Tag: Bob Nutting

Pirates want to win, just trust them, they’re good for it, say the Pirates

The Pirates are all words and no action, again.

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A thing I tell my kids all the time is that saying sorry is fine and all, but what matters is changing the behavior that led to having to apologize in the first place. Words are merely words without the actions to back them up, and an apology without this kind of change is nothing more than a plea for the offended party to stop being mad at the offender. An attempt to buy time, to change the subject.

The Pirates had their annual offseason fan fest over the weekend, and the main takeaway — whether from CEO Travis Williams or general manager Ben Cherington — is that the team is committed to winning. They want to win. They’re trying to build a winner. The most important thing is winning. Owner Bob Nutting isn’t in attendance and here to take your questions, no, but rest assured there’s nothing that man cares about more than winning. When asked if the team can extend young players like Oneil Cruz and Paul Skenes, Cherington responded with meaningless drivel about “creative ways” to keep the roster competitive, and that the most important way they can keep players in Pittsburgh is by winning.

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Pirates’ ownership lies about spending to its own front office, too

Pirates’ ownership is throwing their own front office under the bus in public for not making the moves they aren’t being allowed to make.

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Over at Pittsburgh Baseball Now, John Perrotto writes that the Pirates’ front office was “furious” over owner Bob Nutting’s June 21 comments on there being money and opportunity to add to the team’s roster before the trade deadline. Why would something like that make a front office angry? Well, because that’s just what Nutting said to the public: in private, to the front office itself, he told them the opposite.

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Winning requires ‘more than just player payroll,’ but you also need that

Payroll isn’t everything when building a competitive team, but that doesn’t mean you can outright ignore it like the Pirates plan to.

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The Pirates had their annual fan fest — PiratesFest — over the weekend, and made a point of saying that the questions weren’t pre-screened. The answer to one, about payroll, stuck out in a way that I think requires a little bit more analysis. Here’s the TribLive story it lives in:

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Bryan Reynolds requested a trade out of Pittsburgh because why wouldn’t he?

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The news that Bryan Reynolds (a) requested a trade from the Pirates and (b) that it was initially unclear why he’d do that was, respectively, bound to happen, and very funny. Reynolds is a player who can make an all-star team, not a perennial MVP candidate, but he’s a poor fit for the Pirates and everyone involved knows it. As Ken Rosenthal put it, the Pirates should deal Reynolds as he asked, but because, “they cannot agree with him on an extension. They should trade him because they will not spend enough to build around him. And they should trade him because his value from this point will only decline.”

He’s going to be just 28 in 2023, but yes, the amount of time a new club would have control of Reynolds will only decline from here on out, so his value will most likely dip on that front. As of now, a new club would get three years out of him, and could extend him if both parties were amenable. That’s a thing that’s not going to happen in Pittsburgh: remember, Reynolds has three years left in town and already asked to be shipped out, so you can imagine how well the existing extension talks have gone.

Continue reading “Bryan Reynolds requested a trade out of Pittsburgh because why wouldn’t he?”