The 2025 Pirates Home Opener was Unlike Any I’ve Been to

4-5-25 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

There is usually a feeling of excitement leading up to events like this.

Even when the Pirates are historically bad, or, let’s be honest, that early in the season, you have little more to go on than at most a week or two of baseball, so, maybe it’s more accurate to say they look historically bad some years.

That’s not always reflective of your team. I mean, look, the Braves are 0-8 to start the season, and ain’t nobody who thinks they’ll wind up as one of the worst teams in baseball by the end of this campaign.

I could wind up wrong, but I still think this Pirates team has a chance to get to .500. And if you disagree, or even think I’m insane, that’s ok, it’s early in the season, and frankly, if I only said things based on the response I thought I might get my job would be a lot easier. I could just come on here and type sell the team, or detail how terrible such and such is every day and call it quits.

That stuff is very popular, at least with the vocal minority.

This Home Opener though, it didn’t feel right, and it started before Spring Training even began. It didn’t feel right because the team itself, meaning management on down sounded, looked, spoke in a fashion that led me to believe they were less enthusiastic about the team in 2025 than they were in 2024.

And that was while there was still time to do something about it.

There have been protests. Sell the team billboards, a flyover with a banner saying the same, t-shirts with the saying, and even walk around down town pickets. Hell they were even at Pirates Fest.

I think this is a waste of time. I’ve made that clear. I also hold them no ill will for doing it, they feel convicted and hey, it’s their money and time right? I just know they’ve aimed higher than they have munitions to hit.

The team has had this same regime since late 2019, and while I didn’t expect a World Series contender after 5 years of baseball you certainly shouldn’t be able to add a player like Paul Skenes to your team and somehow NOT feel your team is on the rise.

At the very least, you should have a good explanation of what you’re doing to ensure you don’t waste his time here. Instead, we entered 2025 with these open questions.

• Yes, Derek Shelton had losing rosters for his entire tenure, but the club really thinks he did the best he could have with those rosters?
• Ben Cherrington has yet to bring in any impact bat. Via any means. Any player on this team you would argue is one, he didn’t bring here. How can that be for anyone in his position 6 years in?
• Travis Williams made some changes to the outfield experience and opened up standing room only tickets to get more people in the stadium, yet he’s found no way to help this team monetize their position and create revenue off the field, to effect the field. The main project he started in 2020 across from PNC Park remains unfinished and the projections for what it might bring in has been adjusted down to the point it almost doesn’t matter. If Williams isn’t there to mask/alter how bad a businessman Bob Nutting is, why is he here?

And that’s just the off the field stuff.

How about on the field? You’re probably more familiar with this part.

• The team had at best a shaky closer. In 2024 they felt strongly enough about this need that they spent 10 million dollars bringing in Aroldis Chapman. This year, they add some complimentary pieces in the pen, but no hammer and the worry about Bednar was so clear, so in your face they were forced to Demote him before the Home Opener. A decision like that says one thing, they were ready to make it long before they did to do it that early. So…Why no investment here this time?
• The outfield couldn’t be more clear. You either trust Jack Suwinski to recapture 2023 minimally, or you have to go get a hitter to play corner outfield. Signing Tommy Pham answered that, here’s how… It said, we hope Jack is better, we think Jack will be better, and we don’t want to spend money to fill a role we ultimately want him to take. But that’s not how a team with almost no projectable power approaches a season they want to take a step in. Again, I’d have more respect for your choice if you simply didn’t sign Pham and flat out told me you believed in Jack. Maybe I still don’t agree, but you didn’t even sign a speedbump to hold him back.
• This team has done nothing different to remedy their poor defense or fundamentals since they fired Joey Cora. They say they do, but the mistakes keep happening. On the bases, in the field, at the plate, all of it. At the very least there should be different faces pretending to be addressing it.
• They’ve proven they can identify, develop and deploy pitchers. Their vision for good hitting is off. That’s evident from the types of talents they sign in free agency and the types of guys they trade for. Konner Griffin is the first draft pick since they replaced the group in charge of talent acquisition and it’s early but he certainly looks a lot more like the modern day picture of offensive talent in this version of MLB than most of what they’ve drafted or acquired. The funny thing is, it feels like they have drafted trying for speed and contact, but they don’t coach that way, at least not effectively. Even if they’ve fixed this, it shouldn’t have taken 5 years to identify as a big issue.
• This team spends more on the International Draft than any team in baseball. That’s verifiable, and 100% a reflection of how bad they’ve been, that’s how you get big International Pool banks folks. They invest heavily in their Dominican Academy. They have one of the top 5 Asian scouting presences in the game, and it’s netted them absolutely zero players they signed internationally being on the MLB team. Even if he worked, Ji-Hwan Bae would have been Huntington’s. Luis Ortiz was one, but he’s in Cleveland now. How the hell can you just continue to invest more than everyone, and NEVER have any success? How can you expect to succeed as a small market team if you don’t land any Soto, Rodriguez, Abreu, Robert, type players in this key area of player acquisition?
• First base has been a hole all 6 years. Patched with Free agents and waiver claims, no success. So this year, instead of upping your game and finally saying enough is enough it’s one of our very few holes we absolutely have to fill, you make a trade you should have in 2022. Spencer Horwitz could be great, really, but it’s the type of move you make to try fixing this situation early on, not when the team is supposed to be where they’re going. Same could be said for the recent Alexander Canario deal, he could be good, has power, but it’s the type of deal a team trying to get there makes, not a team that’s supposed to be there.

I could go on, easily.

This team doesn’t have a lot of money. I get and accept that.

But this team that claims everyone will be doing all the little things right, and win in the margins, behind the scenes has done nothing of the sort.

It’s not that any of us should have expected this to be a World Series team right now, but you should sure as hell be starting to see the framework for it.

A framework that makes you feel a real run is on its way probably doesn’t have you legitimately considering a 38 year old Andrew McCutchen as your 3rd or 4th best hitter.

Nothing against Cutch, but he won’t be here when this club wins again and frankly, if feels like Shelton, Cherington and Williams won’t be either.

It’s easy to see why fans are protesting, even if it’s probably something that players see, hear and hate more than the owner ever will. I’m sure Paul won’t have Sell the Team ringing in his ears at all when and if they approach him about staying around for a while longer. I’m positive that hearing those chants 8 games into a brand new season really fills them with faith and a zest to fight for us feverishly.

Don’t get me wrong, these protests aren’t the reason the season is where it is, all those bullet points are, but the Home Opener has always been when we all came together just to celebrate the game being back, the stars we do have and the promise that things have to be headed in the right direction.

This was an embarrassing event if I’m honest. I saw the face on newly acquired Canario as he trotted out to left field following Isiah Kiner-Falefa being picked off first base down 6-runs and launching a round of Sell the Team chants.

Here’s a guy with all of 45 MLB at bats, taken aback by what he’s hearing as he put on a Pirates uniform for the first time. I felt embarrassed he was made to feel that way, embarrassed that the fan base or at least some of it has been driven to this point, embarrassed a league could allow such disparity, and as I heard fans actually fighting with each other on the rotunda and in the seats, all through the concourses about who deserved what and how it was earned vs what was and wasn’t appropriate, well, that too embarrassed the hell out of me.

Yankees fans laughing at how silly and frivolous our little event was for their franchise. How much better they are as fans. Hell, I saw more than a few Yankees Jerseys with “Skenes” written in on the name plate above his number 30. A bold and predictive move that it’s awful hard to argue with.

More than anything. The body language on these players. Bro…They don’t want to play for this team. At least a lot of them.

If this continues, we’ll see a coaching change before this team gets too deep into the season. The lack of energy is palpable, the complete lack of crispness to anything they do has been apparent all Spring and now into the Regular season.

The home opener was not a good experience, right down to somehow the bathroom situation that has literally never been a problem at PNC suddenly sporting lines of humanity stretching into the concourse. It was crazy to see. I’ve been to playoff games at PNC and never seen anything like it.

Unprepared at every turn, that’s the story of this version of the Pittsburgh Pirates so far. Unprepared offensively, unprepared to practice the fundamental approach they’ve preached, and more than anything, unprepared for the reality of how far they could push fans along with an complete underestimation of the ability of the common fan to see the difference between Tommy Pham, Adam Frazier and a real beneficial free agent signing that could help the club do something more than buy time to see rookies.

There is a path to correcting this. I’m not sure they’ll have the balls to start on the project or if the right man would be in charge of it, but Shelton has to be on a hotter seat than he’s ever been, and this team must consider doing something very uncharacteristic.

Get serious about the things a small market has to succeed in, not just saying them.

The players don’t look excited. They look sluggish. They look like they accept what’s coming to them, losses.

Bringing back a coach for a 6th season who’s done nothing but lose, well, why wouldn’t they accept quickly what the team clearly has.

Culture comes from the top, not signing a guy you think yells at his teammates.

I don’t know where it goes from here, but it’s hard to see it as up with Shelton at the helm. If you can’t get them up for the Home Opener, how’s it gonna look on a Tuesday in May?