{"id":98982,"date":"2025-04-10T15:23:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T19:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=98982"},"modified":"2025-04-10T15:23:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T19:23:28","slug":"bob-nutting-wont-sell-pirates-anytime-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/04\/10\/bob-nutting-wont-sell-pirates-anytime-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Nutting\u2019s Refusal to Sell the Pirates Won\u2019t Lead to Major Payroll Boost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pittsburgh Pirates fans showed up for the opening series at PNC Park angry, and their target was owner Bob Nutting. Fans chanted, \u201cSell the team!\u201d as Nutting strolled through the rotunda area and during the game. An airplane flew overhead with a banner that read \u201cSELL THE TEAM BOB\u201d in red capital letters, along with the web address of the group<\/a> responsible for the banner. \u00a0The plane reportedly cost $4,000 on top of a billboard campaign that started last year. Through it all, Nutting says he appreciates the fans\u2019 passion but has no plans to sell the Pirates.<\/p>\n

\n

Pirates owner Bob Nutting was serenaded with \u201cSELL THE TEAM\u201d chants pic.twitter.com\/IPcKcxeTrV<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Barstool Baseball (@StoolBaseball) April 4, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nutting Not Selling the Pirates<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s start with a little quiz. The following are five quotes. Guess the sources and the dates and fill in the blanks where applicable.<\/p>\n

Quotes<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. \u201c[It] might even be a good idea for ________________ to sell the team because a new owner might put some money into it and sign some good players.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to spend money for a quality ball player, and they let a lot of good people like _______________ go.\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. \u201cIf you have two of the best players in baseball and you can\u2019t sign either, you\u2019re not competitive. Let someone who can be competitive own the team.\u201d<\/li>\n
  4. \u201cBoycott ______________, force him to sell the team to an owner who wants to spend his money on a winner for the city and the proud Pirates name.\u201d<\/li>\n
  5. \u201cHave a heart and sell the team. You are not a baseball person, and the people of Pittsburgh are.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Answers<\/h3>\n
      \n
    1. The quote is from a November 21, 1984, column in The Pittsburgh Press in which opinions of fans and baseball people were solicited. The speaker is a 21-year-old University of Pittsburgh student. In the blank goes \u201cthe Galbreaths,\u201d the family that owned the Pirates at the time.<\/li>\n
    2. From the same column, the speaker is a 39-year-old laid-off steelworker. The missing name is Dock Ellis<\/a>. (Dock Ellis?<\/em>)<\/li>\n
    3. The next quote is from an August 18, 1991, Press<\/em> column by Bob Smizik. He\u2019s addressing the Pittsburgh Baseball Partners, a conglomerate of corporations and others that purchased the team from the Galbreaths. \u201cTwo of the best players in baseball\u201d referred to are Barry Bonds<\/a> and Bobby Bonilla<\/a>.<\/li>\n
    4. This one is from an August 19, 2005, letter to the sports editor in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The writer, a resident of Orlando, Florida, refers to Kevin McClatchy, the managing partner of a group that bought the Pirates from the Pittsburgh Baseball Partners.<\/li>\n
    5. This was extracted from a letter to the Post-Gazette editor published on September 1, 2006. The writer is from Sewickley, a well-to-do borough 12 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. He\u2019s also addressing McClatchy.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The Real Problem with Major League Baseball<\/h3>\n

      Does the reader detect a pattern here? The common denominator through four ownership groups is MLB\u2019s ridiculous economic system, where teams don\u2019t share revenue, and a team like the New York Mets can have a higher payroll<\/a> than some teams\u2019 gross revenue. I\u2019m in the minority among Pirates observers, but I\u2019ve long felt that the Pirates’ lack of spending has more to do with baseball\u2019s system than who owns them. The above quotes concerned the three Pirates ownership groups before Nutting. They could have been mistaken for current quotes about Nutting. We\u2019ll see the same comments about the Pirates’ next owner, too, and every subsequent owner until MLB cleans up its act.<\/p>\n

      The Pirates\u2019 Finances<\/h3>\n

      Last month, there were two detailed reports on the Pirates\u2019 finances. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report<\/a> purported to be based on an analysis of the club\u2019s audited financial statements. However, it doesn\u2019t appear that the paper had access to the actual statements, but rather certain figures from the statements that it won access to as the result of a Right to Know request to the Sports and Exhibition Authority. DK on Pittsburgh Sports<\/em> published the results of their own long investigation<\/a> into the Pirates\u2019 finances based on various sources.<\/p>\n

      I usually find these types of reports laughable. Most sportswriters don\u2019t know the difference between a spreadsheet and a bedsheet. The Post-Gazette and DK ran articles comparing their reports. No independent third party has compared them for publication, at least to my knowledge.<\/p>\n

      So, why me? I worked in public accounting for 40 years. (To borrow from an old Bob Newhart routine, the fact that somebody tells you he\u2019s an accountant makes it true. After all, who would lie about that?) I understand financial statements and how business works. So, here\u2019s my conclusion. I found the DK <\/em>report to be cogent and thorough, with a level of understanding not ordinarily found on the sports pages, and therefore credible.<\/p>\n

      Comparing the Reports<\/h3>\n

      The Post-Gazette report found that ticket and concession revenue was tied to payroll and concluded that the Pirates could afford to increase payroll because they didn\u2019t spend other known sources of revenue, such as broadcast revenue, on payroll like other teams do. The experts interviewed for the story found that unusual. It concluded, based largely on Forbes estimates, that the Pirates and Nutting could spend more on payroll. The Pirates argued, correctly it seems, that the report didn\u2019t consider the other costs of operating a major league team.<\/p>\n

      Furthermore, I noted that there was no mention by the Post-Gazette of balance sheet items that cost money but aren\u2019t considered expenses on the profit and loss statement. For example, loan principal payments aren\u2019t considered expenses for accounting purposes. (Loan interest is.) Additionally, signing bonuses paid to draft picks, such as the $6.5 million paid to 2024 No. 1 draft choice<\/a> Konnor Griffin<\/a>, are not recognized as expenses when paid but rather ratably over the estimated period the Pirates have the player under control. Accountants call this process \u201camortization.\u201d Their clients call it \u201cWhat was that again?\u201d<\/p>\n

      On the other hand, the DK <\/em>investigation considered such items. According to DK<\/em>, the Pirates lost $2.2 million in 2024 and have taken on three loans in recent years. Still, it\u2019s hard to imagine that the Pirates are a cash cow. As the DK<\/em> report states, \u201c[T]he minus $2.2 million comes before debt, taxes, amortization\/depreciation, capital expenses and other costs. So the real-life loss would be worse.\u201d However discouraging this notion is to much of the Pirates’ fan base, it would seem the Pirates have a payroll they can afford.<\/p>\n

      But Do You Believe It?<\/h3>\n

      As expected, this revelation hasn\u2019t quelled Pirates fans’ ire toward Nutting. Fans on social media don\u2019t believe the DK<\/em> report (or they didn’t read it because it didn’t fit their narrative). A faction of Pirates fans wants to believe the problem is all Nutting. This is more strictly about the level of payroll here. Other aspects of the Pirates’ operations fall short, and that falls squarely on Nutting. Another owner might run the organization better.<\/p>\n

      Moreover, we\u2019re in a toxic political climate today where people have been made to believe the absurd notion that the media tell lies and hate their readers.<\/p>\n

      Mix in the current \u201cattention economy,\u201d as author Jenny Odell calls it, whereby social media, cable TV, and talk radio are making money by deliberately keeping its consumers in states of anger, agitation, and anxiety, and it\u2019s a toxic atmosphere all around in terms of getting people to believe what\u2019s written.<\/p>\n

      Finally, according to psychologists, societies like the United States, which value success and winning, have extrinsic, as opposed to intrinsic, values. In plain English, those societies tend to blame the losers\u2019 problems on the losers, even if they\u2019re caused by the winners. After all, the winners have achieved the success that we value, so how can they be to blame?<\/p>\n

      Main Photo: \u00a9 Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Pittsburgh Pirates fans showed up for the opening series at PNC Park angry, and their target was owner Bob Nutting. Fans chanted, \u201cSell the team!\u201d as Nutting strolled through the rotunda area and during the game. An airplane flew overhead with a banner that read \u201cSELL THE TEAM BOB\u201d in red capital letters, along with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5010,"featured_media":99013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1071],"tags":[70,6208,2843,28625],"class_list":["post-98982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pirates","category-mlb","tag-barry-bonds","tag-bob-nutting","tag-bobby-bonilla","tag-konnor-griffin"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5010"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98982"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99012,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98982\/revisions\/99012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}