I hadn’t intended on having a Friday Insider this week, hoping to take a least Thanksgiving off. But information arrived my way, and that tends to supersede all in a reporter’s life.
It’s not a massive deal, and I won’t make it such, here’s more from various sources on the Pirates’ plan toward player payroll approaching the 2026 season:
• As I reported exclusively in Insider a week ago, there’d been internal talk about payroll reaching as high as $110 million, which would be about $10 million more than the franchise record of $99,518,136 set in 2015. With that report, I acknowledged having no detail to that, as well as my own skepticism that any such increase would occur, given that the 2025 season saw a payroll of $87 million.
• Detail came this week, notably this: The $110 million top is real as real gets, but it’s not like Ben Cherington’s being encouraged to go that high, at least not at season’s outset. If he gets into the range of $95 million-$100 million, that’s fine. And if he has a very significant offensive addition he can make, and it’d require pushing him closer to $110 million, he can do that. But it’s not as if he’s operating with an open line of credit to get there. A case would have to be made to ownership that this is a bat who can make a meaningful difference.
• Let me spell that one out on my own, based on previous conversations with other: The trust in Cherington’s severely limited, as one might expect after six failed seasons.
• There’s a gap of about $25 million between the $87 million the Pirates spent last season and the $62 million they’re currently projected to spend — based on existing contracts, arbitration cases and so forth — so moving the payroll up into the aforementioned range of $95 million-$100 million would represent an overall additional $33 million-$38 million to spend.
• The clearest way to make that increase exponentially higher would be to trade Mitch Keller, who’d due $16.5 million, $18 million and $20 million over the final three seasons of his contract. I’ve expressed for months my own expectation that this’ll happen. But I’ve now heard in recent days that it might not, that the team values having at least one steady, reliable veteran presence in a rotation full of kids. We’ll see.
• I’m not suggesting Paul Skenes is exerting influence on anyone in this process, but I know for a fact Skenes would love to keep Keller as a teammate.
• Last item: I’m told Major League Baseball, which is heading toward the end of its labor agreement after the coming season, ready to push for a salary cap system — ceiling, floor, expanded revenue sharing — hasn’t had anything to do with the Pirates’ pending payroll increase. Rather, I’m further told, the urgency originates with all concerned understanding that massive change should come if 2026 becomes a seventh failed season.
• All I’ve got. Shutting back down until the weekend. I’ll have Penguins vs. Maple Leafs tomorrow night, Steelers vs. Bills the next day.
• Thanks for reading this truncated — and unexpected — edition of our franchise feature.