DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: Good as gone?

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: Good as gone?

[Music] [Applause] The home schedule’s done. There’s a handful of games left. Nobody cares. One thing and one thing alone remains to come from this 2025 season. And it might feel more realistic than ever right now. Good morning to you. Good Monday morning. Morning. I’m Dan Kachovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates. It comes your way bright and early every weekday if you’re into football andor hockey. I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this Pirates 11 athletics zero. Big days for both Jared Triolo and Joey Bart. four hits and three RBI’s a piece, not to mention a home run a piece. Mike Burrows, Carmen Majinsky, Johan Ramirez, and Dari Moretta combining for the staff’s 18th shutout. That’s most in Major League Baseball. And whoopde-doo, right, that’s 67 and 89 on the season. They’d have to win half of the remaining halfozen games on the season ending trip through Cincinnati and Atlanta just to get to 70. But yeah, that wasn’t exactly the news over the weekend. Ben Cherington had I guess you could call them two media sessions. One’s really not with media. That’s the weekly radio program that he does. It’s team produced. the interviews conducted by respectfully here a team employee the day before and this is why you want independent media involved in this sort of thing. Cherington was asked amid a lengthy session that covered a lot of subjects plain and simple if Bob Nutting told him whether or not he’ll be back. I’m certainly doing the job that way you know like we talk all the time. Um haven’t heard anything to the contrary. So, um, you know, I don’t know that any of us in this room have ever have full asurances of anything, but, um, I I just I want to help the Pirates win more games. That’s it. You know, I don’t do the job because of the job. I I do the job because I I want to be a part of making this thing work. And winning more games and being able to leave PNC Park feeling better, everybody feeling better. That’s that’s why I do it. And I still want to do that. Uh, I badly want to do it and that’s all I’m focused on. You know what I didn’t hear in that answer? I didn’t hear a yes. Nor, to Cherington’s credit, did I hear him try to evade it. I don’t know if he was caught off guard with the question. I don’t know if he just felt like that was something he wanted to get out of his system, but he has not been told by the owner of the franchise that he’s going to be back next season. And that of course flies in the figurative face of what seemed to me to be conventional wisdom that just because Cherington was talking about things in 2026 or even things within the coming off season that he’d been assured by Nutting that he was returning. No such thing has happened. Now, if you want to go ahead and be the cynic or the skeptic about this and say, “Ah, come on. You know, he’s coming back. That’s who they are.” And whatever. Look, you might be right. I’ve yet to make a prediction on this. I’ve told you what I believe based on the information I have about what they actually think of his job performance all the way to the top. what I believe will happen and that’s that he will be fired with the conclusion of this season. A big parenthesis here if you’ll bear with me. I would actually do that before this road trip. The pirates are off today. I can’t fathom any reason to send the man who’s not exactly like some bad dude or whatever on this trip only to leave him in some kind of weird limbo whenever the team splits up following the game in Atlanta. And that is how that goes. I’ve covered season finales that take place not at PNC Park. The players go wherever they’re going to go right from there. or the manager goes, the coaches go. That doesn’t mean everybody does it, but it’s most guys. And I I Where are you going to send him? Just throwing that out there. End parenthesis. Now, my own level of belief as to whether or not he’s going to be fired hasn’t been altered by what Cherington said this weekend because I’d never gotten any wind from anybody at any level of the organization that nothing had told Cherington that he would be back. As it is, he hasn’t told him anything. There’s no context in which I could be convinced that that’s a good thing for Cherington. As you heard him say, Bob and I talk all the time. Well, I don’t know about you, but if I’m talking to my boss and I thought I might be in some trouble and we actually did talk all the time, I might bring it up a time or 200. Even if it was in some side kind of way, like say for example, I don’t know, hey, do you think uh we should do this, this, or this related to the Arizona Fall League? All of which has to be arranged in advance of the Arizona Fall League actually beginning, but it would be stuff like that. Plans for instructional league in Florida that’s coming up and you’ll see pretty much everybody in the organization get together in Bradenon and you get the idea. Here’s hoping that this ends the best way. And here’s hoping that the best way is something that’s not drawn out. Although one could argue it’s already been that I’m talking about in some way that were to awkwardly extend after the season has occurred with Nutting’s previous set of firings in 2019. He’s had months to go over this to consider all the ramifications to consider the how, when, and where. Okay, well get it done and then get to hiring a quality replacement. and get that quality replacement sufficient time to do well a really really really big job when we come back. J1Q. [Music] If you’re looking for a great dining experience, look no further than Northshore Tavern. Located directly across Federal Street from PNC Park, next door to Mike’s Beer Bar, Northshore Tavern is Pittsburgh’s home for steak on a stone. Enjoy your steak finished on a hot lava stone in front of you where you ensure each piece is cooked to exactly your liking. Or try their rotating selection of entre, hot sandwiches, salads, and burgers, all while enjoying the ambiance dedicated to the great players and history of the Pittsburgh Pirates all around you. Come see why everyone’s talking about Northshore Tavern and Steak on a Stone. It’s Gun Storage Check Week. Help prevent unwanted access to your firearms. No one wants their unsecured gun to be used in an accident, a suicide, or a crime. Use lock boxes, safes, and locks to secure your firearms. Learn more at gunstoch checkck.org. That’s gunstorage check.org. Brought to you by NSSF, the firearm industry trade association. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. 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Now, if you’re not much of a planner, you can get lastminute deals on tickets right up to the start of the event. Lowest price guarantee or game time will credit you 110% of the difference. Download the Game Time app and enter the code DK Pirates in your app profile for $20 off your first purchase. [Music] Today’s G1Q comes from Matt Graver who says, “I wish DK that we knew a dollar figure on all these front office contract obligations and the search firm cost. It’s got to be north of 3 to 5 million plus your new people coming in. That’s 8 million now to blow this up. Is it 10 million to some teams? That’s nothing. To the Pirates, that’s a substantial sum. And then Bob Nutting loses money on a lockout to get a salary cap system put in play after next year. Any other organization, the axe would have fallen by now. This one treats nickels like manhole covers. Who knows what they’re thinking? Matt, in answering any J1Q, the first thing I’ll look to is precedent when it comes to, you know, trying to forecast what somebody might or might not do. There’s been one significant precedent in Nutting’s tenure as controlling owner. That was 2019, which I mentioned in the opening segment. It wasn’t just Neil Huntington that was fired. It was his assistant GM Kyle Stark and over their heads it was team president Frank Kunley who unlike the current team president Travis Williams very much played a role an unwanted role but a role nonetheless in baseball ops and just before those three were fired because that happened in one fell swoop Clint Hurdle had been fired All four of these men had money remaining on their contracts and it was of course as all of these things are guaranteed money. I reported exclusively at the time that the combined cost of firing all four of those men was $17.2 million. I have not heard anything about any dollar figures related to anybody in this current setting. And that includes Derek Shelton, who’s obviously already been fired, but Shelton was due money, so something’s already been paid. Whatever’s left to be paid in this scenario, depending on how many people were to go, or if it’s just Cherington, I can tell you right now, it’s not going to be anywhere near 17.2 million. You could throw Williams in there and it’s not going to be 17.2 million. Now, I’ll also throw in here that that ended up becoming more of an albatross than might have been expected because the following year, obviously, unbeknownst to everyone, COVID hit and everybody everywhere lost a ton of money in professional sports. No exceptions. I’m also going to tell you, Matt, and you can do with this what you want. You don’t have to trust me on anything. You don’t have to agree with me on anything. My feeling is that money has zip to do with what’s taken this long. My further feeling is that the playing out the last year before the salary cap system is attempted to be implemented by the owners resulting in a lockout resulting in not bringing in any revenues while the only people that you’re paying are people in your front office and your most expensive person is going to be your general manager. And you’re still not going to operate without a general manager. You’re not going to operate another full year with this one and expect anybody to take anything seriously emerging from whatever work stoppage might result. This is another subject for another day and we’re going to have a lot of days coming soon here over the off season where this would be a perfect thing to talk about. But one of the things that results or that follows longer stoppages where the fans are really the ones who get hosed in terms of losing out on, you know, games and stuff is that the owners and players will agree once they’ve ultimately agreed on a labor pact that wow, we’ve really got to do something to get these people back. So there will be all kinds of trinkets. There will be all kinds of extras. There will be all kinds of uh changes that are seen by the public largely as positive changes. You want to come out of it with a smiley face. If you’re these guys, you’re not doing that with Sherington. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody who listens to Daily Shot of Pirates. We’ll be back with another one of these tomorrow. [Music]

Ben Cherington’s status seems shakier than ever.

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