Is baseball dead in Pittsburgh?

Feel free to let me know if I’m being dramatic.

The Pittsburgh Pirates season is falling apart right in front of everyone’s eyes, with the seams that hold the organization together unravelling one day at a time. With a 12-26 record, the team finally pulled the trigger on firing manager Derek Shelton, but it all may be too little too late. This is one of the worst calendar years for Pittsburgh sports as a whole, but the Steelers and the Penguins always seem to bounce back in the hearts of fans far better than the Buccos do. With that in mind, is it fair to say that baseball is dead in Pittsburgh?

Starting at the top, Bob Nutting is one of if not the worst owner of a professional sports team in North America. 2024 saw the Pirates with the second-lowest payroll in baseball, a clear indicator that ownership is not committed to building a competitive team. The biggest free-agency move that the team made was a 50-year old Andrew McCutchen for another one-year nostalgia deal. Otherwise Spencer Horwitz was supposed to be the first baseman of the future, and has yet to even see the field as a Pirate.

The amount of times a home game has been in the gutter, and the fans start chanting “sell the team” has been more often than not this season. The affirmation made by Nutting during Pirates Fest that he would not be selling the team only makes the situation worse. This is the city of champions we’re talking about, not the city of treading water. I wish I could say the Pirates are treading water, when realistically they are drowning.

News broke Thursday that the team had officially relieved Derek Shelton of his duties, and boy was it the greatest news we’ve had in years. Albeit the team’s issues were not all his fault, but he was just a flat-out bad manager. It felt like at points this season that everyone could see what was coming, except Shelton. Over the course of his Pirates tenure, Shelton had a historically insignificant record of 306-440. There is not another example that even comes close to that kind of mediocrity being tolerated for so long in sports.

“There is a lot of baseball left to be played, Nutting said. We need to act with a sense of urgency and take the steps necessary to fix this now to get back on track as a team and organization.”

These two components, combined with the poor product that has been seen on the field has largely killed this team before May could even really get underway. The team ranks near the bottom of baseball in nearly every offensive category with no signs of getting much better. The team has scored a total of five runs over their past five contests, as they have fallen into a seven-game losing skid. The road ahead is not getting any easier, as they have the Braves, Mets, and Phillies over their next nine games.

Stadium attendance has dwindled in recent weeks, with the team averaging around 16,000 per home contest, nearly 5,000 down from last year. PNC Park can hold up to 38,747 people for baseball games, so the fact that they’re not even filling half the seats in America’s best ballpark is enough of an indication of how the fanbase feels about the team. Just being in the stadium isn’t safe these days, with one fan tragically falling 21 feet and temporarily slipping into a coma, and another inciting a brawl with a PNC Park employee. This team is just a lightning rod for controversy.

Pittsburgh historically has had great baseball memories, but it’s been a long long time since something really significant happened for the black and gold. Paul Skenes, who is only in his second season, said ahead of the campaign that he’s tired of hearing about the 2013 Pirates teams being the last time the club was successful. He and the other young core players that they have are trying to make new great memories and pave the way for this generation of Pirates’ baseball. However, even the reigning NL Rookie of the Year can only do so much, as the team is 3-5 when he’s on the mound, even though he has a respectable 2.77 ERA.

There’s so much wrong with this team, and not nearly enough going right. I hate being dramatic about these things, but what’s happening to the Pirates is what the Athletics and the White Sox have been experiencing for years. The numbers reflect that people just are not tuning in, not spending their time and money at the ballpark, and people’s hearts just don’t belong to this team like it used to. It’s an epic downswing from where we could be, but for now, it doesn’t get much lower than Pirates baseball.

Hopefully someone great like Jim Leyland can deliver a eulogy at the team’s funeral, but even he’s not safe from a brawl in the Burgh. Rest in Peace to the Pirates’ 2025 season.