DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: The greatest mistake?

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: The greatest mistake?

[Music] [Applause] You know, for all the sad things you can say about the local Major League Baseball franchise, you can’t say they’ve never won it all over 144 years. They have won five World Series championships. There are five current teams in the majors that have never won. And I’m going to go through my intro today and buy you some time, don’t cheat, to come up with all five of those. Good morning to you. Good Monday morning if you’re ready for it. I’m Dan Kawachovich 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, hey, both of those teams are in first place. Go ahead and check out my daily shots of Steelers and Penguins if you want to put yourself in a better mood than what this show usually would leave you in. Five teams ready. Colorado Rockies, Tampa Bay Rays, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres’s founded all the way back in 1969. And yeah, the Brewers, who’ve made it to the National League Championship Series, were founded all the way back themselves in 1970. They’d only been to one World Series ever, and that was in 1982. And you can see when you’re there at American Family Field, high at top the roof out in left field, there’s a marker for it. And it’s actually, truth be told, it’s kind of a sorry empty looking thing. But they’re one series away and they entered these playoffs with the best record in the majors. So you could argue for whatever it’s worth that this is the best chance they’ll have had in their franchise’s history. I’ll go back only five and a half years for a pivotal moment in both franchises history, meaning the Pirates and the Brewers to when Bob Nutting and Travis Williams and they were conducting these interviews together, a class of applicants had been assembled through a search firm. That’s standard operating procedure. That’s an easy way to make sure that you’re vetting people before they come in and some, you know, skeleton falls out of their closet and everybody gets embarrassed. But by the end, by the time there are finalists, however many finalists there might be, it’s up to the people with the team who are making that choice. And I’ll repeat that those were Nutting and Williams. I reported at the time that the process had been reduced to just two to just Ben Sherrington and Matt Arnold. Arnold at the time was a lieutenant in the Milwaukee organization, assistant GM, who’d become known around baseball, who’d become respected, who’d been seen as one of those upand cominging types that somebody’s going to get their hands on and be really lucky. So, while his name wasn’t and really probably isn’t known by, you know, the general baseball fandom, the people who work in those circles all knew about him. No secrets. On November 14 of 2019, as this process was nearing its conclusion, I wrote in a column for the DK Pittsburgh Sports app while on location in Cleveland covering the Pirates series at the time the following as the lead beneath a headline that said Arnold right choice for GM. I wrote, “Within the next week or so, Bob Nutting and Travis Williams will have wound up their process to fill the Pirates vacancy at general manager, and they’ll choose, barring some late surprise, between Ben Cherington and Matt Arnold.” Here’s hoping it’s the latter, because it couldn’t be clearer that a complete break is needed from the recent past. and above all because it couldn’t be clearer that Arnold brings the most compelling, most dynamic skill set for this particular challenge. Now, I proceed to say that I’d give whoever it is that gets the job a fair chance. That’s just something that I feel is the right thing to do in the columnist role. But then I say, and going verbatim again, I’d be dishonest if I didn’t open by disclosing that I’ve heard from lots of good, trusted people in the baseball community in the past 48 hours that Cherington would basically represent a continuation of the Neil Huntington tenure. Quote, “Neil 2 is what you’d get.” One American League executive texted me late Tuesday night. You know the rest. You know that Nutting and Williams hired Cherington. This after both individuals flew into Pittsburgh the same week that I wrote that column to meet face tof face with Nutting and Williams at PNC Park. And you further know where all this went from here. You know about all the awards that Arnold’s won. You know about all the games that the Brewers have won. And you know about the spectacular failure that the Pirates have experienced under Cherington at every level and every facet of baseball operations. But when you look back at it and you think of the countless really ramifications of this decision and how one franchise was able to benefit from it so immensely and how the Pirates were and continue to be inexplicably punished for it again and again and again like Seisphus shoving that rock up the when you think of setting ownership aside because every once in a while I bring up this subject and someone says what’s the difference he would have come here and worked under Nutting and Nutting’s problem is that he’s riskaverse and what ended up happening with Huntington and that group was that they started to show Nutting that if he invested the money it would turn into something and thus he became less riskaverse and they ended up with four consecutive cutive franchise record payrolls levels that by the way haven’t been touched since and why would they be? What would Cherington have done with Nutting’s money through these first six years that would make you think, “Oh yeah, now here’s a responsible guy.” I can’t wait to give him even more money so that he can put it into the right players. And at that point, you come back at me with all the usual, why is nothing in keeping him? And I just going to keep shrugging and saying, I have no earthly idea. But would Arnold have succeeded here? Oh my goodness, yes. If you look at the way he’s done this with the Brewers, go dig it up yourself. Find out how this 2025 playoff roster that Milwaukee’s got was constructed. Find out how little of that was the result of let’s just go and exercise unprecedented blowout spending. Their payroll is only 20 million higher than the Pirates. That’s virtually nothing in terms of difference. Arnold would have gotten a ton of young talent in here. Arnold would have gotten people who know how to evaluate baseball talent without being affixed to a spreadsheet. I’ll say it again. The data is fine. The advanced analytics are fine, but they sure as heck aren’t everything. They can’t be everything. Just such an enormous, borderline incomprehensible in scope mistake that Nutting and Williams made. We’re now about to watch the other half of it play out on a grand baseball stage when we come back. J1Q. 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. 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Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to join deleteme.com/hit. Use promo code hit at checkout. That’s hit. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com/hit and enter hit at checkout. That’s joined me.com/hitcodeh hit. [Music] Today’s J1Q comes from Andrew Reiner who says, “DK, I understand why you haven’t been watching this baseball postseason, and I’m hoping you’ll understand why I have been. I still love the drama and strategy of postseason baseball, but as I watch these games, I also keep wondering, how can the Pirates management expect their fans to believe that this team is really close to winning? Do they even believe that themselves? And watching, for example, the Blue Jays lineup against the Yankees, it was like watching a completely different sport. They take aggressive swings early in counts. They protect the plate late in counts. They hammer pitches left over the middle of the plate. And the bottom half of their lineup doesn’t just give away automatic outs. There’s no way the Pirates front office really believes that quote making bets on guys who are not proven end quote will be enough to get their offense to a playoff level. Can they? No. No. Also, no. Just no. No. No. No. Let me go to your actual questions here, Andrew, and tell you why I have a problem with the way you’re asking it. You say, “How can management expect fans to believe that the team is really close to winning?” They’ve never said that. They’ve never uttered anything of the kind, not one of the individuals that I named in that opening segment, Bob Nutting, Travis Williams, certainly not Ben Cherington, have ever said or suggested that the Pirates are close to winning. They can say that that’s their goal. And Williams of all people was the one who stressed in that awkward press conference a couple of weeks ago that they need to be in the playoffs and he made that sound as if it was some ultimatum. That’s not the same as what you’re asking about. Another problem that I have, and I’m not picking on you in any way. I’m pointing out the absurdity on their end. Okay? Just understand that part, Andrew. When you further ask do they even believe that themselves the correct question I think would be do they even care about that themselves now when I say that nutting doesn’t care about winning it’ll sound the same to a lot of people as when I say Cherington doesn’t care about winning when in fact these are very different things top priority is not and never will be winning. He’d like to do it. He’d be happy if it occurred. He was legitimately very happy from 2013 to 2015. And not just because those were the three most profitable years of his tenure as an owner. He was happy to be around people who were, you know, happy themselves. Was a much better place to go to work. But when I say that Cherington doesn’t care about winning, it’s something else entirely. He cares about his process. He sees the process meeting his approval or what he sees as his standard as the winning. So whereas you and I will think that 2025 was a complete catastrophe for a general manager in his sixth year of a tenure. He will say to you publicly after the season that what they need to do in 2026 the Pirates is to be and I quote directly more excellent. If I was doing a Saturday Night Live sketch about the Pirates, if I was one of the writers in that room up there in New York, and someone had given me all day to come up with a hilarious line to represent Cherington’s stance on how 2025 went. I would never have been able to come up with something as sharp, witty, and biting as more excellent. I appreciate hearing from you, Andrew. I appreciate everybody who listens to Daily Shot of Pirates. Don’t forget that Brewers versus Dodgers is actually a series that you and everybody else needs the Dodgers to win. No matter how much you might want to pull for the underdog, some things are just bigger and more important. The Dodgers need to win it all this year and ideally next year as well. Let’s hook up again tomorrow. [Music] with

The Brewers’ ongoing success underscores Bob Nutting’s greatest mistake.

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