Fans fire away at management about payroll, playoff hopes in Q&A session at PiratesFest
With Pittsburgh Pirates fans packing the third-floor ballroom of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, the “Ask Pirates Management” Q&A session addressed the most repeated submitted question first.
No surprise, it was pointed at payroll: What will it take, in terms of a financial commitment, to make the Pirates a winning organization once again?
“Thank you for the softball to start,” Pirates president Travis Williams said, with a laugh. “As you can tell, we did not screen questions with that as the first one.”
Where past PiratesFest Q&A panels were akin to facing the firing squad of a frustrated fan base, the front office was armed Saturday with counterpoints that had nothing to do with bobbleheads, fireworks or even touting PNC Park as the best ballpark in baseball.
The Pirates brought back fan favorite and five-time All-Star Andrew McCutchen, gave outfielder Bryan Reynolds the richest contract in franchise history in April, had the best record in the National League over the first month, signed No. 1 overall pick Paul Skenes to an MLB Draft-record $9.2 million bonus and played above .500 over the final two months to finish with a 14-win improvement in 2023.
“Commitment to win requires more than just player payroll,” said Williams, flanked on stage by general manager Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton. “There’s lots of ways we can invest within the organization to put us in a position to win. That can be through identifying talent, acquiring talent, developing talent and then obviously deploying talent on the field. Payroll, while important, is not the most important factor in terms of how we get to building a championship-caliber team for our fans.
“There’s an absolute commitment from (chairman) Bob Nutting to myself, to Ben, to Derek that we build a playoff- and championship-caliber team for this fan base. They deserve it. I know they want it. We hear it all the time. We certainly want to do that here as well, and we’re doing it every day, day in, day out, to make that happen.”
