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On Thursday, the Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton. On Sunday, the Rockies fired their manager, Bud Black. The Pirates had just lost seven games in a row and sat in last place in the NL Central, while the Rockies were one day removed from a 21-0 loss to the Padres, at home, that pushed their run differential to -134, twice as low as the next-worst team, the Marlins.
The Pirates made it seem like firing Shelton would be a move that would turn things around for them sooner than any other possible move, as if it was Shelton’s fault that they were the way they were, and simply elevating Don Kelly from bench coach to manager would undo that damage. The Rockies, similarly, let go of Black because what else are you going to do when you’re on pace for the worst season in modern history (and then some)?
The related point in these firings isn’t so much the performance of these clubs, but what’s supposed to be accomplished here: passing the buck. What does firing Derek Shelton do? Does it increase the Pirates’ payroll, or give them better players to write into the lineup, or improve the farm system? Does canning Bud Black make it easier for the Rockies to have even a single starting pitcher with an ERA+ north of 100? Or more than two players in the lineup who aren’t a daily embarrassment?
No, they just make it seem as if the teams are Doing Something, as if they’re being proactive in righting the wrongs, in the hopes that fans won’t think too much of the source of those wrongs. Which are, of course, the wrongs of their respective front offices, which are in turn the responsibility of the ownership groups.
Not just in the sense that Pirates’ owner Bob Nutting hired Ben Cherington to run his team, or that Dick Monfort hired Bill Schmidt, making them responsible for the actions of the men they entrusted in these roles. But also because whoever the GM is for the Pirates and Rockies is limited by their owners’ own rules about spending. The Pirates’ 2025 payroll is lower than their 2015 payroll, for instance, even though, in between, inflation has happened and a 26th roster spot has been introduced to rosters. Even though the 2025 Pirates have Paul Skenes to build around. The Rockies don’t seem to have any idea what makes a quality major-league player anymore, and while their farm system is decent enough, they need a lot more than what just that can provide, and they need it sooner than later.
Let’s rewind a bit, to earlier days of this newsletter, when Nutting fired GM Neil Huntington in October of 2019, and Monfort got rid of Jeff Bridich in 2021. On Huntington:
Nutting is being cagey about finances, as usual, and this is not a great sign following what looks like a regime change in the front office. It’s more likely just going to be a swapping out of office door name plates, since Nutting wants you to know that the financial limitations that are definitely not an excuse are weighing the team and their decision-making down. How is this any different than the story under [president Frank] Coonelly and Huntington? The new president and GM still won’t be authorized to spend, which means different people will be making disappointing decisions going forward. Especially since the Pirates’ best chance at copying the Rays’ low-cost version of success, Chaim Bloom, was just hired by the Red Sox to be East Coast Andrew Friedman.
What Nutting is looking for then, really, is a new spin on an old yarn. That’s what all of the talk about effective, “compelling” communication is about. He needs a new president and GM who will do a much better job of public relations with the fans. He needs people who will do a better job of explaining an exciting vision that’s unlikely to come to pass because of the way Bob Nutting runs his team. Fans had tired of the Coonelly/Huntington duo, who were with the organization in their positions of power for over a decade: a fresh coat of paint and no other discernible changes will surely fix a fan base that’s seen almost nothing but failure and a lack of imagination and effort for multiple decades, a fan base that staged a stadium boycott just last year and is content to watch the team at home on television, though!
And Bridich:
Monfort realizes, by way of the reaction to the [Nolan] Arenado deal, that Bridich is toxic at this point, that he’s not enjoyed by the press nor the fans, and that it was time for a change so as to get the Rockies in a better position to get away with what they’ve been up to all of this time once more. Until proven otherwise, this is no different than what the Pirates were attempting to do, except, to this point, Monfort has been smart enough to clam up and not give away the game at the initial press conference to the degree that Nutting did.
Maybe Monfort realizes that new leadership was needed because Bridich lacked the baseball mind necessary to put together a consistent, winning team. Much more likely, though, is that he needed someone new to run the same racket the Rockies have been running under his ownership for years now. They’ll compete if they can, sure, but it’s more lucrative for everyone involved if it happens by accident.
Maybe the funniest part about the Padres crushing Monfort’s Rockies 21-0 — and with a complete-game shutout by a pitcher you wouldn’t expect to see getting one — is that they are the team that the Rockies’ owner criticized for their spending, for doing things The Wrong Way. Hey, how have the Rockies done since 2023 compared to the Padres, anyway? The Padres haven’t won a World Series, no, but they also have fielded an actual professional baseball team that you can watch without questioning every life choice that brought you to that moment.
Anyway, the larger point here is that you could see the failures of teams still owned by Nutting and Monfort coming back when they swapped out their GMs for new ones who would still be handcuffed to the same organizational issues as their predecessors. Changing out their managers will have a similar result. Sure, maybe the Pirates will get a little more life under someone who hasn’t had the weight of five years of working under Nutting and in these conditions under him, and maybe getting Black out of a literally hopeless situation for someone with a little more motivation than he could possibly muster will help the Rockies lose 120 games instead of 140. They’re both still jokes, though, that treat their teams solely as a business from which they can extract profit, a carny act meant to sell tickets to rubes who don’t know any better. And since people do still inexplicably support these teams — and the Pirates are, in turn, supported by revenue-sharing — what’s the motivation to change? If you don’t care about winning, and all you care about is perception — and just how much the likes of Nutting and Monfort truly care about how they’re perceived is certainly up for debate — then what will ever force you to change?
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