Perrotto: Derek Shelton Proved to Not Be the Answer

PITTSBURGH – Derek Shelton’s time with the Pittsburgh Pirates came to a merciful end on Thursday.

The manager was fired about a quarter of the way through his sixth season with the Pirates. The move seemed inevitable, especially after the current seven-game winning streak dropped the team’s record to 12-26.

If anything, the Pirates did Shelton a favor by axing him. He gets a reprieve from watching an awful team and will be paid for doing it.

This wasn’t how the season was supposed to go. The Pirates talked about contending all throughout the offseason and spring training despite general manager Ben Cherington doing little to upgrade the roster following back-to-back 76-86 seasons.

Contention seems unlikely because the Pirates have fallen into a deep hole barely more than a month into the season. The Pirates are already 10 games behind the first-place Chicago Cubs in the National League Central and 10.5 games off the pace for the third and final wild card.

The Pirates have 124 games remaining, but the chances of making up that deficit seem impossible due to their lack of talent. As much as I think the Pirates will get a lift from promoting bench coach Don Kelly to manager, it won’t be enough to make the postseason for the first time since 2015.

The poorly constructed roster and the lack of organizational depth are attributed to Cherington. Granted, owner Bob Nutting doesn’t give Cherington much payroll to work with, but the GM hasn’t helped matters by making poor personnel choices.

However, Shelton certainly deserves his share of the blame for the first quarter of this season being a nightmare.

Shelton’s fascination with trying to make Carmen Mlodzinski a starting pitcher was mystifying. Shelton often faced ridicule for his curious handling of the bullpen. Then there were the ever-changing batting orders that led to the strong perception that Shelton didn’t have control of making out the lineup card.

Most vexing was Shelton’s refusal to criticize or discipline a player.

The Pirates would make Little League-level mistakes, and Shelton shrugged them off. A player would fail to run out a ground ball, yet he would be in the starting lineup the next day.

The last straw came this past week when Shelton admitted he was out of solutions to turn his team around.

Shelton’s career record of 306-440 was dismal, and his winning percentage was a paltry .410. The Pirates went 19-41 in the strike-shortened 2020 season in Shelton’s first year, then lost 101 games in 2021 and 100 in 2022.

Most managers wouldn’t have survived three seasons like that, but Cherington gave Shelton the benefit of the doubt, cognizant that his hand-picked manager had little talent to work with.

The Pirates showed improvement in 2023 but collapsed in the final two months of the 2024 season. Then came this year’s disaster. It’s the big leagues, and you eventually must win.

I talked to people who worked with Shelton during his stints as a coach with the Cleveland Indians, Tampa Bay Rays, Toronto Blue Jays, and Minnesota Twins. All believed Shelton possessed the traits of a winning manager.

Yet it didn’t happen.

I heard from executives, coaches, and scouts from opposing teams that the Pirates lacked attention to detail. Those things ultimately fall on the manager.

Cherington pushed back against the criticism of fundamentals on Thursday when he met with the media. Cherington also seemed more like a man trying to boost his shaky employment status.

This is not an indictment of Shelton as a person. He is a good man. I wish he hadn’t kept the media at a distance because it would have been fun to talk baseball with him beyond cursory group conversations.

Some people are suited to being coaches rather than managers, and Derek Shelton is in that category. Pair someone like that with an inept franchise that hasn’t won a division title since 1992, and it’s a recipe for failure.