Opinion
Perrotto: When Will Bob Nutting Reach Breaking Point?
The Pittsburgh Pirates have a 5-11 record.
The Pirates score 3.1 runs a game and had just 10 hits over the weekend while getting swept in a three-game series against the Reds in Cincinnati.
The Pirates’ two-time All-Star closer, David Bednar, is pitching at Triple-A Indianapolis.
The Pirates’ home opener was highlighted – lowlighted? – by an airplane flying over PNC Park carrying a sign that implored owner Bob Nutting to sell the team.
The Pirates roiled their fans by removing a sign on the right-field wall at PNC Park honoring the legendary Roberto Clemente and replacing it with an ad for Surfside, an alcoholic beverage.
The Pirates played with the emotions of some of their most loyal fans by digging up the commemorative Bucco Bricks on the sidewalks outside PNC Park without warning and sending them to a recycling center.
This has all happened in the last three weeks. We’re only in the middle of April, and the Pirates’ 2025 season already feels interminable.
It’s one loss after another, many punctuated with mental lapses or physical errors. On top of that are the off-the-field crises that never seem to end.
That leads to the question of when Nutting will reach his breaking point. He can’t be happy with how his team is playing and is unhappier with the public relations beating the Pirates are taking on a near-daily basis.
Surely, Nutting must consider making changes before the season becomes a fiasco. Certainly, Nutting is embarrassed by everything around his franchise.
Or maybe not.
Sometimes, Nutting seems embarrassment-proof. His tenure as owner has been filled with bad baseball – except for the unforgettable but championship-less run from 2013-15 – and PR faux pas.
Yet Nutting never gets upset publicly about all the negativity surrounding the franchise. He consistently maintains that the Pirates are focused on winning and building a strong organization.
If Nutting wants to focus on winning and building a strong organization, he should act now.
A strong case can be made that team president Travis Williams should be fired. The PR disasters could be avoided with better communication and common sense. The Pirates lack in both departments, which reflects poorly on Williams as much as Nutting.
General manager Ben Cherington’s job status is overdue for review. He has been on the job six years and still hasn’t assembled a contending roster.
Sunday’s lineup in a 4-0 loss to the Reds looked like this: 2B Enmanuel Valdez, DH Bryan Reynolds, CF Oneil Cruz, 1B Endy Rodriguez, RF Alexander Canario, LF Adam Frazier, 3B Isiah Kiner-Falefa, SS Tsung-Che Cheng, C Henry Davis, RHP Carmen Mlodzinski.
Fans want manager Derek Shelton fired, but Danny Murtaugh could be resurrected from his grave and not win with that group. Nevertheless, Shelton’s career record is 299-425, and few managers have ever lost at that clip and lasted six seasons.
I am at the top of the list of those who criticize Nutting for caring more about profits than wins. He certainly does nothing to suggest his mindset is different.
Nutting needs to change the narrative surrounding him. He needs to do it quickly before another season turns into a disaster.
The Pirates need a spark, and only Nutting can provide it.
‘Apathetic’ is what Nutting needs to avoid and that may be close to be what is the realty for all Pirates fans. When people stop putting up billboards and flying signs over PNC and screaming at Nutting to sell the team and just not care about baseball in the ‘Burgh’.
Bring in Jason Kendall!!!
John do you think Bob Nutting is capable of providing a spark? Apathy certainly is dangerous if the slide continues and fans stay home. How long before Nutting says he might move? The crap thats gone on with Bucco Bricks and Clemente logo shows his lack of respect for Pirate fans.
It all comes down to risk. And Nutting just will not do it. He is risk-averse to an obsessive level.
If he would have just bumped payroll up to say around $110MM or $115MM, that’s an increase of about $25 million. You could drastically improve the on-field product for that much money, especially if you reallocate what he spent this offseason into one good player instead of 3 washed up ones.
I firmly believe that if you put a winner on the field by spending that money wisely on good players, your attendance will jump from 1.7 million to at least 2.4 million, based on what attendance was from 2013 to 2015.
Figuring conservatively around $50 per ticket plus merch and whatever else they get a cut of thrown in, that’s an additional $40 million in the coffers.
That more than takes care of the $2 million loss from last year, and people don’t want you gone.
Is it foolproof? Nope. The players you get might get hurt or forget how to play. Nothing in life is a sure thing, except that it is a sure thing that the Pirates are going to end up with a losing record if we keep doing business this way.
I don’t know anything about big business, but I can’t imagine that Nutting is operating in a vacuum, he must have some financial advisors.
All I know is something is rotten in the state of Denmark and in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh pirates have a new batting couch and pirates batting average is let say something below 200
Well it’s hard to hit sitting on a couch.
It’s never been about winning for Nutting. It’s about minimizing spending and maximizing profit. That’s all he cares about. His track record confirms it.
Well said. It’s how he operates his publishing business, also how he operated his ski resort before selling it.
He’ll NEVER reach his breaking point because he is totally complicit in the scam of fleecing the city and its fans!!
He will never change. He needs to be forced out with the pnc park lease negotiations there are around the corner. Give him terms that he will reject and force him to sell or move the team. Thats the only way.
This owner is making a lot of millions just loosing…at the end of the day he doesn’t care fans disappoint!
If you truly want him to sell the team, stop going to games. Don’t watch them on TV and don’t listen to them on the radio. Hit him where it hurts, his profits. I haven’t watched or listened to a Pirates game in 5 years. Not even when Skenes is on the mound. Why bother? The kid will be in pinstripes before to long and Nutting and his cronies will be touting yet another bs lie about rebuilding a “winner”.
We need to take it to the streets and protest at Nutting’s house. Peacefully, of course. Unless it’s not. Anyone got his address?
Show some self-respect and stop going to games/watching games. The best fate for any of the players (and any fans) would be if the team were sold.
Stop going to games. He is linning his pockets with gold. He does not or will never care about Pittsburgh. He is laughing every time people come to games and spend a fortune. The team stinks and always will as long as he is owner. I get free tickets and will not go