Pirates name Coonelly president

Sep 13, 2007, 15:39 GMT

Pittsburgh, PA - The Pittsburgh Pirates officially named Frank Coonelly as the team's next president on Thursday.

The 47-year-old Coonelly will oversee the Pirates' day-to-day operations and takes over for Kevin McClatchy, who had been the president since 1996. McClatchy, the Pirates' primary owner from February 1996 until January, announced two months ago he would resign as chief executive officer at the end of the season.

'This is a tremendous step forward in the transition of our organization. After an extensive search process, it became clear to me that Frank is by far the best and most qualified choice to become the day-to-day leader of this organization,' said Pirates chairman of the board Bob Nutting. 'Frank brings a tremendous amount of baseball experience to this role. This experience will be a critical asset for us moving forward, including in the short term in the selecting of our new general manager and assembling our baseball operations team.'

Coonelly was a lawyer at Morgan Lewis & Bockius who worked as an outside counsel for baseball's Player Relations Committee until he and Rob Manfred -- baseball's executive vice president for labor relations -- moved from the law firm to the commissioner's office in 1998. Coonelly has been involved in labor negotiations with players and umpires, salary arbitration and making recommended assessments of player value for free agents and amateur draft picks.

Viewed as a hard negotiator, one of Coonelly's first jobs will be to hire a new general manager to succeed recently fired Dave Littlefield.

'To be named president of such a historic ballclub is a tremendous opportunity and true honor. The quality of the city and its people were a major factor in my decision to take this position,' said Coonelly. 'I have a great deal of respect for the knowledge and loyalty of Pirates fans. Pittsburgh is an extremely proud sports city. I am absolutely committed to restoring that same sense of pride among Pirates fans.

'Our immediate priority will be to find the right general manager who will work hard to build on the baseball foundation by broadening our talent base, improving our player development systems and making the international market a true priority,' added Coonelly. 'We must develop a system that regularly feeds premier talent to the major league level, while at the same time putting our current group of young players in the best possible position to succeed.'

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