Andrew McCutchen. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

Pirates

Kovacevic: If they don't care, why do you?

Jan 15, 2018 • 5:25 pm

30.8K

The Pirates traded Andrew McCutchen.

I don't care what the return is, and not because it might or might not be promising or pitiful or whatever.

I don't care because, as the truth gets laid increasingly bare for all but the most sycophantic supporters to see for themselves, they don't care.

Not about winning. Not about a championship.

Every move that the front office of Bob Nutting, Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington has made since taking charge of this once-proud 132-year-old civic institution has been rooted in one founding principle: Make money.

I'm not being cynical when I say that. I'm not even guessing. They've told me themselves, even in their earliest years, that there would never be a point in their stewardship -- not one year, no circumstance at all -- in which they'd deficit-spend. Now, that's their right. That's the right of any owner of any business. But let's not pretend that the business of Major League Baseball is akin to a hardware shop on East Carson Street. Because Nutting's Pirates have, by all accounts, quintupled in value since he took control in 2007, from $200 million to more than $1 billion.

That, apparently, doesn't count in their books.

Neither does winning.

Tell me: Why do you care?

PNC Park during a game this past September. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

I get it. Grandfathers and grandmothers handed down the passion for baseball and for this franchise's five World Series championships and its many iconic figures from Honus Wagner to Ralph Kiner to Roberto Clemente to Willie Stargell to ... yeah, Cutch, too. It's generational, just as Cutch himself was a generational talent here in the most literal sense.

I get it, too, that you were there for the Blackout, that brilliant, unforgettable evening that finally brought life to PNC Park after a dozen years of basically being Kennywood on the North Shore. Cutch made that happen. He even came up with the #Blackout concept that blossomed not only into an epic event on its own but also two more playoff runs.

I get that the men on the field care, too. They really, really do ...

pic.twitter.com/JmF2ouGkO7
— Felipe Rivero (@Rivero43) January 15, 2018

I get all that.

But you also were there after the 98-win season in 2015, when that very special team, arguably the most gifted in the majors through that regular season, knew it would lose A.J. Burnett to retirement and thought it might lose J.A. Happ to free agency. Those would be real losses but not insurmountable. Two starting pitchers would need to be replaced.

Two.

One. Two.

And they could be replaced, in part, by re-administering money that was already being paid to Burnett and Happ, so it wouldn't technically be at full price.

What management did instead:

1. Trade Neil Walker to the Mets for Jon Niese, an even money swap but a disastrous return for Niese's pitching alone, never mind the other repercussions within the clubhouse for trading a vital piece of their leadership group right after Burnett was lost.

2. Nothing.

No, really, they did nothing. Gerrit Cole and Francisco Liriano remained for the rotation, but the rest of it was filled out in Band-Aid form with Niese, Jeff Locke, Ryan Vogelsong and a misguided attempt to convert Juan Nicasio from relief to starting.

That's nothing. That's doing nothing.

That's not caring.

And that, my friends, is who these guys are. That's what they're all about. Fuss and pick and choose over Prospect A or Prospect B acquired in this trade or the Cole trade. They'd love you to do that. Go flipping through a Baseball America manual to find out who might be the next ... oh, Andy LaRoche or Jose Tabata. Because that's the distraction. That's the kicking of the can down the road that they do, partly to pinch pennies but also partly to buy more time to keep baseball fandom from figuring out that they haven't been able to internally draft and develop talent over this long span.

Yeah, they'd love if you break apart the potential impact of this hot new prospect pipeline they had to create because they couldn't draft and develop on their own. Go right ahead and do that.

Fans atop the Clemente Wall. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

I'll ask again: Why do you care?

It couldn't be more glaringly obvious that they don't. At least not about actual baseball.

They do care deeply, passionately about the business. They work like crazy. They're up at sunrise, Coonelly and Huntington and even Nutting more than you might think, and they're relentless through well into the night. I've witnessed that myself. It's impressive in that context alone. But the core of what they're doing, the very heart of it, is centered on the business, of making sure that they can all three keep doing their respective duties for many years to come.

What's more, they're so protective of that, so crammed inside their own figurative cocoon, that they'll even eschew potential future revenue to ensure it continues. For example, they're currently engaged in negotiations to extend their local TV rights deal with AT&T SportsNet, the former Root Sports, and they're doing so fresh off September ratings that were so low that I've been told they occasionally registered a technical 0.0. Those talks already weren't going to go well. Imagine now. They're also two years away from their stadium naming rights deal expiring, and I don't believe those were going well, either.

Think about how small that thinking is. Think about blowing up the current roster at this stage on the business aspect alone. And from there, it's so much easier to see what they're all about.

As I wrote over the weekend in the Cole column, Nutting can never so much as glance at the incredible value the franchise has gained under his watch and consider that meaningful or worthy of an additional boost to the product. He simply counts the coins at the end of the evening, like a convenience store clerk. And if he’s a quarter short, he stocks one less pack of bubblegum for the following morning.

One of our subscribers, Tom Ogoreuc, sent me this today before the Cutch news broke. It's the food court area of the ski lodge at the Seven Springs resort, which Nutting also owns:

Looks like the Nutting family likes to save on more than just starting pitchers … @Dejan_Kovacevic #7Springs pic.twitter.com/fIsQoPWcDA
— Tom Ogoreuc (@tom3glav) January 15, 2018

That's why they never acknowledge any specific window of opportunity. Not even after 2015. All three are carbon copies on the topic. Because if they acknowledge a window, they also acknowledge accountability for if/when that window fails, and they can't have that.

Better to just spout nonsense about some "continuous cycle of success," as Huntington repeated again at the Winter Meetings last month, as if it would be beyond anyone's intelligence to see that their own "cycle" saw one three-year burst in 2013-15 bookended by eight total seasons of losing.

They've even deluded themselves into thinking they're the norm rather than the exception. As Huntington told a fan questioner at PiratesFest five weeks ago, "“With sports owners, it’s real money. It’s tangible money to them and they didn’t get to the point in time that they’re at by doing spending unwisely. If we operate as a business — and that’s hard for fans to hear because you want to operate with Monopoly money — but if we operate as a business, the other owners that would come in here would operate in the exact same way.”

Right. You the fan want them to operate with "Monopoly money." Like the Royals, Indians, Brewers and other big-league teams based in smaller markets do. They use "Monopoly money" to consistently outspend the Pirates, as well as getting drop-dead serious when their teams do hit contention windows.

They think you're stupid. Yet again, I'm not being cynical when I say that. I'm not even guessing.

They think you'll come back for the opener and pack the place. They think you'll go gaga over the first glimpse of something bright, maybe a weekend sweep or a winning streak. They think that, even if you ignore the actual product, you'll still visit their wonderful ballpark, the skyline, the fireworks, the bobbleheads and all that. And then, if they're right about any and all of that, if things should happen to look up, they'll yank the rug out from under you before any pressure might build on them to lift so much as any extra pinky finger.

They think you're so spectacularly stupid that, minutes after Cutch was told he was traded, the Pirates leak out they're signing Felipe Rivero to a four-year extension and ... oh, what a coincidence!

They think you're so spectacularly stupid that, at their PNC Park press conference, Huntington ascended the very peak of Mount Condescension to share the following regarding public sentiment about the trade: "I’m not even going to attempt to rationalize it because I respect and appreciate where our fans are. We want them to think with their hearts. We want them to fall in love with these players. It’s our job to give them a lot of players to fall in love with."

Translation: Keep thinking with your hearts, peasants. We'll keep thinking with our brains.

They think you're so spectacularly stupid that Nutting, at the same press conference, came up with this swing and miss when our Lance Lysowski asked what the Pirates plan to do with the $50 million payment they and all teams will get this spring from Disney's purchase of MLB's mobile streaming division:

Good Lord! A lifelong businessman has $50 million coming his company's way, and he's claiming he doesn't have a plan for it yet! When the frighteningly obvious reply should have been -- even if it was a lie -- that he intends to bolster the baseball team!

Finally, finally, the national baseball media's beginning to take heed at what's been happening here, maybe now that the Marlins' ownership mess has stopped stealing such headlines:

Timing of Pirates' Rivero extension news -- mere minutes after Andrew McCutchen was told he has been traded -- reminds me of this: https://t.co/rm610FLu5L
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) January 15, 2018

None of this is new or specific to Cutch and his $14.5 million salary being traded. It's been going on all along.

So come on, give it to me straight: Why do you care?

Fans above the Clemente Wall. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

As for Cutch himself ... he doesn't deserve to have his name dragged through a column about this front office. Not anymore. He's headed for a place that's shown a powerful commitment toward winning championships -- I seldom hear from fans more trusting of a management team than when I visit the Bay Area -- and here's hoping he can add a ring to all his other achievements:

I've written plenty about Cutch, having covered him from the day he was drafted by Dave Littlefield and Ed Creech to the day he made his Pittsburgh debut to the day this past summer when he sat with me for an extraordinary interview in Denver -- dreaming of a parade down the Boulevard of the Allies "just like we see with the Penguins and Steelers" -- to the day the following week when he slugged three home runs in, of all places, San Diego.

The man loves this city in ways I've never seen from a professional athlete who came from the outside. He and his wife Maria were the only ones from the Pirates' family to make their home in Pittsburgh year-round, living right Downtown and hanging out with ordinary folks in the Market Square corner Starbucks, posing for pictures and signing autographs. They also shared with us, via social media, the recent birth of their son.

They named him Steel.

For real.

He's a special player, a special person. A beautiful person from an impoverished background in the tiny central Florida town of Fort Meade, born to beautiful parents in Lorenzo and Petrina, the latter of whom once brought the house down here with her rendition of the national anthem.

His penultimate tweet as a member of the Pirates was as yinzer as it gets ...

Forever #SteelerNation ✊?
— andrew mccutchen (@TheCUTCH22) January 14, 2018

... and his final one, on this holiday, was this:

Martin Luther King Jr. A man who was killed for standing up for what he believed in. Change has come but there’s more change that needs to take place in this nation. How can We strive toward his dream? ”Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.” #MLK
— andrew mccutchen (@TheCUTCH22) January 15, 2018

... capped off by this after the trade:

Pittsburgh.My Home.My Fans.My City. The placed that raised me and helped mold me into the man I am today. You will 4ever be in my heart.A tip of the cap to all who have been on this journey with me. With Love and respect,
Cutch pic.twitter.com/QB0n9vuBuZ
— andrew mccutchen (@TheCUTCH22) January 15, 2018

But right here, right now, I want to hear why you care about the Pirates.

Or better yet, why you might think that they do.

Neal Huntington, Frank Coonelly, Bob Nutting at PNC Park press conference, Jan. 15, 2018. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

WHAT'S BREWING

• Tons and tons of stuff on the Cutch trade, headlined by beat writer Lance Lysowski's coverage.

• Matt Gajtka is out in California with the Penguins all week, covering practice Tuesday and the game tonight in Anaheim.

• Still more hockey: Taylor Haase offered three strong pieces this week, one of them a perspective on Sunday's NWHL game up in Cranberry, the other her weekly Wilkes-Barre Watch that includes a detailed Q&A with head coach Clark Donatelli, the other her weekly Wheeling Watch that includes a similarly detailed Q&A with assistant coach Riley Armstrong.

• Do you follow us on social media? If not, we're available on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. We'll make it worth your while, as we've got some fun initiatives planned on those fronts toward signing up new subscribers.

VIDEO

Lance and I go all-Cutch on Java: