DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: The big lockout theory

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: The big lockout theory

[Music] [Applause] What if Ben Cherington was retained solely because what’s coming up will be the final year before Major League Baseball gets shut down for a while. What if? Good morning to you. Good Wednesday morning. I’m Dan Kavaj of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into football and hockey, I also offer daily shots of the two teams in town that are both interested and invested in winning. Okay. So, there’s a a common, maybe almost too common theory that Bob Nutting can’t fire Cherington because it would cost him money because Cherington has two additional years on his contract. Now, I’ve spent quite a a significant amount of time attempting to debunk that because when Nutting fired Frank Counley, Neil Huntington, Kyle Stark, and Clint Hurdle in one fell swoop, that bill cost him $17.2 million, as I exclusively reported at the time. That’s a big chunk of change. On top of that, COVID came the next year and yeah, wasn’t great financially speaking and the Pirates, like every other team in professional sports, lost a lot of money around that time. Nonetheless, there was a precedent. Nutting saw stuff that he didn’t like, didn’t agree with, didn’t endorse, fired them all, paid up $17.2 million. He had done something similar, I should add, going back to 2010 when he fired Dave Littlefield. Money was eaten. So that’s the only precedent that I’ve got. So I cited precedent and I’ll still do that. Nothing’s in place to change my mind so far. But let’s put the tin foil on today. Let’s let’s take this all the way out. Full extrapolation. My guess is that there are exactly 31 people on this entire planet who know whether or not there’s going to be a work stoppage in 2027. And those would be, you guessed it, the 30 owners and Rob Manford, the commissioner. These aren’t ambiguous concepts to these guys. They won’t be waiting till the final minute to figure stuff out. and they sure don’t have to wait on the players association to wonder what their stance will be on what they’re going to take to the union. So, they know everything now and they know from previous experience, whether it’s within Major League Baseball, whether it’s things that have happened in the NFL or the NHL, who gets paid in a work stoppage and who doesn’t get paid in a work stoppage. And here’s the answer to that. The players don’t get paid. They can’t get paid. Of course, it’s a work stoppage. If you’re not playing baseball, you’re not going to get paid for it. But everybody else in baseball ops, I mean, yeah, they’re they’re under your employee. And depending on the nature of their individual contracts, they’re probably getting paid through a stoppage. They’re probably still preparing for baseball when it comes back, future drafts, and so forth. So, if you get to the end of 2026, if you get all the way to the end, and I don’t even know if that’s safe because the players can always go ahead and strike to make sure that the owners don’t get their money from the playoffs. So, they that’s like a preemptive salvo there. But whatever it is that represents the end of the 2026 season, if you don’t have a general manager or an assistant general manager or uh go ahead and name it, anybody at all in baseball ops, you don’t have to pay anybody. However long the thing lasts, you don’t have to pay anybody. Not just the GM, anybody. Now, do I believe that that will happen? No. Do I believe that there’s financial value in retaining such flexibility? Yes. Okay. Now, going even further, one thing that we’ve seen in both the NFL and the NHL is that under cap systems, there is immense benefit to knowing the cap system. We talk about that a lot in Pittsburgh related to Omar Khan who went from being the Steelers cap guy to now their general manager. Well, Omar worked really, really, really hard on the football side of it and takes a lot of pride in his football evaluation skills. That’s fair. That’s fine. But the path was the cap knowledge. The path was becoming one of the league’s more respected guys at managing the cap. So, there is a spectacular chance that Cherington, who’s obviously got zero experience with this, in fact, pretty much everybody in baseball does, won’t be the GM in a cap system regardless. So, you here again, buy yourself some more time and save yourself some more money. Is this cynical? Yes, of course it is. Is it about the pirates? Also, yes, of course it is. When we come back, J1Q, [Music] if you’re looking for a great dining experience, look no further than Northshore Tavern. 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[Music] Today’s J1Q comes from Bill Zitch who says, “DK, if there is no baseball in 2027, will Paul Skins become a free agent after the 2029 season or will it be after the 2030 season?” Not that it’ll probably matter since they’ll likely trade him before that. A couple of things to say to this one is that when you have a new collective bargaining agreement, nothing carries over from the previous agreement by default. Meaning it’s all on the table. Now, when that agreement totally changes the landscape of everything about the system, there can’t be an answer for your question because they might say, the owners might say, “Well, we’re putting in this salary cap no matter what.” And the players might say, “All right, we’ve waited for a full year. We’re tired of not playing. We’re ready to negotiate. What do we get out of this?” and the owners can say, “Well, you can become free agents sooner.” That exact scenario occurred in the NHL’s negotiations 20 years ago when hockey went to the cap system. You can now become a free agent in the NHL in half the time it takes to become one in Major League Baseball. So, for all we know, not to scare you or whatever, you’re the one who asked, Skins could become a free agent the instant the lockout ends or the instant there’s a new deal, whether it’s a lockout, a strike, or whatever it is that you’d want to call the work stoppage. And from there, he could go to the highest bidder and depending on what kind of system emerges, then everybody’s capable of competing for that talent. And of all the greatest ironies, the teams that would be the least likely to be able to sign him are the ones who currently have the greatest payroll commitments. That also happened when the NHL switched to a cap system. There were a handful of teams with some really, really, really big long-term commitments that had to be really judicious about how they spent coming out at the other end. Best answer I can give you, Bill. It’s a whole new world. It becomes unrecognizable. And if all of that sounds to you right now so far-fetched that you can’t even fathom any of it happening, dude, go ask a hockey fan what that was like. Everything, the entire hockey world was turned on its head when it returned. but also 100% for the better. The sport has grown like never before since then. The sport has had labor peace ever since then. Don’t get me started on this one. I appreciate the question, Bill. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Pirates. Going to do another one of these tomorrow. [Music]

The big lockout theory for keeping Ben Cherington.

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