Pirates Fire Manager Derek Shelton

The Pirates announced Thursday that they’ve fired manager Derek Shelton, who’d been in his position for the past five-plus seasons. Bench coach Don Kelly has been elevated to the managerial position.

“Derek worked incredibly hard and sacrificed a lot over five-plus years. His family became a big part of the Pirates family, and we will miss that,” general manager Ben Cherington said in a statement within today’s press release. “He’s an incredibly smart, curious, and driven baseball leader. I believe he was the right person for the job when he was hired. I also believe that a change is now necessary. I wish Derek and his family all the best in their next chapter.”

Shelton, 54, was hired by the Pirates in the 2019-20 offseason, replacing longtime skipper Clint Hurdle. He’d served as the bench coach in Minnesota prior to his hiring and has also had a long run as a big league hitting coach, spending 2005-09 in Cleveland and 2010-16 in Tampa Bay. The Jays hired Shelton as a quality control coach for the 2017 season, after which he spent two years in Minnesota.

Shelton was the first major hire under Cherington, though he’d been under consideration for the managerial vacancy in Pittsburgh even before the Pirates fired former GM Neal Huntington (a curiously timed move, given that he’d been leading the early stages of said managerial search). In parts of six seasons under Shelton, the Bucs have posted a 306-440 record, topping out at 76 wins in a given season (a mark they reached twice). Pittsburgh is out to a 12-26 start on the season, effectively tanking any faint trace of playoff hopes they had coming into the season. Owner Bob Nutting referenced that grim start to the season in his own statement.

“Derek is a good man who did a lot for the Pirates and Pittsburgh, but it was time for a change,” said Nutting. “The first quarter of the season has been frustrating and painful for all of us. We have to do better. I know that. Ben knows that. Our coaches know that. Our players know that. There is a lot of baseball left to be played. 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.”

There’s no denying the Pirates’ poor performance under Shelton, but it’s also hard to pin that performance on a skipper who was never handed much to work with. Nutting’s mention of acting with “urgency” feels borderline farcical at a time when, for the second straight year, the Pirates have baseball’s top pitching prospect obliterating Triple-A lineups as the back end of the major league staff flounders.

Last year, it was Paul Skenes, who didn’t make his MLB debut until May 6 and promptly took baseball by storm. Skenes started the All-Star Game, won NL Rookie of the Year and finished third in Cy Young voting. This year, Bubba Chandler is sitting on a 2.25 ERA and 38.3% strikeout rate in seven Triple-A starts. The Pirates’ fourth and fifth starters, Bailey Falter and Carmen Mlodzinski, have ERAs of 5.06 and 6.16, respectively. Jared Jones, their second- or third-best starter, has been on the injured list all season. It’s impossible not to wonder if Nutting feels burned by Skenes earning a full year of service by virtue of that Rookie of the Year win and is thus waiting even longer to pull the trigger on Chandler’s promotion.

Beyond the contradictory nature of those “urgency” comments and the Pirates’ actions with Chandler, Nutting has flatly refused to invest in the team via free agency. The Pirates have never signed a free agent to a larger contract than the three-year, $39MM deal signed by Francisco Liriano more than a decade ago.

As shown in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, they haven’t signed a single free agent to a multi-year deal since their nearly decade-old signing of righty Ivan Nova on a three-year, $26MM contract. Not only that, the Pirates have only once topped $8MM on a one-year free agent deal in that same span — Aroldis Chapman’s $10.5MM contract in the 2023-24 offseason. Using that same data from our Contract Tracker, the Pirates have spent a total of $173.65MM on free agents since their last playoff appearance a decade ago.

Certainly, free agency isn’t a cure-all that’s bound to fix everything that ails an organization. Major free agent signings can often be a setback, in fact. But completely eschewing even the middle tiers of the open market and steadfastly avoiding any kind of mid-range spending to complement the roster does not put the baseball operations or dugout staffs in position to succeed.

That’s not to say Shelton and the front office are without fault, but the margin for error for those key decisionmakers is rendered razor-thin when ownership is content to average the $69.4MM payroll (excluding the shortened 2020 season) that’s been trotted out in the five 162-game seasons under Shelton. Pittsburgh was 55-52 at last year’s trade deadline. Shelton and his staff clearly bear some responsibility for the team’s post-deadline struggles. However, critics would be remiss not to point out that ownership’s tight budget, which led Cherington & Co. to pursue cost-effective deadline acquisitions like Bryan De La Cruz and Isiah Kiner-Falefa (while subtracting Martin Perez), didn’t put give them the best chance to capitalize on their strong play through the first two-thirds of the season.

The Pirates’ player development — or the lack thereof — over the past several seasons also surely factors into the decisions. Skenes has been a roaring success. Jones looked the part of a potential high-end starter prior to his injury. Mitch Keller, Bryan Reynolds and Oneil Cruz are all quality big leaguers — the latter standing as a potential star. However, the majority of the organization’s top prospects over the years, particularly the hitters, simply haven’t panned out. Injuries have impacted some of them, most notably including Ke’Bryan Hayes and Endy Rodriguez. But prospects like Nick Gonzales, Liover Peguero and Henry Davis have all struggled upon reaching the majors. Other young hitters (e.g. Jack Suwinski) looked to be on the cusp of breaking out before taking significant steps back in their second and third looks at big league pitching.

With Shelton being shown the door, Kelly will now be tasked with the unenviable goal of trying to right this ship. The former big league utilityman retired after the 2016 season and took a role in the Tigers’ player development department for the 2017 season. He then spent a year in Detroit’s scouting ranks before being hired by the Astros as their first base coach. Shelton tabbed Kelly as his bench coach just weeks after being hired, and Kelly has been his right-hand man for the pair’s nearly six years in Pittsburgh.

There’s no “interim” tag in today’s press release from the Pirates. Cherington told the Pirates beat today that Kelly’s appointment is “permanent for 2025” (link via Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). He could end up being considered for 2026 and beyond, but for the time being, the team is only committing to the remainder of the current season. That seems to set the stage for a broad-reaching managerial search this winter.

“Donnie is as respected as any person in our clubhouse and throughout our organization,” Nutting said of Kelly in today’s press release. “He is a Pirate. He bleeds black and gold. No one is more committed, and no one loves this team or city more than Donnie. He is the right person to manage our team and help get us back on track.”