I spent some time at PNC Park this week, spent far more time on the phone, and, based on a bunch of conversations, here's all that I've been able to cull on the (pathetic) state of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club:
• Bob Nutting's made up his mind about nothing and no one. And that's how he does stuff. He prefers to wait until a season's complete to absorb and assess as much information as he can, then act as needed. In 2019, for example, his only initial action was approving the firing of Clint Hurdle on the final day of the season. But after several weeks of additional work and no small amount of public pressure, he eventually fired everyone all the way up to Frank Coonelly.
• No, neither Nutting nor Travis Williams were part of Ben Cherington's recent public statement that "I fully expect" Derek Shelton to be back in 2025. Cherington spoke on his own. Read into that what one will.
• I continue to get zero vibes that Cherington's in trouble. Absolute zero. Which I find flabbergasting under the circumstances, but hey, again, Nutting's made no calls to date. And I'd never dreamed he'd eventually fire everyone in 2019, as he did despite having to eat $17.2 million in guaranteed money for all those guys.
• Shelton, on the other hand, has knives out for him all over the place. As does Andy Haines. And I'm talking about from the inside.
• Baseball players might be the most attentive and observant of any sport anywhere. And as such, the things that'd bother them about a manager wouldn't be those that'd bother, say, the common fan. An example: I'm told that one common complaint in the clubhouse is Shelton's striking reluctance to activate a running game. As one source relayed to me, with Bryan Reynolds leading the team with just 22 home runs, it's wild that even fast players at first base aren't sent to steal or even to get moving on a hit-and-run attempt. And after that was shared with me, I was able to find several such instances in the past week alone.
• There are similar complaints about lineup construction, although I'd be hypocritical here if I didn't add my own view that nothing's more overblown in baseball than a batting order. Regardless, one inside view is that, because Reynolds bats second, it shouldn't be, say, Alika Williams batting ninth, the better to afford Reynolds RBI opportunities.
• The Rowdy Tellez fiasco, to reiterate from my reporting earlier this week, was nothing more than Cherington being typically tone-deaf. Both in the actual move and his totally non-Pittsburgh way of trying to B.S. out of it with reporters later. Not his first massive embarrassment in the role. Simple fact is, he just didn't care what anyone's reaction to it would be, as he didn't think it was significant, largely because the Pirates gave Tellez three more months in the majors than he could've had if they hadn't (maddeningly) stood by him in May.
• To also reiterate from that same reporting, Nutting had as much to do with Tellez as you or I did. The next time he's made aware of something as mundane as a DFA will be the first, both for him and for any owner in the game. Anyone who doesn't get that doesn't want to get it.
• If the Pirates were going to cheap out over $200,000, by the way, then good luck explaining promoting both Paul Skenes and Jared Jones before their respective Super-2 statuses could trigger this year. I'm not about to bore anyone by explaining how Super-2 arbitration works, but suffice it to say those two calls will cost them literally millions in the near future. And trust me, both of those players know it and respect it.
• Free agents don't decide where to play based on anything beyond base pay. That's why Aroldis Chapman and Martin Perez both came directly here from the World Series champion Rangers. Because the Pirates offered the highest base pay. And, in Chapman's case, the Mets offered $10 million and the Pirates topped that with $10.5 million. Never overthink this sort of thing.
• Very, very few within the Pirates' orbit will miss Tellez. All I'll say on that front.
• Michael A. Taylor was the polar opposite, a class act and consummate pro respected by all.
• I don't matter in any of this. I'm nobody. But I still feel compelled to add that I've never been so ... blah about this franchise as I am right now. Meaning I'm sick of covering this crap. I've got two other teams I cover that, for whatever flaws they'll occasionally flash, the conversation never, ever turns to something as stomach-turning as whether or not they care about winning. Whereas, with the Pirates, the conversation's seldom about anything else.
Nutting needs to do the right thing again, only even righter than in 2019. Meaning get rid of them all AND do far better with the replacements.
If not, just give it up, man. Just sell.
Think about it: He'd likely haul in a one-time payment of $1.5 billion that'd dwarf any level of profit he could earn as owner over the next half-century, and that's not an exaggeration. He can even plot out a happy exit, saying he helped stabilize the operation first in taking it off Kevin McClatchy's under-capitalized hands, then again in shepherding his way through COVID and other challenges. And he can always have 2013-15, the Blackout and all that. There won't be a statue in it for him, to say the least, but that's not nothing.
But keeping all these guys after five years of failure is far uglier than anything seen under Coonelly, Neal Huntington and Kyle Stark ... yeah, that's not OK.
Or it is.
JUSTIN BERL / GETTY
A fan sits near the Roberto Clemente statue Thursday outside PNC Park.
See that dude up there?
That body language might as well be me, albeit in the journalistic sense.
I swear, I can't recall the last time, if ever in my lifetime, I was this ambivalent about the Pirates as anything but a civic institution. What's there now is just leeching off the brand, the pride that preceded this perpetual losing. It's borrowing from a storied past and some of the greatest names in our city's history, only to sully it with this circus-like, scandalous ... well, crap.
It's crap.
As a result, because it's important to me to be all-the-way invested in what I choose to cover -- whether that's written or spoken -- I'll be reassessing what/how I commit to this team until/if something occurs over there that convinces me they're even slightly serious. And I'm not even sure what that means, other than that the two teams that care, interest me far more.
Tomorrow, I'll drive to Detroit to cover the Penguins. Day after that, I'll drive down to Indianapolis to cover the Steelers.
Next Friday's Insider, I'll do all Penguins. Week after that, all Steelers.
• Thanks for reading.
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