Opinion
Perrotto: This 76-86 Season Ends With a Different Vibe for Pirates
The Pittsburgh Pirates finished the 2024 season with the same record they had in 2023. However, the feeling about the two seasons is different.
Optimism surrounded the Pirates at this time last year. Their 76-86 record was a 14-win improvement over 2022, and an 18-12 finish seemed to signal that better days were ahead.
The Pirates also went 76-86 this year after losing to the Yankees 6-4 on Sunday at Yankee Stadium in their season finale to lose 32 of their last 52 games.. That represented an improvement of zero wins over last season as the Pirates finished in last place in the National League Central for the fourth time in six years.
While the record stayed the same, the vibe is different heading into this offseason.
It is easy to question whether the rebuild that general manager Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton started in 2020 is working. Five seasons in and the Pirates haven’t reached .500, a mark they have cleared just four times in the last 32 seasons.
One must wonder if owner Bob Nutting will decide to make major changes in the next few days.
Could he fire Cherington and Shelton? Could he keep Cherington and order him to fire Shelton? Could he make a big move and fire team president Travis Williams, a hockey guy who has never seemed comfortable in the baseball realm.
The last time Nutting cleaned house was in 2019, doing in the most ham-handed way possible.
Manager Clint Hurdle was informed he was fired about an hour before the start of the season’s last game and after meeting with the media. Nutting left general manager Neal Huntington hanging for a month before firing him. In between, team president Frank Coonelly was also boxed.
If Nutting decides to make changes, hopefully, he will do it more dignifiedly. Love or hate them, Cherington, Shelton and Williams are good people who don’t deserve to be potentially hung out to dry.
Whether Nutting will do anything remains to be seen. He has not publicly addressed anyone’s future and has never met with the media for a season postmortem.
The educated guess is Nutting will do nothing. In his history as a businessman, he has been slow to make changes and greatly values loyalty. Cherington, Shelton or Williams has never complained about ownership and always speak the company line.
The Pirates can then spin standing pat by pointing to the development of rookie pitchers Paul Skenes and Jared Jones giving them a solid foundation for the future. They can boast of shortstop-turned-center fielder Oneil Cruz having a 20/20 season. They can talk about left fielder Bryan Reynolds being selected to the All-Star Game.
And, of course, the Pirates can brag about having “the greatest ballpark in America” – because they never stop pushing that narrative. It is cheaper to have a ballpark built primarily with public funding than paying out of pocket for even an average MLB payroll.
The bottom line is that the Pirates did not make progress this season. They might not have regressed, but they aren’t better.
Cherington needs to improve his trade history and quit signing free agents at the tail end of their careers. The Pirates plummeted from contention immediately after Cherington’s biggest moves at the trade deadline were acquiring infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa and right fielder Bryan De La Cruz.
Shelton needs to start holding his players to a winning standard instead of allowing stuff like Cruz to walk down the first-base line on the ground ball that ended the Chicago Cubs’ no-hitter against the Pirates earlier this month. Cruz amazingly faced no repercussions for such an egregious act.
Nutting at least needs to pretend that he cares about winning. A start would be holding himself and his management team accountable to the fans. Dozens of fans have told me that they want Nutting to show that losing at least bothers him.
If none of those things happen then nothing is going to change. And the Pirates will be a good bet to finish 76-86 again in 2025.
The Pirates lack passion to win and it starts from ownership down to the minors. In order to win they need an owner who doesn’t shop in the Flea market every year and nickel and dimes the Franchise. I’m reminded of the early 80’s Eddie Debartolo bought the 49ers who were a losing franchise and had never won but he had passion and wanted to win and he poured money and heart into the franchise and became a Legendary Franchise winning 4 Superbowls in the 80’s. The Pirates sadly have ownership that doesn’t care if I lived in Pittsburgh I would not go to the games until a different ownership shows me different.
Congrats to the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates. Fooled ’em again.
The bullpen and Shelton’s management of it was the number one reason for the collapse. There is reason for optimism — but we’ve heard that story before. When this team improves in one area it seems as if another area digresses.
Definitely not all 76-86 records are created equally. O’Neill Cruz sleep-walked through the final couple weeks of the season. Mailed it in. No accountability from the manager. That’s my biggest reason why Shelton should go. He just presides over a culture of losing. Hey, flush it and we’ll get ’em tomorrow boys. How about having your team ready for today?? Be the aggressor and take the fight to the other team.
The frustrating thing is that the talent is there. They could possess the best starting rotation in the NL next year. That’s a real possibility. The window is open. Does Nutting even know enough about baseball to know that? Does he know that he needs to clean house? If he doesn’t, who will tell him?
FIRE THEM ALL!
Did you all see Quinn Preister win at Fenway yesterday? Hitting the gun at 96 ! A ground ball throwing machine ! Kid goes into Milwaukee this July 1 ER , 8 Ks gets the W and they never start him again ! Ok 👍 I hear he was smiling and laughing on the mound and winning !
Did you even look to see whom Quinn was facing? The TB lineup looked worse than even the Pirates. 5 innings pitched and still not missing any bats.
I would rather have Nicholas Yorke
The only constant over these many years is the Owner. He is the absolute worst team owner across any sport! This guy is an abomination and MLB is too broken to do anything about it. You could put a team of Einsteins in the front office but an owner so cheap trickles down the entire organization to managers & coaches to single A!!! Disgusting
He’s not the worst owner but he’s definitely near the bottom.
I will be optimistic with the Pirate’s once Nutting is removed as owner. And we get ownership that gives a shit about winning and not being a pro farm team for all the other MLB teams.
Never gonna happen. Plus, lets be honest here, there are not a lot of former Pirates “stars” out there in the league. This is hyperbole.
The he only thing Nutting hates losing is his money. You’re not supposed to own a sports franchise to make money, that comes naturally from winning. This was not a losing season to him, he made money!
I worked for one of Nutting’s newspapers years ago. Low pay, no loyalty to employee’s, and bad morale…..sound familiar?…longtime Pirates fan here, but this is embarrassing to watch.
The Pirates made a lot of progress, it just didn’t translate to wins and losses. With Skenes, Jones, Keller, Ortiz, Falter, Oviedo, Chandler, and Harrington they have a rotation that is envied by all but a very few teams.
With Bart, Davis, and Endy they have 3 young catchers with MLB talent. I know, Henry has 2.9 fWAR so far. But let’s put that in perspective for a minute. The only two catchers since 2000 who have accumulated double digit fWAR in their careers through age 24 are Brian McCann and Joe Mauer. Only 34 catchers have even accumulated as many as 2 fWAR by that age, and only 92 have even been allowed to get 200 MLB PA’s. Joey Bart finally had his breakout season at age 27. Endy, BTW, has accumulated 0.6 fWAR in his brief time in MLB.
They have a lot of infielders (Hayes, Gonzales, IKF, Triolo, Yorke, Peguero, Cheng, and Johnson) who appear to have major league talent (although, sadly not all of major league backs). And all are under 30 and must under 25. Gonzales has looked like a no-doubt regular so far, Yorke looks like he has a major league bat, and Peguero reportedly made a lot of progress with defensive consistency this year.
There will likely be worse outfields next year than Reynolds, Cruz, Cook, and Suwinski. Among OF’s with 502 PA’s, Reynolds was 19th in OPS+ and Cruz 27th. Reynolds may move to 1B if the Pirates bring in another OF who can log a 120 or so OPS+ (Jurickson Profar was at 139 and is a FA.), And Bryan de la Cruz might force his way into the OF picture as well.
Indy was probably the best team in MiLB at the end of the year (they went 27-11 in their last 38 games). fueled by Chandler, Harrington, Burrows, Davis, Yorke, Bae, Cook, Palacios, Suwinski, and Peguero. So they were probably one of the younger teams in the league, and many of those guys have major league experience.
This organization is in a very good place heading into the off-season. If I were the GM I’d make a strong push to sign Profar to a 3 or 4 year deal and explore trading some cheap infielder(s) and a lower level pitcher like Reed for a solid SS.
Volpe might be available for a 3B (IKF?) and a young pitcher, which would allow the Yankees to dump Verdugo, sign Soto, move Chisholm to LF, and turn SS over to Cabrera or Peraza. Arizona is also a fertile trade partner, with Perdomo and Lawlar both at SS and Marte and Suarez locked in to 2B and 3B. They also have a glut of productive OF’s, and would want pitching in return.
Lots of other deals are possible. The Pirates look to have about $30 million in 2025 salary to play with without exceeding last year’s $86 million opening day payroll. And they really only have two “gotta haves” – SS and corner OF or 1B. If they want to, they could make a big splash with Willy Adames or Anthony Santander without giving Nutting heart palpitations.
It was disappointing to see them fail to contend into September, but you really need to be a pessimist to not see the potential for a big leap forward next year.
You’re hired! The problem is, everything you said, makes sense, but how they are running this franchise, doesn’t. Every year there’s a different excuse, this is year 5, year 5! of a rebuild, cmon now, we’re striking out too many times per game, walking too many batters, etc. We can’t afford to do those two things, if you put the ball in play, the defense can’t make an error on a strikeout, well, they can, but you get my point. When you see other small market teams succeed, you can only hide your ineptitude for so long, something is wrong here. I’m convinced, that as long as Nutting makes money, winning becomes secondary, and I just don’t get that.