some pressure of the 21 year old.

According to Rob Biertempfel, the team is set to make an official statement shortly addressing the rumors. Updates and my reaction to the news after that.

UPDATE: Jenifer Langosch tweets that the pair have indeed been extended to 2011, and Dejan Kovacevic goes so far as to say that the deal was already done this past offseason.

I’m happy with the Huntington extension. A reasonable argument could be made either way, as it’s now clear that he pretty much whiffed on the Jason Bay trade, who was arguably the only player the team could have expected to get a real return on. There’s a chance that Bryan Morris could still make the trade look good, but one out of four is generally not a good return. However, it also looks like he hit the Xavier Nady trade out of the park.

As a whole, I feel like Huntington has done yeoman’s work rebuilding this team from the minor leagues up, and honestly I feel like if Bob Nutting gave Dave Littlefield seven years to completely wreck the team, he should give Huntington a fair amount of time to rebuild it as well.

As for Russell, I’m generally indifferent on who manages the team. The players seem like they like Russell. I’m not a fan, as I feel he makes some truly boneheaded decisions, but I also don’t have the fiery hatred for him that a lot of other fans have and I feel like the team’s record is far from being his fault. A magical combination of Joe Torre, Connie Mack, Tony LaRussa, Bobby Cox, Lou Piniella, Joe Maddon and Casey Stengel rolled into one manager couldn’t get a winning record out of this team as it’s currently assembled. At some point I think Russell has to go, but he’s nothing more than a fall guy right now. If the young guys like him, I say let him stick around until the team starts to look good.