Pittsburgh Pirates manager Derek Shelton will return in 2025, per general manager Ben Cherington’s recommendation to owner Bob Nutting. Cherington confirmed this to the assembled media during Wednesday’s end-of-season press conference.
Pirates GM Ben Cherington told reporters he has recommended Derek Shelton returns in 2025 and that Bob Nutting supports that idea. https://t.co/iuGXO7706n
— 93.7 The Fan (@937theFan) October 2, 2024
Why Derek Shelton Returning as Pirates Manager in 2025 is the Wrong Move
“I believe he can help lead us toward winning in 2025,” Cherington said of the much-maligned Shelton. Yet, oddly, his ensuing remarks sounded like less than a ringing endorsement. “I believe he already does a lot of the aspects of the job very well and at a high level. I believe he works as hard as any manager in the game, and I certainly believe he cares as much as any manager in the game. Like all of us, certainly, including me, he has targets that he needs to improve on, and I believe he is fully aware of those.”
In five years, Shelton has produced a 294-414 record, four last-place finishes, and a fourth-place finish.
Handicapped at the Start
The Pirates hired Shelton on November 27, 2019. Previously, he had been the hitting coach for the Cleveland Indians (2005-09) and the Tampa Bay Rays (2010-16). After a year as the Toronto Blue Jays quality control coach (whatever that is), he became the Minnesota Twins bench coach in 2018. He was with Minnesota in 2019 when the Twins hit an astounding 307 home runs, with eight players hitting 22 or more homers. Thus, hitting was ostensibly his area of expertise, although one couldn’t tell from his Pirates teams. He was also attuned to analytics, which made him attractive to general manager Ben Cherington. Owner Bob Nutting fired general manager Neal Huntington and manager Clint Hurdle after the 2019 season because, inter alia, they had fallen behind the times regarding their use of analytics.
Shelton was to preside over yet another rebuilding program. He was handicapped immediately when Cherington traded his best player, Starling Marte, before Shelton got a chance to manage him. After the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Josh Bell, Joe Musgrove, and Jameson Taillon were dealt away. At the 2021 trade deadline, Cherington traded All-Star Adam Frazier, Clay Holmes, Tyler Anderson, and Richard Rodriguez. After the 2021 season, Gold Glove catcher Jacob Stallings was sent away.
Great Expectations
At last, in 2024, year five arrived for Shelton and a fan base weary of five-year plans. The Pirates finished 2023 by winning 35 of their last 67 games. A similar pace would result in 85 wins over 162 games. Of course, pacing is relevant in horse racing but has little application in baseball. Even so, expectations were high coming into 2024. Nutting and Cherington were on record that 2024 was the year the Pirates were expected to contend. Indeed, most scribes pegged them for around 85 wins. It would be Shelton’s chance to show what kind of manager the Pirates had. Would he be like Jim Leyland, who took over a hopeless situation and was still around when they were winning division titles? Or would he be a caretaker-type manager like John Russell, who would give way to Hurdle when the right players were finally in place?
Perhaps the lofty expectations of 2024 were never reasonable to begin with. Cherington’s offseason acquisitions were underwhelming. The team wasn’t built to be an offensive juggernaut. Injuries hampered the performances of key players such as Ke’Bryan Hayes, David Bednar, and Colin Holderman or kept others like Ryan Borucki and Marco Gonzales away for most of the season. Other players unpredictably underperformed.
On the Hot Seat?
The news that he’s returning in 2025 must come as a relief to “Shelty,” as he’s known in baseball circles, perhaps the worst nickname in the history of sports. Although he received a vote of confidence from Cherington on September 11, Shelton may have felt his seat getting warm. After a 12-0 loss to the Chicago Cubs on September 4, Shelton uncharacteristically snapped at beat reporter Noah Hiles after an innocent question about the reason behind a relief appearance by Rowdy Tellez. A rumor circulated in the media that the Pirates needed a strong September to save Shelton’s job. Instead, they played like a team trying to get its manager fired.
Conversely, in September, Shelton managed like a man desperate for wins. On the 11th, he pulled Bednar from the game in the ninth inning when Bednar allowed a run. Previously, Shelton had rarely removed a pitcher during a save opportunity. Jalen Beeks came in to get the save against the Miami Marlins. Ten days later, Shelton kept valuable rookie pitcher Jared Jones in the game after a mysterious, sudden drop in velocity raised health concerns. For that, he was criticized by postgame analyst and former Pirate Steven Brault. It was a stunning rebuke from a postgame show that usually serves as a megaphone for the team.
Come, Writers and Critics
Shelton isn’t popular among Pirates fans. That’s what a five-year .415 winning percentage will do for a manager. The criticisms piled on: Shelton changes the lineup daily and can’t handle the pitching staff. He plays this guy instead of that guy. Of course, such critiques are made with the benefit of hindsight. There’s no correlation between a set lineup and winning, and in any event, if the players can’t hit, the batting order doesn’t matter much. Furthermore, in matters of pitching moves, fans don’t always understand that just because the manager has an eight-man bullpen doesn’t mean all those pitchers are available on a given night. Again, without a good bullpen, picking the right relief pitcher every night is hard.
In today’s game, a manager’s chief function is to carry out the front office’s plan. As the Pirates hitters continued to strand runners and look at third strikes with alarming regularity, Shelton’s loyalty to hitting coach Andy Haines remained undying. Perhaps his hands were tied in the matter of hiring and firing coaches. Even so, it wasn’t a good look for Shelton (Haines and bullpen coach Justin Meccage were fired on Monday)/
The above can be said about any manager in baseball. Now we get to the case against Shelton and why the Pirates are erring in bringing him back.
Thou Shalt Not Steal
Shelton rarely tried to jumpstart the offense with the stolen base. Ever the analytics disciple, he apparently subscribes to the premise that the stolen base is of questionable value in terms of net runs added over the long season. Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Brewers used it as an effective weapon on their way to the top of the division. The entire major leagues stole 3,617 bases in 2024, the most since 1915. Shelton declined his invitation to that party. His Pirates stole just 106 bases in 2024. Instead, Shelton sat and waited for a lineup dotted with too many .200 hitters to somehow string three singles together.
The Bad and the Ugly
Fundamentals were weak in 2024. Outfielders threw to the wrong base. Baserunners ran into outs, most annoyingly at third base on grounders hit to the shortstop. Against the Brewers on September 26, Oneil Cruz was picked off first base with a runner on third and two outs. Later in that game, he was tagged out walking off second base when he mistakenly thought there were three outs.
Accountability seemed to be lacking. Nobody outside the clubhouse can know whether Shelton ever got angry or animated with his players away from the cameras. We’ve seen him get upset with umpires, so it’s not hard to believe he could get that way with players. Additionally, in 2022, he dispatched Rodolfo Castro to the minor leagues after an incident of non-hustle and arranged for Andrew Knapp’s release after an incident of stupidity. At least outwardly, that guy didn’t seem to exist in 2024. There was a complacency among the players that didn’t exist earlier in his tenure. Players jogged to first base after hitting deep fly balls, costing them an extra base.
Most of all, however, again at least outwardly, a sense of urgency never seemed to emanate from Shelton. This lack of urgency seemed to trickle down to the players. His patience and support for underperforming players was unwavering. His postgame remarks usually consisted of staid references to pitchers not executing pitches and batters not executing game plans, as though they were still in development mode, with little said about the Pirates’ record and place in the standings.
The Last Word
On a recent installment of #1 Cochran Sports Showdown, a weekly television program on KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh (named after a local automobile dealer, not Goat Cochran, who pitched one game for the Cincinnati Reds in 1915), Associated Press reporter Will Graves reported that Nutting once told him that after the Pirates’ 2012 collapse, he was ready to fire Hurdle and general manager Neal Huntington. He decided to bring them back for 2013. That was the first year of the Pirates’ three-year National League Wild Card run. Perhaps that’s what Nutting is thinking about now.
However, a new voice is needed in the manager position. It looks increasingly like Shelton is a Russellesque caretaker manager as opposed to a Hurdlesque next-level manager. Since the Pirates aren’t going in that direction, what now? Shelton’s voice needs to come in and stress that mediocrity can’t be accepted any longer. He must lay down the expectation that guys struggling to hit .200 and pitchers with ERAs over 5.00 aren’t going to have a place on the team. A better offseason from the general manager would help, too.
Photo Credit: © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
