Pirates fans have spent years treating a $100 million payroll like a mythical creature — rumored, debated, and never actually spotted in the wild under Bob Nutting. But now, thanks to the Marcell Ozuna deal, Pittsburgh is finally flirting with a franchise-record number that used to feel downright impossible.
Ozuna’s signing is a flashing payroll siren. Once you stack his money onto everything else, the Pirates are suddenly living in the $105 million neighborhood, and the bigger deal is what that number means: a psychological barrier Pirates fans stopped believing in is getting broken in real time.
For a fanbase conditioned to expect bargain-bin winters, this is whiplash. There’s been a long-running, justified grievance that the Pirates operate like a small-market team even when they don’t have to, living near the bottom of the league in Opening Day payroll far more often than is defensible. Pittsburgh has landed bottom-five in Opening Day payroll 16 of the previous 19 seasons. That’s an organizational identity.
Pirates reaching $105 million payroll territory is a wild twist for Nutting’s era
It’s not that $105 million suddenly makes the Pirates big spenders. It still doesn’t. But it’s finally movement. The club is acknowledging what fans have screamed for years — that “we can’t” was always more choice than circumstance.
The cynical take (and honestly, the smart one until proven otherwise) is that this is just optics. A one-year Ozuna commitment is clean, controllable, and easy to sell. If it works, great: you bought thunder for the middle of the order. If it doesn’t, it’s over fast, and you can pretend the lesson was “free agency is risky.”
But on the other side, the Pirates haven’t even sniffed these numbers since that 2016 era when the club openly expected payroll to top $100 million. If they’re back here now, fans aren’t wrong to wonder if something real is shifting.
Still, the burden of proof is on Nutting. Hitting a payroll benchmark is not the same thing as acting like a franchise with intent. If this winter ends with a record payroll and the same old roster holes papered over by fliers and platitudes, fans will treat this like a temporary glitch.
Pirates fans can enjoy the fact that a number you never believed in is suddenly on the board. But don’t throw a parade for the minimum of what trying should look like.