Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.
Regular followers here know my stance on a salary cap and the basic, one-line summary is: The problem isn’t owners that spend a lot, it’s owners who spend too little.
Every time there’s a discussion about a potential salary cap, the strongest pushback against my side that I get always seems to come from people who just happen to live in Pittsburgh.
There’s an important intersection here. I understand that Yinzers could easily look at their Penguins and Steelers and come away with the conclusion that a salary cap would solve many of MLB’s ills. Those more well-versed in the Pittsburgh baseball team, however, could see right through that superficial line of thought to the biggest problem with the Pirates. He’s named Bob Nutting.
There has been one excellent point over the years made to me from Pirates fans and it’s that a salary cap would inevitably also come with a salary floor and said floor would force Nutting to spend more. And on this point we agree: the root of the problem is the owner refusing to spend more money on his product for the fans, who double as his customers. Even if he claims to value his customers, his actions say otherwise.
Let’s just zero in on the circumstances behind the 2025 Pirates.
They have three quality players on club-friendly deals, long-term. Two-time All-Star Bryan Reynolds is signed to an eight-year, $106.75 million contract through 2030 with a club option for 2031. All-Star starting pitcher Mitch Keller is on a five-year, $77 million deal through 2028. Gold Glove third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes has an eight-year, $70 million contract through 2029 with a club option for 2030.
Now, let’s also note the presence of star-caliber talent like Oneil Cruz, Jared Jones and, of course, Paul Skenes. All three are in pre-arbitration, which means they won’t even make a million bucks this year. The three are going to combine to make $2.4 million this season, a veritable steal for the front office.
The Pirates this last week signed Andrew Heaney to a $5.25 million deal. Woo hoo! The only other salaried player is Isiah Kiner-Falefa at $7.5 million. The Pirates only have six players in arbitration and only closer David Bednar ($6.6 million) is set to make more than $3 million from that group.
It’s little more than a bare bones payroll, really.
They aren’t even too far away from contending. In fact, you could call them a contender right now for 2025. They were 76-86 last season and that was with only 23 Skenes starts and 22 from Jones, not to mention off years from Keller and Hayes — which included time lost to injury — and Bednar totally falling apart.
If everyone mentioned gets a full season and plays to their potential, the Pirates will get better.
The NL Central is open for the taking, too. The Brewers were great last season and should never be counted out, but they are far from a juggernaut. The Cubs are better than last year but have won 83 games two straight seasons and shouldn’t be too imposing. Sure enough, the Cubs are projected by FanGraphs to win the Central with the Brewers in second, but it’s with 84 wins and 81 wins, respectively. The Pirates are projected for 78, sitting only six games back.
Therein lies the rub. The Pirates have an excellent payroll situation with all that cheap talent and should have been in position to strike with a big offseason and take advantage while Skenes, in particular, but also Cruz and Jones, are cheap.
Instead, the Pirates’ offseason additions were Tommy Pham (minor-league deal) and Spencer Horwitz (already injured). They also added Adam Frazier to the bench and Caleb Ferguson and Tim Mayza to the bullpen. Finally there was the quality, late-offseason addition of Heaney.
As things stand, the Pirates are set to have a lower payroll than last season and rank 26th in baseball. The only teams behind them are the Athletics, Rays, White Sox and Marlins. There are decent reasons for each of those four teams to have paltry payrolls. The Pirates don’t quite have one, aside from the normal “small market” cries of poverty. Here I’ll point out the smallest market in baseball is Milwaukee and the Brewers have a payroll for 2025, at present, that is about $20 million higher than the Pirates’.
Why didn’t the Pirates try harder to improve the club, especially with the team looking like it’s so close to being a strong contender and with this underpaid talent on hand?
Well, the answer is two words: Bob Nutting.
Again, they barely did anything. Did they try to make more moves and just lost out? It’s hard telling, but general manager Ben Cherington said Friday, regarding the possibility of moves to come, “we’re not on the doorstep of anything.”
Pretty well sums it up.
What could the Pirates have done? Well, they could have tried to trade for Garrett Crochet like the Red Sox did. The Padres were known at one point to be trying to shed salary by dealing Dylan Cease or even Michael King (and still might be!). How nice would a Skenes-Cease-Keller-Jones top four in the rotation look?
There were plenty of free agents who could have been within the Pirates’ reach. Jack Flaherty signed a two-year, $35 million contract. Joc Pederson agreed to a two-year, $37 million deal. Christian Walker went for three years and $60 million. Gleyber Torres signed a one-year deal worth $15 million while Jurickson Profar took a three-year, $42 million deal.
We could keep going. We don’t need to break down if any of these deals would have worked for the Pirates, because it doesn’t matter. They’ve voluntarily made themselves irrelevant in free agency — even small deals like Torres and Flaherty took — because Nutting won’t pay.
And he can absolutely afford any one of these deals and likely more than that.
He just doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t care enough about the great fans of Pittsburgh. They deserve better.
What a pathetic offseason for a pathetically run franchise thanks to a pathetic owner.
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