MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Derek Shelton walked the plank on Thursday, but his walk was merely the swing gate for more walks to come, and, barring a Festivus miracle, walks that will soon come.
The Pittsburgh Pirates are 12-26 and their record has been bad since Shelton became manager six years ago. As Bill Parcells said, “You are what your record says you are,” but the Pirates’ record is not what Derek Shelton is. It’s what the Pittsburgh Pirates organization is. And the Pirates are not alone.
Naturally the Pirates’ news release announcing Shelton being “relieved” (more fact than fiction) was dominated by lovey-dovey from general manager Ben Cherington and team owner Bob Nutting (blech!), because folks genuinely like Derek Shelton, and to create a shiny object in an attempt to gloss over ownership’s continued unwillingness to spend on payroll – the latter of which anyone who has lately worked for a newspaper chain, something Nutting has owned longer than he has the Pirates, understands completely.
It’s not about profit, mind you; it’s about profit margin. There is blood in that turnip, dammit!
Previous bench coach Don Kelly is the new manager of the Pirates and he is a Pittsburgh native, former Pirate, as well as a former player for Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland in Detroit, which Nutting went out of his way to make sure was in the statement.
Based on his credentials, it seems like Kelly is a guy who has earned a shot at a big-league manager’s job, and here’s to his finding great success with the Pirates and for the city of Pittsburgh. But the story of this tale is no more about Don Kelly than it was about Derek Shelton. Nor will it be about Buck Britton when he succeeds Brandon Hyde sometime this summer (or spring).
Managers pay the price when the general managers or, in the Pirates’ case, the owners do poor jobs and the players play poorly top to bottom – or just aren’t very good.
Honestly, what has the Pirates organization done since Nutting took over to show any commitment to winning?
The Pirates have won 80 games in a season just four times in 35 years, and Nutting, who became the principal owner in 2007, has not signed a free agent to a multi-year contract since 2017, nearly two years before he hired Shelton and Cherington, who came to Pittsburgh with a stellar baseball reputation and track record.
Kelly, though, is an interesting hire for the Bucs, because he’s a baseball lifer who grew up to be one following the Pirates; he played for the Pirates, as well as for the great Jim Leyland, who still lives in Pittsburgh; so there’s potential here for great affinity.
Maybe Kelly can bring a fresher perspective and energy to the Pirates, who have talent, but not enough. Maybe Kelly can help the Pirates grind and be grinders the way he was to have stayed in the big leagues for as long as he did. It’s been done before. It’s been done a lot.
And though Kelly might get the needle moving this season, he, or whoever follows him, will be up against it in the long run, because for as long as Nutting owns the team, this team will not have a chance to be what so many of us are fortunate to remember Pittsburgh Pirates baseball being and meaning – and this from someone who still nightmares about 1971 and 1979.
That said, the biggest part of a manager’s job is to get the players to play better and to win baseball games. Despite the very real, unnecessary and unfortunate circumstances the Pirates, and now the Orioles, have been given to work with, playing better and winning baseball games have not been happening in Pittsburgh or, of late, in Baltimore, our very favorite cities in Two Hours from Everywhere.
So, fair or unfair, Derek Shelton isn’t going to be the last guy we know to lose his job.
When the great Edward Bennett Williams was the controlling owner of the Washington Redskins and was asked why he fired George Allen as head coach and general manager of the team, EBW, who later became the owner of the Orioles, said, “I gave George an unlimited expense account and he exceeded it.”
The current Orioles owner David Rubenstein said in early March he has “no financial limit” to building a winning team. Maybe he forgot to tell that to boy-genius general manager Mike Elias, but, as we used to say in the ‘70’s, I kind of doubt it.
Either way, Brandon Hyde will end up being the receipt. Or, rather, the change.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT