I love a good underdog story.
It’s for that reason that I love the city of Pittsburgh.
Most of my attachment these days to this city comes from running this site on the Pittsburgh Pirates.
I was born in central PA, living in the Altoona area for the first 12 years of my life. My Dad is from Pittsburgh and my mom is from Baltimore, and they got married a year after the 1979 World Series. I grew up an Orioles and Cal Ripken Jr. fan. However, Pittsburgh was always “the city” to me, and we went often. Especially for baseball.
I was there in the upper deck of Three Rivers Stadium when Ken Griffey Jr. was launching bombs in the Home Run Derby.
I can’t tell you how many Pirates games I went to as a kid, but I can tell you that my favorite games were in the first years of what would eventually become the losing streak. I didn’t care as a kid if they won. I liked going to games, and eventually moving down to seats by the field, because no one was at the stadium.
The Pirates have never really been good for an extended stretch during my lifetime. I was too young to appreciate the 1990-92 seasons. By the time I was in college, Ripken had retired, I didn’t like the way Peter Angelos ran the Orioles, and I became more of a fan of small market teams.
Read that again, because you are allowed to just stop liking a team if you hate the owner so much.
I loved what was happening with the Oakland Athletics at the time, during the Moneyball era. I also fell in love with PNC Park.
The Pirates were at their worst when I was in college. However, they had the brand new, nicest stadium in the game. By the 2004-05 seasons, I would make routine drives from my college in VA up to Pittsburgh — six hours each way in the car with my roommates — just to take in a game.
I made a lot of trips to see Oliver Perez during that time. There’s something about seeing a dynamic player playing for the Pirates that just gives PNC Park a purpose. An amazing stadium is only a selling point for so long. Without exciting players, the Pirates are just selling tours to PNC Park.
Eventually, Pirates fans would want to see meaningful baseball in that cathedral to the game.
Pittsburgh’s Sports Identity
I love a good underdog story.
That’s what I see in the city of Pittsburgh.
I’m not talking about the Pirates anymore, or the sports teams. I’m talking about the city itself.
Pittsburgh proudly adopted the title “City of Champions” after the success of their teams in the 1970s. That included four Super Bowls by the Steelers, and believe it or not, the Pirates won multiple World Serii during this decade.
At the same time, Pittsburgh was going through an economic transition. The steel industry was starting to collapse, and would leave the city in the 80s. Between 1980 and today, the population of the city has declined by 100,000 people, with so many moving elsewhere to areas where there were jobs.
This wasn’t the only mass exodus from Pittsburgh in the last century. The population of the city was well over half a million people in the 1930s, before the coal mills closed.
Pittsburgh used to be about industry, and what their citizens produced. They were the “Steel City”. As the steel mills closed in the 80s, and another population exodus was taking place, the city adopted a “City of Champions” identity.
That’s an unfortunate transition, though it does make Pittsburgh unique in how they follow their teams like no other city.
It was easy to embrace the teams.
The Penguins won two Stanley Cups in the 90s.
The Steelers remained competitive through the 90s, and won two Super Bowls in the aughts.
The Penguins followed that with three championships of their own in the last decade-plus.
The Pirates, on the other hand…
The Same Old Pirates
I love a good underdog story.
That’s why I’m still here covering the Pirates. I wrote about what I see changing in this organization in detail two weeks ago in this feature. I honestly believe that the Pirates are heading in the right direction to be serious contenders in the not-too-distant future.
When I started this site, I noticed early that Neal Huntington wasn’t just the “same old Pirates GM” with the “same old Pirates” approach. I was called an apologist for years by a segment of jaded Pirates fans, all for saying that he had the organization heading in the right direction.
He did.
For the final few years of Huntington’s tenure, I was on the other side of things, realizing that the Pirates no longer had the approach necessary to maintain a long-term winner. They also weren’t adjusting to the changing league. I called their situation “No-Man’s Land” back in 2017.
Unfortunately, they remained in No-Man’s Land for two more years.
To this date, most Pirates fans have a misguided view of what happened in that downturn. It was easy to chalk it up as “same old Pirates” and then limit your analysis to “Nutting won’t spend” or “they’ve only made the playoffs three times in 30 years”.
A lot of fans actually believe the Pirates decreased their payroll after 2015, but that’s not true. Their payrolls in the years after 2015 were the highest in franchise history. They spent money, but they spent it poorly.
The problem the Pirates had was their approach. They were aiming for 82 wins each year, with a hope to make the playoffs. They also didn’t have an organization built for that.
After the 2015 season, where the Pirates made the Wild Card game for the third year in a row, the organization was raided of a lot of front office members and scouts who played an impact in the success. The system didn’t have ready replacements.
The team was about to see an influx of talent from the minors. That didn’t work, due to development issues that have never really been clear.
In all actuality, the Pirates have never really been good at developing players in my lifetime. Look at their drafts after Barry Bonds. Look at their endless list of busted prospects.
The Pirates ruled Major League Baseball in the 1970s, on the back of a strong farm system.
The economic changes to the game in the 1990s made it more imperative for small market teams to rely on their farm system, and this was a time when the Pirates were horribly mismanaged.
The farm system is what they’ll need for Ben Cherington’s plan to work.
The Same Old Pirates?
What I saw from Neal Huntington’s tenure was the start of finally building a modern-day farm system.
The Pirates built a Dominican Academy. They gradually upgraded the facilities at Pirate City. The scouting department was overhauled in the first few seasons of Huntington’s tenure. They also added innovation to the development process in a way that allowed them to at least catch up to other organizations.
Bob Nutting took over as the principal owner in 2007. At the time, this was not a Major League organization. It didn’t even have a functioning farm system. They had minor league teams who operated independent of each other, no system internationally, and I’m not convinced that they even cared to develop their own players, or invest in prospects, up to this point.
Again, I casually followed this team until 2007. I didn’t start this site until 2009. Every story I heard about those former years just sounds like there was no organization throughout the organization.
I don’t talk about Nutting much on this site.
It’s not that he doesn’t deserve to be discussed. It’s just that there’s not much point to identifying his role on the team.
Nutting hires the people who run this organization. He does not have the knowledge needed on this game to have any further say in how the on-field product is built. When he’s made GM hiring/firing decisions, he has always sought the guidance of people around the game. I believe this to be a weakness, though it can be mitigated by good hires below him.
As a former Orioles fan, who stopped following them because of the owner’s involvement in player moves, I can tell you that Nutting’s only role should be hiring the right people, and setting the budget.
Nutting hired Travis Williams, formerly with the Penguins, to be the team’s President. Williams replaced Frank Coonelly, though the job shifted.
Coonelly had way too much oversight over baseball operations. Coonelly also wasn’t qualified to evaluate such moves, and essentially gave the Pirates the “Angelos” effect, where the GM was partially handcuffed by a higher ranking executive in the organization.
Ben Cherington was hired as Huntington’s replacement, and Cherington has more autonomy than any previous GM. Williams handles the business, and Cherington handles the baseball.
I wrote a few weeks ago how Cherington has passed that autonomy down through the development system. Just like Cherington has more autonomy as the GM, John Baker has more autonomy as the farm director than Stark or Larry Broadway ever did under Huntington. That continues down to coordinators and coaches.
The biggest change in the system is how they’re treating the players, giving them their own independence, and empowering them to take control of their careers. This is a big difference from the old organization, where players were treated like kids, and weren’t built up with self-confidence in the minors.
You can imagine how that might have led to so many busts in the majors. I believe the biggest factor to MLB success is mindset — not being overwhelmed by the stage, and just executing your skills. The old system treated the majors more like a mythical dragon to slay.
Huntington and Stark essentially built a farm system for the Pirates. They had a system before, but it was more a token system, rather than an actual baseball development system.
Cherington and Baker are working to patch up any holes in that system, while upgrading the framework to a modern-day system.
The biggest thing that I think the Pirates are doing right now is building up the mindset of their younger players in a more positive way. We will eventually see if this translates to better MLB results. I can tell you that this is a focus around the league. Cherington’s old organization, the Toronto Blue Jays, were big on mindset.
Thus far, while the system has been patched and built up, the MLB team has been the worst team in baseball.
I was calling for the Pirates to rebuild in tanking fashion for years. I know that Pirates fans are desperate for a winner, and instead the Pirates have lost more games during Cherington’s tenure than any other MLB team.
The Pirates have been obviously tanking, so the losses in these seasons don’t matter in my eyes. This was necessary. The fault here is that Nutting didn’t make this organization shift earlier.
I can say that, because I questioned him on this approach, pointing out how it was wrong compared to modern-day successful orgs, back before the 2018 season.
Nutting eventually made this change, and I think Cherington is following a more modern-day approach to contending in a small market.
What matters is that the Pirates eventually switch gears and start competing in the majors.
What matters more is that Bob Nutting properly funds the eventual winner they are building.
The 30-Year Fan
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the opportunity to call a city “miserable”, but if you ever get the chance, I can tell you it’s a wild experience.
Pittsburgh seems like the most miserable fucking place.
— Tim Williams (@TimWilliamsP2) December 18, 2022
I got a lot of responses to that tweet. In all actuality, Twitter isn’t the best place for those types of nuanced thoughts — kicked off by an anything-but-nuanced grenade to kick things off. The responses were expected.
Anger. Pittsburgh writers and radio hosts educating me on why Pirates fans deserved to be upset. A lot of justification for why Pittsburgh was miserable based on the Pirates. A lot of “No, you’re miserable!” comebacks. People making fun of my Calvin Klein suit and limited edition Ken Griffey Air Force Ones — not the traditional blue collar look you find in the city.
There was also a lot of agreement with what I said.
That tweet wasn’t about Pirates fans. It was about Pittsburgh, and specifically how they follow their teams to an unhealthy level.
For example, I used to follow the Steelers and Penguins. I find it difficult to be a casual fan of those teams, because I honestly never know when they’re winning, due to the urgency from the fans to always win. If you go by the vibe of fans, the Steelers have been horrible for a decade, and I actually thought the Penguins were having a losing season this year until checking over the weekend.
The way Pittsburgh fans follow their teams is unique. I’ve been to almost every major city in America, and I’ve lived in a few of them. Pittsburgh is different.
You get to the city, and there is black and gold everywhere. It’s like it’s always gameday.
The city itself is beautiful. This summer, I spent two weeks in downtown Pittsburgh, evaluating whether I would want to live there.
I ate a lot of Primanti Brothers to survive in downtown, thinking about how this meal used to feed the miners who were in a more difficult situation than I was. They were working in mines all day, and relied on this sandwich to easily rebuild their strength and provide their nutritional needs. I was writing articles about Endy Rodriguez and skipped lunch. However, Primanti Brothers revives all.
I had a chance to walk through the streets of downtown, interacting with the people. One of the most common responses I got to my Tweet was that the people were nice and friendly. I’ve never experienced otherwise. A lot of the sports fans are objectively miserable, though, and that’s more an observation than a condemnation.
I made a few stops to the DK Pittsburgh Sports headquarters to talk with Dali and Dejan Kovacevic. Talk about people who love this city. When I told Dejan that I considered downtown Pittsburgh to be a poor man’s Manhattan, his eyes lit up with so much pride.
Pride is what Pittsburgh has. Pride in their city. Pride in their community. And pride in the sports teams that they use to identify their city and community.
The last pride can be toxic. Especially when following Major League Baseball — a league now set up in favor of large market teams, and financially secure enough to ensure every team makes a profit without selling tickets.
Pirates fans are jaded everywhere, but the angriest fans seem to be in the Pittsburgh area. That’s why most complaints are centered around tax dollars paying for PNC Park, or about how the city of Pittsburgh deserves a winner.
Pirates fans have a right to complain, regardless of where they live. This hasn’t been a good organization, and it hasn’t been run well, regardless of the owner.
The ownership group in the 90s almost went insolvent. I believe that played a role in the lack of a farm system until 2007, as that’s a lofty expense.
The most common complaint comes from what I like to call “The 30-Year Fan.”
The complaint is simple. Look through that Twitter thread above and you’ll see many examples.
“This team has made the playoffs three times in 30 years.”
It’s a valid complaint, aimed at justifying anger that has built up over time.
If we’re talking about the Pirates today, that complaint is irrelevant. It’s pointing out the past, and expecting the future to be the same.
I think “30 years” isn’t reflective of the Pirates right now. I think a lot of Pirates fans silently agree with me. That wouldn’t be an issue, except a lot of the 30-Year Fans attack anyone who says that things are different.
There isn’t one type of Pirates fan. It wasn’t a good move of me to generalize the city in my Tweet, and I don’t want to do the same by saying that all Pirates fans are the same. The 30-Year Fans are just a segment of the fanbase. They just happen to be the ones with the loudest voice.
This society tends to cater to the ones who claim the aggrieved status, simply over the fact that someone claims to be aggreived.
That doesn’t mean the 30-Year Fans are correct about the current state of the team matching the past. Even if they are justifiably upset from years of losing.
A Revival in Pittsburgh
I love a good underdog story.
I think the Pirates are heading in the right direction to be contenders, and I think they’re setting up for a more sustainable run this time.
They’re spending in a way that suggests they’re saving their money for when they’re competitive. This is the approach I pointed out to Nutting a few years ago, which other teams around the league were implementing. At the time, Nutting said that the Pirates had a different approach.
The last three years have featured losing and rock bottom payrolls. They’ve also included a few interesting financial moves, like a front-loaded Ke’Bryan Hayes extension, which will make it easier to build a team around him long-term.
My belief is that Nutting will spend in a better way this time around. I think that long-term budgeting has already started. I don’t have any proof of this. I’m just reading their moves.
My concern is that Nutting doesn’t have the risk profile needed to support a small market team. Nutting is a billionaire because the Pirates are worth a billion dollars. By comparison, Steve Cohen is a billionaire who used his billions to buy the Mets, and then fund ridiculous payrolls.
The disparity in MLB is like never before, but small market teams can still win. Nutting’s main priority is keeping the team in his family. There will be a time when the Pirates need to take a risk, and I think that long-term goal of Nutting’s will make him more financially conservative than he needs to be to give the Pirates the best possible shot.
This is a few years in the future, so it’s not something to worry about now. Right now, we need to see if the Pirates can get back to contending. I think they will win north of 75 games in 2023, with an exciting second half led by the farm system arrivals. This time next year, it should be more obvious to The 30-Year Fan that things have already changed for the better.
When I went to Pittsburgh this summer, my goal was to scout out an area to live and run this site.
I can run this site from anywhere. Typically, I’m traveling during the season, so it doesn’t matter where I call home — I’m never there anyway.
Living in downtown Pittsburgh is appealing to me. What I see in the city now is the potential for a revival.
The mills are closed, but the medical and technology industries are taking hold. That said, I believe it will be the art community that brings the future Pittsburgh revival, and that’s where my interest lies.
My current plan is to turn this site into an outlet that has at least four full-time media jobs in Pittsburgh. That won’t eventually include me. I’ve written before, but my long-term focus is more on the artistic side, where I want to take my shot writing novels. We only live one life. Do what makes you happy. Don’t worry about money.
Pittsburgh is cheap, and it’s beautiful. Yes, the weather sucks this time of year, and it’s often overcast and raining. But, if you’re someone like me who works online and can live anywhere — that’s more and more people these days — then Pittsburgh seems like the perfect place to go.
The only downside for me is the obligatory bitterness that is expressed over the Pirates.
It’s not that The 30-Year Fans don’t have a right to be bitter.
It’s just that it feels impossible to talk about this team in any other way.
The conversation in the city is driven by the radio, and Pittsburgh sports radio tends to cater to angry callers. It brings in ratings. 30-Year Fans want to hear an angry yinzer screaming about the team. They don’t want someone calmly breaking down mechanical adjustments of a pitcher at 11 PM on a post-game show. Most of the discussion surrounding the Pirates caters to The 30-Year Fan.
I believe The 30-Year Fan is wrong.
I believe the 30-Year analysis from those fans is a deterrent to any discussion that shows what’s actually happening today.
Those fans don’t need to dig deep into this team. We all know the team has given them the opposite reason to do so over the years.
However, there are a lot of Pirates fans who don’t want to be miserable. They just want to watch baseball. They see signs that things are changing. They don’t want to perpetually forecast doom. And not many places cater to those fans.
I believe that is the main reason of the success of this site — the fact that we focus on the present year, rather than the last 30. It’s an objective approach that is understandably lost in Pittsburgh.
This is a frustrating situation, because there are a lot of 30-Year Fans in Pittsburgh who are nice people that are simply frustrated by the historical ineptitude of their baseball team — in a city that has rallied their identity around sports.
Someone sent me this video during all of this discussion, and I think it encapsulates the typical 30-Year Fan in Pittsburgh.
A heavy yinzer accent, wearing Steelers and Penguins gear, complaining about the negative impact to his community over a controlled burn by a local organization.
I can’t think of a better metaphor for Pirates fans in Pittsburgh.
After the complaints, he finishes on a positive note:
“Pittsburgh’s the best place to live, I don’t care what anybody says. If you gotta do some cleanup, hey, it is what it is. But we’re still number one out here.”
That’s what I love about Pittsburgh.
The Pittsburgh today isn’t your Grandfather’s Pittsburgh, or my Grandfather’s Pittsburgh — having to recover from the loss of the coal industry.
Pittsburgh today isn’t your Father’s Pittsburgh, or my Father’s Pittsburgh — having to recover from the loss of the steel industry.
This city has seen decline over generations, which has led to an understandable cynicism. Yet, beneath that is a warmth and joy in the residents that, in my travels, makes Pittsburgh unlike any northern city.
It’s for that reason that I want to see a winner for Pirates fans.
Sports aren’t supposed to matter this much in life, but in Pittsburgh, they matter more than other places. This is a city that has used sports as a catalyst for massive economic declines. And despite all of the downturns — whether economically, or with the baseball team — there’s still an underlying optimism that can be noticed and admired from those of us who are more on the outside.
The reality is that anyone reading this (and I appreciate you reading this far) has an attachment to the Pirates, and probably to Pittsburgh. No one owns the rights to this fan base, or the sentiment of the fans. Every fan is different. But we all want to see a winner in Pittsburgh.
Until then, there will be miserable fans, and their misery will be justified by years of losing.
In my opinion, the misery won’t be accurate in assessing the state of the current organization, which looks more optimistic than the 30-Year Fan is willing to acknowledge.
It’s hard to express that optimism when The 30-Year Fan is so aggressively loud to dissenting opinions — and when every discussion surrounding the team is meant to placate those fans.
My belief is that we aren’t far from every Pirates fan seeing that this team is heading back to contending in the next few years.
At that point, we can all share our own consternations over whether Nutting will do what’s necessary to allow Pirates fans to see a winner for as long as possible.
LAST WEEK ON PIRATES PROSPECTS
Here is a recap of everything on the site over the last week.
**In our article drop on Tuesday, we looked at the status of the bullpen, the recent addition of LHP Jose Hernandez, and the departure of minor league reliever Domingo Gonzalez.
**The Pirates have made a lot of moves to address the pitching staff. We looked at where they still need to add in last week’s Roundtable.
**Wilbur Miller thinks the Pirates might be sending a wrong message to their young players with how they’re handling some messaging for the upcoming season.
**Jeff Reed says it’s time to take a deep breath, and points out how this was always going to be a long build for Cherington.
**John Dreker talked with Andres Alvarez about his work in winter ball, featuring him in this week’s Pirates Winter Report.
**Ethan Hullihen estimated the Pirates’ 2023 draft pool, now that they have the first overall pick.
**Vince Velasquez will join the starting pitching group.
**The Pirates signed Austin Hedges to be their starting catcher. They also are re-signing Tyler Heineman.
**The Pirates wrapped up the week by trading minor league RHP Nick Garcia for outfielder and former Pirates prospect Connor Joe.
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FUQUAY VINYL PLAYLIST
I was under the weather this past week, so this First Pitch ended up being a combination of a few articles I was working on — plus the Tweets over the weekend.
I didn’t get a chance to throw together a playlist this week. So, I’m leaving you with my favorite Christmas album, by The Dan Band.
WEEKLY PIRATES QUIZ
That 2001 pick is still one of my low-key favorites over the years. I was at the game he hit his first MLB home run. True Pirates fans won’t be thrown off by this hint.
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