Why changing managers won’t fix the Pirates’ bigger problems

Rowan Kavner

MLB Writer

Off to the same miserable record they had through 38 games five years ago, in what was supposed to represent the start of a rebuild in Pittsburgh, the Pirates tossed manager Derek Shelton overboard on Thursday.

At the end of the 2019 season, new general manager Ben Cherington tabbed Shelton as the skipper to right the ship of a Pirates team that had not been to the playoffs since 2015. In year one under the new regime, Pittsburgh began the COVID-shortened 2020 season 12-26 and finished it 19-41.

Five seasons later, in the midst of another 12-26 start, with the Pirates still in search of their first winning season since 2018 after finishing no better than fourth place since the front-office shakeup, they relieved Shelton of his duties.

The decision was understandable.

Taking over for Clint Hurdle — who amassed a winning record (.505) over nine seasons in Pittsburgh despite the club’s crippling limitations stemming from its unwillingness to spend — Shelton went 306-440 (.410) over parts of six seasons at the helm of a perennially overmatched and insufficient roster. Over that time, the Pirates’ offense ranked last in the majors in runs, home runs and OPS.

Amid the team’s abysmal start this year, Pirates fans deplored Shelton’s lineup tinkering and bullpen management as he attempted to find any kind of recipe to help an offense that again sported the lowest OPS in the National League and a team trending toward its worst season since his tenure began. To call it underperforming would imply a level of talent that Shelton’s clubs never possessed, but he did little to help his cause.

Toiling through a seven-game losing skid, with the Pirates already 10 games back just 38 games into the year, Shelton walked the plank.

Both laughably and predictably, owner Bob Nutting then tried to talk about “urgency.”

“We need to act with a sense of urgency and take the steps necessary to fix this now to get back on track as a team and organization,” Nutting, the man who has never handed out a free-agent contract of $40 million or more and is again overseeing a club with a bottom-five payroll, said as part of a team statement.

Nutting and Cherington, meanwhile, continue on. Nutting, after all, was not going to fire himself, despite being the primary reason for the Pirates’ ineptitude.

Since he became the club’s principal owner in 2007, the team’s payroll has never been higher than 20th, according to Cot’s Contracts. The Pirates’ Opening Day payroll this year ranked 26th in MLB…and that was the highest it had been at any point during Shelton’s tenure. The years preceding it: 29th, 27th, 28th, 30th, 30th.

In related news, the Pirates followed their dismal 2020 season by winning 61 games in 2021, 62 in 2022, then 76 each of the last two years.

But with Paul Skenes, [the now-injured] Jared Jones and Mitch Keller atop the rotation, and with highly-regarded prospect Bubba Chandler waiting in the wings, there were at least reasons for optimism entering the 2025 season. Skenes was coming off a Rookie of the Year season in which he started the All-Star Game and finished third in Cy Young Award voting despite not getting called up until around this time last year. The Pirates had a record over .500 at the trade deadline last year before a late-season collapse led to their fourth last-place finish in the last six years. Their starters finished the season with a respectable 3.95 ERA.

Their offense, meanwhile, ranked 24th in runs scored and 27th in OPS, with little help coming from a farm system that appears unable to draft and develop hitters or successfully supplement those deficiencies on the trade market.

Needless to say, the needs were clear after nine straight seasons missing the playoffs.

And Nutting did … basically nuttin’.

Neither the team’s struggles nor having the most intriguing young arm in the sport prompted the Pirates to spend to fix their offense in an indefensible farce of an offseason. They signed 38-year-old Andrew McCutchen and 37-year-old Tommy Pham to one-year deals. Their most notable offensive move was a trade for Spencer Horwitz, a 27-year-old who hit 22% better than league average over parts of two seasons with the Blue Jays. McCutchen is now the three-hole hitter in one of MLB’s most predictably feeble lineups, while Horwitz has yet to debut with his new club after undergoing wrist surgery.

Once he returns, he can only do so much.

Skenes has a 2.77 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and .192 batting average against, all of which rank in the top 20 among qualified starters this year. And he is 3-4, having received four runs of support or fewer in six of his seven starts.

Now, the response is a rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic.

That’s nothing against bench coach Don Kelly, the man now tasked with leading the Pirates’ sinking ship forward. Letting Shelton go can change the voice in the clubhouse, but it can’t change the fact that the roster is inadequate.

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.

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