9-28-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter
I’m going to write a lot about what these other smaller market teams have done today in this piece, and before I even start, there is one big reason we all know that sets them apart. It’s of course Bob Nutting, but more specifically than just being cheap, it’s his unwillingness to trust the potential reward for investment and an inability to absorb risk even at a very high odds position.
Tell you what, you know what he is, you know what he does, let’s start looking at some other franchise’s who we consider “small market”. What did they do? What have they invested? Is it just smart hires? We’ll do that for a bit, see what we learn and apply it back to our good ole miser.
Lets keep this fairly modern too, like back to 2010’s, there’s no need to be jumping back 3-4 GM’s and 2-3 Owners.
The Milwaukee Brewers
They’ve been in the playoffs 6 of the last 7 seasons, still yet to win a World Series as a franchise. Payroll has fluctuated from low points around 68 million to peaks of 135 million. Nothing crazy, and they’re actually a slightly smaller media market than Pittsburgh.
Mark Attanasio is a terrific owner, a true civic partner in Milwaukee. Rumblings that the Brewers might relocate were quickly squashed because rather than just holding his hand out to his city that is not thriving financially and threatening to move somewhere that would pay for his ballpark that doesn’t need improvements, he put up 150 Million from the team and partnered with the city and fans to ensure the Brewers would play there through at least 2050.
I’m sorry, I’m passionate about how very much so an owner in a non cap league can make a difference, and how often this one has overseen some really good baseball teams.
Some Brewers fans would probably prefer they spend even a tic more to try harder for a World Series (at least my Brewers fan friends) but they win, a lot and coming from my perspective as a Pirates fan, it’s very hard for me to imagine it not being better.
They’ve hired good GMs and allowed them to cultivate internal candidates to become GMs elsewhere or in some cases, take over right there in Milwaukee. The owner’s flexibility to spend when needed and the GMs ability to develop the talent the draft and trade for into quick turnaround replacement players is next to none.
They aren’t afraid to dish out a bigger contract when it’s warranted and even when it mostly looks like an albatross such as Christian Yelich, they find a way to make it ok. Shrewd moves to acquire MLB help that were blocked like William Contreras or Willy Adames for peanuts. Go back farther and they traded a bunch of prospects for Christian Yelich before extending him to a mega deal taking a swing at a star since they didn’t have any internally coming, and it really worked one year.
The culture works because everyone involved wants to win, for them, for their profits too of course, but legitimately for the city of Milwaukee and the fans. They don’t spend what they can so much as spend what they need and make good deals when they have to make one they don’t really want to make.
Good, well run organization.
Maybe the best word, sustainable. Every year they lose stars, every year they create new ones and when necessary, they sign one to plug a hole they failed to prepare for. They’re the Rays with a soul for their fans.
Cleveland Guardians
Paul Dolan is a cautious owner, but one who recognizes a moment, or a special player and steps up periodically to make sure his team keeps them and he’s never been afraid to recognize a down year and their limitations to authorize his GM to do what’s necessary.
MLB does have a financial imbalance problem, but much like our last team, the Guardians will allow stars to stay there when it’s a special player and he’s willing to work with them too of course.
Trading players doesn’t always mean a step back for the Guardians, in fact it often looks a lot more like recognizing a trend and selling high on something instead of a costly extension or arbitration award.
As a Pirates fan, I’ve certainly seen this tried enough, but think back, the Pirates almost always do it a year too late. This might not sound great, but you almost have to do it when it’s going to piss people off or it’s too late to get the kind of value you want, the kind that probably returns something you can use quickly along with a few pieces that might be something later.
The Guardians have done this with pitching for years, and they certainly did it with Lindor. It’s not like they “won” the trade, but they got players back who stepped right in and they coached the shit out of them.
They’ve had great coaching to make the most of every drop of talent, and while it hasn’t lead to any World Series, the Guardians have made the playoffs 5 out of the last 10 years and their payroll has fluctuated from 53 Million to 155 Million or so.
Again, a well run organization. They do what they can, fans support them when they win, not so much when they don’t and there will be valleys here and there with this org, but they’re the kind of valleys you can see both edges of, unlike the Pirates where you at times can’t see the high on either side any longer.
It certainly wasn’t always this way, certainly wasn’t for the Brewers either, more on that later.
The Kansas City Royals
A little shorter on this one, mainly because I’d really rather focus on perennial playoff participants for this piece for all out praise and analysis. Instead, I’m just going to talk about how they got here, it’s yet to be determined if they’ll sustain it like our first two although inking a generational kid like Bobby Witt Jr. is a nice sign that they intend to try.
The Royals have for years in the eyes of the baseball world spent money when it seemed like a very strange idea to do so. I mean, they’d have like 1 or 2 players worth a crap and sign some high second tier free agent type to a couple year deal.
Sure, they’d trade the guy eventually, but in the process they brought back some really nice players who have lead their charge to the playoffs, helped out by a historically bad Chicago White Sox Team so the division will produce 3 playoff teams this year.
There is reason to expect the Royals are just getting started, but it’ll be years before we know how well they keep it together or transition around Bobby Witt as he spans windows.
It’s been ten years for the Royals, so as rebuilds go, they’ve had a few stutter starts and they will likely lose two key contributors who delivered more than anyone including them. Bottom line, they brought in temporary help for the rotation to augment their youngsters who performed very well too, and to repeat their performance, they’ll likely have to back fill these spots, and they’ve proven they will, but taking runs at guys to over perform is a hard to replicate effort.
Detroit Tigers
The Tigers were supposed to come out of their rebuild years ago. They had a mass of youngsters from high drafting lined up and on the cusp of making the show, so they went out and bought themselves some free agent help to make a splash, and announce to the league they and their young pitching staff were back and to be taken seriously.
Javi Baez was the biggest of such signings, but his completely terrible performance and near constant injuries to their top end prospects essentially left the Tigers with some high priced vets either finishing out the string like Miguel Cabrera or the formerly mentioned Baez just taking a paycheck to be bad at baseball.
Well, those arms are slowly getting healthy and their poor play has lead to even more picks to augment their core.
They reached on a historic end of the season push in 2024, repeating it won’t be easy as the Guardians and Royals look to be poised to stay competitive for a while, the Twins are always floating around .500 and the White Sox won’t be this bad again next year, that low water mark lasted as long as it did in this game for a reason.
Point is, I can’t tell you the Tigers are back, I can’t even tell you if they’ll do it again next year.
So Back to Our Ownership
I could have kept going, Baltimore has obviously made a move, but they have a brand new ownership and I have no clue what they’ll do moving forward. They managed to acquire a ton of prospect depth, but the bill is coming due on some major contributors to their effort and I don’t see the pitching help coming to survive losing what it looks like they’re poised to lose.
Again, this owner could be different and they could go out and keep Anthony Santander or Corbin Burnes. Maybe they go pay for the bullpen help they’ve needed all year, maybe they trade some of that offensive talent for pitching. I just don’t know and again, I wanted to keep this more perennial winners, we have yet to see if Baltimore belongs there, all we know is they took 10-15 years of epic losing and fostered it into a very productive system.
What the Pirates have tried to do here is no different than any of these teams.
First, they all tried to stink, yes, even the Brewers way back when. Yes, Houston did too, Baltimore, Detroit, KC, Tampa, the Marlins, even the Braves. Every single one of them tried to stink so they could get themselves in better position to draft high end talent.
They all tried to invest heavily in some Latin American Country for more effective international signings.
Each and every one of them thought to themselves, they’d have to develop most of their “stars” if they were going to have them.
The real difference is throughout the years the Pirates have not spent enough money to help the MLB product succeed when the development failed. For Bob Nutting and the Pirates, every cycle like this will bring talent, and it’ll be enough to have the team reach the playoffs. Yes, I mean to tell you if they make no changes and just play out the string for the next couple years, this team will make the playoffs, maybe as early as next year, but Nutting has almost always failed to make it more of a sure thing.
His spending cost them opportunities in 2012 and 2016. The years bookending their playoff seasons last decade. A little spending on either side, and I’m not talking crazy, just up to the 130 territory and they probably add one playoff year to either end.
If you want to know the biggest difference, that’s it. Hiring executives of course has a large role, but even that goes back to the money a bit.
See, I don’t care who you are, or how you tell your story, if your plan is to spend as little as possible for 4 or 5 years, do little more than ship out veteran performers for prospects and wait, you will have officially hired a “Dumb” GM. Probably a really dumb coach too.
You can’t ask anyone to lose for 4 or 5 years and then expect them to be seen as anything less than losers.
It’s fair to conclude Cherington and Shelton are both failures. It’s also unfair to refuse to acknowledge they lost for 4 seasons by design. Mandated design. See Bob wants a system that will replenish itself, not unlike the Rays, but he also wants to retain some players so fans think he’s trying. Problem is, that’s usually the players who either don’t have a ton of options, or are willing to take less to be here.
Money is a problem, and it will be until such a time as they show us it isn’t. Money provides flexibility to adjust to sudden losses of personnel, or to swing a trade of a player they don’t want to part ways with knowing they can competently back fill the spot and acquire something else they needed in the process.
This deadline Ben Cherington was tasked with adding to this team, but not the payroll. Then we fans look at his product for those trades wondering how he thought they’d help bring a playoff run in 2024.
Truth is, he probably didn’t. Fact is, if he were given the ability to add to payroll significantly, he probably targets someone else.
I honestly hate hearing things as simplified as “Bob needs to spend” because yes, of course he does, but we also should be aware enough about MLB to know a team in a market like this is absolutely going to have things fall in such a way where it simply doesn’t make sense to throw good money after bad, the problem with Bob is that threshold so far hasn’t existed.
Bottom line, Bob lacks the willingness to take a risk knowing that good baseball brings higher revenue witch leads to higher payrolls, he refuses to make the investments that would create that environment. Worse, when he gets to the point where the team is actually primarily built internally, he lacks the foresight to take a risk and sign some guys who might stop being great players by the end of the deal, and that’s if he’ll pay arbitration figures for a generational talent.
This team can win. And everything I said tends to point the finger at Bob, but it doesn’t excuse Ben Cherington or his staff either. What I’m saying is Bob makes it hard to fairly evaluate any GM they hire, because they are often forced to make dumb moves for financial reasons as opposed to winning baseball games.
Maybe that’s the moral of the story.
When faced with a choice of spending a bit more than is comfortable or starting over, Bob almost always chooses starting over while his competitors often choose shooting their shot.
This Pirates team can win as early as next year, but to have it last, they’ll need to hit on extensions at a better rate than they have so far. 1 out of 3 performing like you expect isn’t good enough. They’ll need to invest in filling the holes that are there and being fine with wasting some money here and there. And lastly, they need to coach and develop what they do bring in much more effectively.
Maybe none of that is in Cherington’s skill set, maybe the truth is under this ownership, getting lucky is the best we can hope for. Some of these other small market teams are in the same boat, some are perennial winners. It can be done, but not until or if the owner is a partner with his GM instead of a boss paying attention to his bottom line.
Steel City Pirates 