Weird Fishes

A closer look at the Pittsburgh Pirates

The beginning of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” starts with a quick, haphazard-paced drum beat, before abruptly shifting gears into a slow, steady, classic pace for the rest of the song.

It’s not unlike what appears to be happening with the 2025 Pittsburgh Pirates.

After starting their season with a disappointing 2-7 record, the Pirates hit a smooth, steady groove the last two games. Literally, they started hitting.

Monday night’s 8-4 victory over the division rival St. Louis Cardinals saw the Pirates pick up ten hits, with Joey Bart’s first home run leading off the scoring.

Bart, Andrew McCutchen, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa each had two hits and combined for six RBIs. Endy Rodriguez also had a two hit game, while Ke’Bryan Hayes continues to hit the ball hard, with a 100 MPH RBI single in the second inning.

For all of the fan angst directed at the Pirates’ front office, you’d be crazy not to follow where this team leads.

Carmen Mlodzinski gave up one run in five innings in his second start of the year. Thomas Harrington came on to close out the final four innings. He allowed a few runs, but had plenty of run support to work with, and never let the Cardinals get back in the game.

Those two young pitchers were planned depth for a starting pitching group which will lead this team all year.

The offense has been off to a slow start, but tonight showed there is enough talent to compete. In light of my article yesterday about how the Yankees lineup offers more forgiveness to their hitters, Oneil Cruz was robbed of at least one hit on a hard hit ball in his 0-for-3 night. And the Pirates still scored eight runs. It’s nice when forgiveness works in their favor.

While the offense might be streaky at times, and while the bullpen lacks a current shutdown leverage guy, this team isn’t short on the talent needed to win.

The Pirates are now 4-7, with Paul Skenes on the mound tomorrow, giving them a great chance for their first winning streak of the year.

Pirates fans could lament about how everybody leaves, if they get the chance.

I think it’s more constructive to consider that this team may have hit the bottom and escaped.

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BASEBALL OPERATIONS EXPANSIONS

There’s been a narrative spreading through Pittsburgh’s media about how the Pirates are spending the limited resources they have.

On Monday, Pirates’ pre-game host Dan Zangrilli went on 93.7 The Fan and mentioned that a “big chunk of the Pirates’ budget” was spent on baseball operations jobs. This was amplified by 93.7 host Andrew Fillipponi as something he had been hearing, and in his opinion, not a good thing.

This isn’t exactly a secret held in the media. It’s become a common public complaint from at least one outlet.

Last September, when the Pirates were watching another season of losing go by, Dejan Kovacevic reported that the “real problem” with this team was that they had too many coaches in the locker room.

Part of that complaint was that the Pirates had 18 non-players inside the visiting clubhouse during a September road game.

From that DK Pittsburgh Sports report:

“And not only were these not players, they weren't even any of Shelton's coaches, all of whom had a separate room. Two were athletic trainers, and that's the norm. One was a strength coach, also the norm. But the other 15, from the best I could tell, were various versions of staffers, exercise assistants, nutritionists, video workers and more, all part of Cherington's years-long hiring spree that's brought the most bloated version of baseball operations anyone can recall.“

I’ve been in a visiting locker room in September where the Pirates had more coaches than players. This happens annually when the minor leagues end, and support staff joins the big league club. What the Pirates are doing now is a bit different.

The Pirates have expanded their baseball operations beyond traditional coaches, and Kovacevic’s report outlines the details. Exercise assistants. Nutritionists. Video analysts. These are all part of a 21st century performance staff. Kovacevic mentioned that these non-players have their own separate room added at PNC Park, so the crowded clubhouse was only an issue on the road.

In his recent special report on the Pirates’ finances, Kovacevic wrote that the Pirates were losing money, reporting the Pirates lost a little over two million dollars in 2024.

In that report, Kovacevic once again pointed out the expanded analytics group. From that article:

“Another angle's not so easy, though still tangible: When Ben Cherington was hired as GM in late 2019, he committed to a sizable expansion of the Pirates' analytics department. So it might mean something that the team's official media for 2024 showed the team employing 138 total people compared to 111 in 2019, Neal Huntington's final year as GM.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't share, from personal experience, the absurd amount of these analytics types who are omnipresent in all phases of operations. One morning in Bradenton, Fla., last month, I could count more than 20 of them roaming the fields of Pirate City ... to observe a few pitchers and catchers milling about. And don't get me started on how many of them are routinely in the road clubhouses all the way into the real games. It's like they're revving up for math competitions, not the World Series.”

Let’s do some math for a moment.

The Pirates have expanded this baseball operations staff by 27 people in the last five years. We don’t know those salaries, but if they average $100,000 per person, that’s a little over two million dollars. Coincidentally, that’s the same financial range Kovacevic says the Pirates lost in 2024.

I’m going to mention at this point that the Pirates have a long-standing grievance against them by the MLB Player’s Association, related to how much they are spending on big league payroll. The focus of the MLBPA is exclusively to fight for the players to receive a fair cut of league revenues. There is no MLB Coach’s Association. Nor is there one for nutritionists, video analysts, or the other support staff roles.

If the Pirates are losing around two million dollars, they can’t cut that from player payroll without further inciting the MLBPA.

So, it is curious to me that a certain faction of Pittsburgh sports media is campaigning against this group of staffers, who may or may not compile that estimated two million dollar loss. And I’m not even going to get into the very real possibility that this “two million dollar loss” was likely only on paper, via accounting math, and not actually a stack of cash that was burned in favor of a guy editing clips on an iPad.

While the complaints of staff expansions are focused on “old school” trivial sounding things like nutritionists, the reality is the Pirates have also expanded their actual coaching staff.

One of the best moves this offseason was the hiring of veteran pitching coach Brent Strom to be their assistant pitching coach. Strom is the perfect complement to a staff that is led by one of the best young pitchers in the game. His addition will do more for this team for years than the budget free agent the Pirates could sign if they had 27 fewer staffers.

As a side note, I recommend you check out this interview with Strom, conducted by MLB.com’s Alex Stumpf. There’s a section where Strom discusses the “old school” versus analytics mentality, giving the perfect answer that defines the difference between knowledge and understanding. That’s the type of knowledge the Pirates need to add to this organization.

The Pirates have added more knowledge with these baseball operations expansions.

As a small market franchise with a limited budget, the Pirates need to rely on younger, unproven players more than most teams. The players they rely upon for success are actively learning how to play in the majors, and the Pirates need to do whatever they can to shorten that learning curve.

Just like with any form of education, a higher teacher-to-student ratio is going to lead to better results for more students. Having specialists to do what the generalists can’t do is also going to lead to those better results.

If the Pirates are going to ever win, they need to act like a real organization. That doesn’t entail complaining about the minimal cost of support staff.

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EXPANSIONS WITHIN A SMALL MARKET

Do you know what else the Pirates expanded over the last five years? Their marketing department.

One of the first things that team president Travis Williams did when he took over was to refocus the marketing approach. The new marketing team took over the social media accounts — a role previously held by the media relations staff in the press box — and created the novel concept of a social media account to promote their own prospects, called Young Bucs.

No part of Kovacevic’s report on the Pirates’ finances dug deep into what the Pirates were spending on the employees who work on the business side, under Williams. There was hardly a mention of what Williams or the non-baseball operations side has accomplished with their expansions.

On Monday night, the Pirates couldn’t even draw 10,000 fans to PNC Park.

The young pitchers helped lead them to a victory.

The hitters came through.

And the business side was figuring out how to put a Roberto Clemente logo back on the Clemente wall, not realizing that there would be fan outrage when they plastered over it with an advertisement for a sparkling alcoholic beverage.

Look, I get it.

Pirates fans traditionally have a lot of need for alcohol when they’re watching this franchise. The ad sales department had their minds in the right place. They just didn’t put the advertisement in the right place.

The complaints about an expanded support staff are irrelevant. Nothing will prevent this team from being defined honestly during the 2025 season.

The only honesty comes from the Win/Loss column.

If they lose again this year, then every decision made by General Manager Ben Cherington will be picked over by the worms.

And that support staff with zero union support will most likely be on the financial chopping block.

But what if they’re right to expand these operations?

I’m old enough to remember the Pirates’ last winning stretch cratering in 2016, not long after their analytics department was raided. You can focus on their spending, but one of the architects of that 2013-2015 team was Mike Fitzgerald. The Pirates watched him walk away to a bigger and better role with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and they simultaneously lost the analytics edge that helped them in their best years.

It makes you wonder how things might have been different had the Pirates been spending more on baseball operations positions back then — in a year when they had the highest payroll in franchise history.

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CAPITAL UPGRADES ARE ALWAYS IN THE BUDGET

We know today that the 2016 Pirates’ MLB payroll was reduced, in order to pay for capital upgrades to Pirate City. This is all thanks to last year’s reporting from Stephen Nesbitt of The Athletic.

There’s never a lack of money when it comes to the need to expand or upgrade a facility owned by Bob Nutting.

One month ago today, plans were started in Bradenton for expansions to LECOM Park. According to The Business Observer in Florida, these expansions will include a third baseball field at the complex, which will match the dimensions of PNC Park. The expansion will also bring more seating to LECOM Park behind home plate, a new batting cage for all-weather practice, and the following additional upgrades:

*VIP parking lot expansion to the intersection of 9th and 17th street

*Grass parking for 550 cars east of the LECOM Park home clubhouse, sized for a future fourth baseball field

*New paved parking lot for 300 cars accessible from 13th Street

*Monument sign at the northwest corner of the site

All of these plans were silently announced two weeks before Kovacevic’s report that the team was losing money.

That financial report and the team’s financial woes were a heavy focus during the team’s broadcast on Opening Day. This article you’re reading right now is probably the first time you’re hearing about the planned LECOM expansions. I promise you, they will be hailed and heavily promoted when they are completed.

Ten games into the season, the narrative of an expanded baseball operations staff has begun to take hold, in concurrence with the minimal reported losses in 2024. Quick math would suggest those 27 extra staffers would probably cost around the estimated figure of what the Pirates claim they lost.

Which member of the media will dig into the cost of this next capital upgrade, while conflating how much money was diverted away from Major League payroll this time around?

How much of the team’s reported new debt taken on over the last five years came from buying the land around LECOM Park for this expansion?

The good news is that Kovacevic claims to have been privy to the team’s complete books during his site’s reporting of the financials. We already know who doesn’t need to do the digging to get these answers.

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SONG OF THE DAY

I felt like this was an appropriate way to end today’s article. Lianne La Havas with of the best covers of “Weird Fishes” you’ll find.

Thank you for reading along as this new writing project gets underway. Until the next time I go live…

-Tim Williams