The Athletic came for Pirates owner Bob Nutting this week. Just shoot this straight into my veins:
Nutting, whose family made its money owning newspapers before buying a ballclub and ski resorts, has always asked his management team to do more with less … But conversations with more than 20 current and former players, coaches and club officials, some of whom were granted anonymity in order to speak freely, revealed numerous issues plaguing the Pirates:
Years of misses in the draft and amateur international market. Conflicts between old- and new-school philosophies in the coaching ranks. Distrust among some players in the development process, including a situation last season in which third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes secretly sought help from the Pirates’ then-Double A hitting coach, who the team let go a short time later. Most of all: A front office handcuffed by a frugal owner.
I drew this cartoon in 2009. What’s changed since then?
Absolutely Nutting. Er, I mean, nothing.
I wrote this in 2007:
Possible reasons why Pirates owner Bob Nutting keeps sabotaging his own club:
- Worried that successful season will push him into higher tax bracket
- Doesn’t want Washington Nationals to feel lonely at bottom of standings
- Has instilled same “quality control” in baseball team as in his newspapers
- Thinks it’s like golf and has been trying for low scores
- Strategy to keep Pirates unique? Leave “winning” to Steelers and Penguins
- His giant piles of money make it hard to see good talent
- At heart, he’s more of a Phillies fan
- Needs smaller crowds for planned move to Helen Richey Field
- Hoping for federal government bailout
- Just three more lousy seasons makes it an even 20!
What’s changed since then? Nothing.
I’ve been saying for a while that the Pirates are literally “The Producers.” Bob Nutting makes more money putting a flop on the field than he does a successful team.
Someone (it may have been Billy Gardell) had a pretty good joke a few years ago: “Everyone leaves PNC Park saying, ‘Nice ballpark, shame about the team.”
At some point, I would think that staring at the Golden Triangle while the Pirates rack up another 90-to-100-loss season would lose its allure. But as long as Pittsburghers keep going to PNC Park to eat Primanti sandwiches and watch pierogi races, there is no incentive for Nutting to do anything else.
Rather than go to PNC Park, I can have as much fun at a minor-league game and also have the satisfaction of knowing my money isn’t going to Bob Nutting (net worth, $1.1 billion) along with the profits of his shitty newspaper empire.
Because that’s the other thing: If Bob Nutting were a colorful Bill Veeck type figure — a lovable loser, just trying to survive in the major leagues — I might be more sympathetic to him.
But he’s not. He’s the Rupert Murdoch of Appalachia.
He owns a chain of really bad newspapers — the Ogden Newspapers — where the editors and reporters are paid starvation wages. When he bought the Washington Observer-Reporter a few years ago — one of my alma maters, and a newspaper that once routinely won journalism awards (no thanks to me) — Nutting took a meat-axe to the payroll and gutted the staff within hours of getting the keys to the building.
Per complaints on the paper’s social media, they have now “de-emphasized” hard news (like crime and police coverage) for “happy” lifestyle news. He did the same thing for the Uniontown Herald Standard.
Drive through West Virginia, Southern Ohio and central Pennsylvania, and you will encounter town after town afflicted with an Ogden newspaper-like product. Oh, it looks like a newspaper, but the “news” is mostly just press releases, wrapped around an editorial page with far-right columnists such as Mona Charen. It’s enough to gag any dead fish unlucky enough to be wrapped in one of them.
If you want to know why West Virginia has gotten so crazy in the last 20 years, take a look at Nutting’s newspapers, which are straight-up Trump propaganda. Over the past few decades, the few papers he didn’t already own (like the Weirton Daily Times) have been gobbled up and turned into more right-wing blither-blather.
Says The Athletic:
The Pirates ended two decades of losing and made the playoffs in 2013, 2014 and 2015, but the fact that they began 2016 with their highest payroll ever, $99.9 million, obscured the fact they’d lost a parade of veterans without adding any impact players. Payroll declined in each of the next five seasons, dropping as low as $45.2 million in 2021. Players felt Nutting had a chance to double down on winning after 2015, and didn’t.
“He pulled out so quick,” a former player said. “He was kind of comfortable stepping back and being mediocre. That permeates. That’s just what the organization is.”
Mediocre newspapers, mediocre ball-club. What do they have in common?
He’s one of the richest owners in baseball. And he got there with the help of Pittsburghers who keep making excuses and shrugging whenever the Pirates trade away their best players and fire their best coaches, and say “just wait for next year.”
There is no reason to “wait for next year,” because as long as Bob Nutting owns the team, they’re going to stink next year, too. It’s not an accident: It’s literally his business model.
Just as it’s not the fault of the reporters and editors at Nutting’s newspapers that those newspapers look so bad, it’s not really the fault of the players and on-field coaches that the Pirates have so rarely even contended.
It’s the fault of the ownership. Everyone knows it. We’ve known it for years: Nothing from Nutting leaves nothing. Sing along, OK?
As originally heard on “Radio 9 With Jay Thurber,” Jan. 20, 2018:
Nothin’ from Nutting leaves nothin’
You gotta spend somethin’ if you wanna win some games
Nothin’ from Nutting leaves nothin’
You gotta spend somethin’ if you wanna win some games
We don’t need to win a world serious
We’d be delirious … if you just didn’t suck
We don’t need to have no more de-bates
Just sell the Pi-rates if you won’t spend a buck
Nothin’ from Nutting leaves nothin’
And we’re not lyin’, they’re really bad.
They’re not contenders, they’re losers,
They’re fan abusers, the worst we ever had.
(Bob Prince and Lanny Frattare calls)
Nothin’ from Nutting leaves nothin’
You gotta spend somethin’, if you wanna win some games
We know you’re makin’ a profit
So get off it, and hurry up and sell the team
You gotta spend somethin’ if you wanna win some games
If you spend nothin’ it’s gonna stay the same
He’s Bob Nutting, the guy who is to blame
He’s a rich jagoff, and don’t feel no shame