*Please Note This Is Satire*

I usually write serious articles. This is not one of them.

Trash talk has been an integral part of baseball since its inception.

All the way back in 1912, Ty Cobb ran into the crowd during a game to beat up a fan who was yelling some … less than savory things at him.

To be very clear, I don’t condone violence, nor racism, nor ableism. I do, however, support the First Amendment and the inalienable right to talk sh*t.

As a baseball fan, you yourself probably talk at least a little trash. Even the most mild-mannered of Brewers fans has said something less than kind about an umpire, or Jesse Winker, or Manny Machado. I know it’s always better to take the high road, and I encourage you, reader, to do so as much as possible.

However, if you’re going to talk trash, do it well. Do it effectively.

This guide is for those of you who like talking trash about our division rivals. This is for the Brewers fans who want to make sure that their Cubs fan coworker thinks twice before referring to AmFam Field/The Field Formerly Known As Miller Park as “Wrigley North.” Next time your buddy from college won’t shut up about how great Paul Skenes is, or about how *insert NL Central team here* won a World Series before the Brewers, come back and find this article. I promise it’ll inspire you.

Welcome back to the 2025 Haters’ Guide to the NL Central. Without further ado, the Pittsburgh Pirates:

Pittsburgh Pirates

Owner: Bob Nutting, the front-runner for the 2025 Worst Owner In Baseball Not Named John Fisher Award. Nutting has been nicknamed “Bottom-Line Bob” for his unwillingness to spend. Brewers’ owner Mark Attanasio and Reds’ owner Bob Castellini both rank bottom five in net worth among MLB owners. Nutting is closer to Astros’ owner Jim Crane than Attanasio and closer to White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf than Castellini. The Pirates are spending nearly $30 million less on payroll than the Brewers ($87.6 million to Milwaukee’s $115.1 million) despite Nutting being worth over a billion dollars ($400M+ more than Attanasio and $700M+ more than Castellini).

That level of cheapness is a sin in and of itself. However, Nutting isn’t just cheap, he’s also greedy. Nutting has repeatedly insulted the legacy of one of baseball’s most storied franchises by prioritizing profits.

Since 1999, fans of the Pirates have had the opportunity to purchase engraved bricks — called Bucco Bricks — outside of PNC Park. It was a cool idea — for a couple hundred bucks, you could put your name (or the name of your late father) on a brick that would be outside PNC Park presumably forever. Bricks usually last a long time.

Proceeds also went to benefit the Roberto Clemente Foundation (dedicated to humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and funding sports teams for low-income and at-risk youth). The Bucco Bricks were removed before the 2025 season and discovered in a landfill, (rightfully) enraging Pirates fans and anyone else who cares about morals.

The Pirates (read: Nutting) replaced the Roberto Clemente logo on the right field wall with an advertisement for Surfside Hard Iced Tea. Why honor your franchise GOAT who died tragically on the way to deliver humanitarian aid to a developing country when you can make a few thousand bucks instead?

Nutting also screwed over former Brewer fan favorite Rowdy Tellez — cutting him with six games left in the season. Tellez, who’d played for the Pirates all year, just so happened to be four at-bats away from a $200,000 bonus. Of course, that didn’t factor into the decision to cut Tellez at all. How can you expect a guy like Paul Skenes to stay with an organization like that? Justice for Rowdy.

The people of Pittsburgh deserve better.

Manager: Derek Shelton Don Kelly. Kelly, a Pittsburgh native, is married to Neil Walker’s sister. Due to the Pittsburgh connections and the fact that things can’t really get much worse, Kelly will definitely get more love than Shelton did.

Shelton isn’t really worth mentioning, even though I wrote a whole blurb on him before the Pirates sacked him. Based on his time with the Pirates (zero winning seasons and a .410 win percentage, third-worst ever among managers who lasted five years), he’s not going to be a manager again for a very long time.

President of Baseball Ops: Theo Epstein-trainee Ben Cherington. The Epstein baseball ops tree is like the Sean McVay coaching tree, but with even more open nepotism and fewer results (see: Jed Hoyer).

Don’t take it from me, though. From a top 1% commenter on the Pirates’ Reddit:

“These two bums (the other being Derek Shelton) won’t be getting jobs anywhere once they’re fired here because they have completely crapped themselves every single year they’ve been here. We’re in year 6 of ben cherington and we got guys like valdez, frazier, canario, pham, etc giving us daily AB’s. We got a prospect system that has 0 bats in it and the prospects we did have in endy, davis, jack, nick, etc etc look like busts and in nicks case he’s been mediocre and injury prone. It’s a disaster beyond recognition and this team is an embarrassment to the city of Pittsburgh.”

Unlike on Brewers social media, nobody is pushing back in defense of their front office. They all think Cherington sucks. One of the top comments says it would be more accurate to change “worst GM in Pirates history” to “worst GM in the history of Major League Baseball.”

Cherington’s Pirates are on pace to win 51 games this year. The Pirates don’t have a single Cherington-drafted-and-developed position player in the lineup. Not great. No, he doesn’t get credit for Paul Skenes. You should have put your foot down about Rowdy, Ben. That’s on you too.

Position Players Worth Mentioning: I have a friend from the Pittsburgh area who’s a huge football fan and a very, very casual baseball fan (tracks). Dude thought Oneil Cruz was Elly De La Cruz for at least two years — don’t ask me why. Tall? Dreads? Shortstop? Cruz? Imagine his disappointment when I explained that no, Elly De La Cruz is not a Pirate, that’s a different guy.

Bryan Reynolds (career .274/.348/.464) has made two All-Star teams with the Pirates and is probably their best position player. This season, he’s hitting close to his weight (205 pounds, if you’re curious) with a 76 OPS+. Pretty representative of how the season’s gone so far in Pittsburgh.

Andrew McCutchen is still hitting third, just like it’s 2013. Cutch is sitting at a 110 OPS+ despite being roughly 55 years old. He’ll at least deserve a conversation for the Hall of Fame, and it’s cool to see him finish his career with the team that he won an MVP with.

Pitchers Worth Mentioning: Paul Skenes. At least until Livvy Dunne decides that she doesn’t want to live in Pittsburgh anymore.

The Ballpark: Apparently, the Thunderdome. The two headlines I’ve seen about PNC Park in the last couple weeks are:

“Fan falls from stands at PNC Park”

“Ballpark usher whips Pirates fan with belt during altercation”

The Fans: That usher who beat up a fan, then whipped him with his belt? He did so because the fan (and some other goon) was sexually harassing a female concession worker. Shoutout to the usher, the guy deserves a promotion.

Pirates fans are still 500 million times better than Steelers fans. Maybe that’s because the Pirates aren’t good enough to be that passionate about.

The City: I’ve never been to Pittsburgh, so I called in a favor from a friend from college who moved out there for a job. He said mostly good things. Good food scene, cool industrial bones, up-and-coming nightlife. Primanti Bros. apparently is worth the hype. My additions to the “Pittsburgh good” list: Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller (RIP), Mark Cuban (no, he isn’t from Dallas).

My buddy did say that he’s never seen as many potholes as he has in Pittsburgh. He lived in West Oakland for a while. Also, apparently, the air smells like “burning plastic.” The American Lung Association consistently ranks Pittsburgh as one of the top 10 most polluted cities in America, though it’s not even top 65 in population.

Next up: St. Louis Cardinals