Comments on: Bob Nutting Isn’t the Only One Who’s Cheap This Year

By: George Newman

George Newman — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 01:44:14 +0000

These arguments are ridiculous. Nutting has made a fortune on paper as the value of the team has increased, mainly due to the MLB TV package. When he sells his profit will be in the $ hundreds of millions. As owner you either manage to win or you do not. Perhaps the best indication is the perpetual weakness of the Pirates’ bench players. Also the team is just sloppy and always has been. Nutting seems to accept mediocrity.

By: Steve DiMiceli

Steve DiMiceli — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 03:48:57 +0000

“All in” is probably exaggeration, but they did make bigger bets than the Pirates for sure.

Also, Lorenzo Cain has played in more World Series than Greinke and Sabathia combined.

By: Ron L.

Ron L. — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 03:11:26 +0000

While the Pirates had down years that had a big impact on 2016 (Cutch, Cervelli, Liriano, Cole) there were some surprises too. S-Rod, Freese and Joyce on offense.

The biggest disappointment was the pitching and going into the season relying on Locke, Niese and Vogelsong was a huge gamble that didn’t pay off. It just looked like even if Cole and Liriano would have matched their 2015 seasons that the pitching staff was going to be weaker than 2015 team.

By: Tom H.

Tom H. — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 03:01:23 +0000

Kang neither gets paid or credited for service time while being on the restricted list.

By: Tom H.

Tom H. — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 03:00:27 +0000

I think the Brewers comparison is rather interesting in that the Brewers front office pushed all their chips in and went for a championship. The Pirates instead have perennially kept one foot on each side of the line, making incremental improvements to say they did something, managing salary to a bottom 5 % of revenue in the league, while doing paying lip service to winning a championship.

By: Steve DiMiceli

Steve DiMiceli — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 02:52:25 +0000

Good comments all around but I thought I’d share my follow up thoughts:

Corsair,

Realistically, you’re not going to improve on a 98 win team and no one is going to convince me that team wasn’t capable of winning the world series. Sure, I think maybe they were a little presumptive on Glasnow and clearly made a mistake with Niese especially since I don’t think he was ever seen as a bridge, but truthfully, the team’s underperforming star players, Cutch, Cole, Liriano, and to a lesser extent Watson, let them down more than the offseason failings. Signing someone like Kennedy may have improved the team marginally, but the truth is, the Pirates got as much value (fWar) from Taillon as the Royals did from Kennedy. Replace Glasnow with Kennedy and are you really going to improve a team enough to make the playoffs that finished 8 games out of the wild card and 25 games out of the division? I doubt it. Maybe they finish 6 and 23 back.

Tom,

Are they not paying Kang this year? I was unaware if they weren’t but I’ve been under the assumption that they are.

I could absolutely name 5 moves that fit into that that $30-35 million range, even at $20 million especially with the benefit of hindsight, but it still probably doesn’t get you from 8 games out to the playoffs. They get you closer, but probably not over the top.

Rik,

Closer sure, but what does just be closer actually get you? .

But they’ve made a lot of moves that show me they have an interest in winning. Spending so much in the draft over a four year period that MLB changed the rules. Extending some of their most important players even if they didn’t extend all of them. Signing Liriano and Nova to basically the same kind of contact as the one you bemoan them for not signing Happ. Sure, they have made many huge deals aside from Cutch and Marte’s extensions, but the front office has had the leeway to make some mistakes when trying some unconventional roster management. Some didn’t work out, but what did helped take them to three straight post season appearances.

Ron,

I do think the window is going to close, but heading into 2016, I firmly thought the organization had enough position players locked up and enough near major league pitching ready to reload internally. I think they took a risk on prospects, but I still don’t think it was a bad choice given what they new at the time. It still will likely get better, but the pieces haven’t fallen into place perfectly.

David does a nice job responding to your thoughts on support in 2015 and he saved me time as I would’ve responded nearly identically, but don’t you think the 40,000 paid fans in Toronto should be equally disappointed or Kansas City and their 4,000 extra fans a game.

By: Ron L.

Ron L. — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 02:45:17 +0000

well the Pirates were heading in the right direction. attendance was 2256862 in 2013, 2442564 in 2014, 2498596 in 2015 and then dropped in 2016 and again this year. Doesn’t mean Pittsburgh is a baseball town but Bucs maximum attendance is probably going to be 2.6 or 2.7 million and 2015 is team attendance record. 8t h or 9th in league is probably as high as attendance can ever get.

By: David

David — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 20:04:16 +0000

Some support was there but not to the level it should of been.

For sake of comparison lets compare the 2015 Pirates to the the 2011 Brewers. This is a 98 win team vs a 96 win team. Both were probably the best version that either city has seen in a long time.

The Brewers drew a total of 3,071,373 good for 4th in the NL with a low of 22,861

The Pirates drew 2,498,596 which was 9th in the NL. Their low was 11,777 and they had a total of 15 games (almost a fifth of the season) below the lowest attended game Milwaukee had in 2011.

Pittsburgh actually has a bigger metro population than Milwaukee. There is no way anyone can look at that and say the support was there. The bottom line is Pittsburgh isn’t a baseball town and really that is ok.

By: Tony Ventimiglio

Tony Ventimiglio — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 18:57:46 +0000

And what did fans do in 1991? Stayed away in droves.

By: Ron L.

Ron L. — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 18:32:42 +0000

I agree with above comment that support was there in 2015, then management talks about a bridge year instead of trying to improve for 2016. Then it turns out the bridge year was a bridge to no where. Throw in management’s previous comments about not having a window and wanting to compete for championships year in and year out and why shouldn’t fans be more than disappointed by the 2016, 2017 and who knows about 2018. Toss in Marte and Kang issues (is Kang going to play again? is Marte’s reputation going to be recovered?) and it is easy to see fan interest declining. And it is declining when management should be working hard to maintain its base of fans and grow it so that tv and radio ratings can be high. Instead management provides a team that is poor fundamentally (the defense at begin of year was atrocious) has little power, and gets caught stealing at a higher rate than anyone else. It is like watching the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.