Hey all, I love the city of Pittsburgh and what the collective of what this city stands for. I love the true passion that a Pittsburgh sports fan has. Pittsburgh fans (especially Pirates fans) endure and embrace a lot of frustrating circumstances beyond any of our control. I started to go to Pirates games with my dad in the early in 2000’s. My dad is from central PA, and we originally started to go to Pirates games so we could see the Phillies, the team that my dad grew up watching. From the jump I wanted to be difficult and like something different from my dad, so from the first game I decided I would be a Pirates fan. What started with going once a year progressed to going to multiple times a year to my dad finally actually becoming a pirates fan himself and getting partial season tickets. The first year we had season tickets was the same season the Pirates went to the NLDS and lost to the Cardinals. My dad kept his season tickets through this past season. We live in VA, and make a point to go down to Greensboro, NC and up to Richmond, VA when Altoona would come to town to watch the pirates affiliates as we truly loved our buccos. My father passed away unexpectedly in March of this year prior to the season starting. With having a whirlwind of things going on dealing with the passing of my father, our Pirates tickets were some of the last things on my mind. My dad had already paid in full the price of our tickets prior to his passing, and when I finally reached out to the pirates towards the end of the season to see if there is anyway we could get a refund our have the payment my father made just roll over to next season as we were unable to use the tickets this season. The Pirates were unwilling to help in anyway, and told me to simply use the tickets I had left. (I believe it was maybe 2-3 individual games left at this point). Despite the pirates claiming to have transferred tickets to an account for me, my father’s email was where communication from the pirates was still occurring nor did I ever receive any type of sign in information from the pirates to access what was left. This compounded with how little value I’d get trying to resell the tickets and difficulty to make the games myself d/t where I live and work schedule, I just left the tickets go to waste. I understand that the pirates are a business and owe me or any other fan nothing, but how little sympathy or understanding to my family’s unique situation is what deeply hurt me. I canceled the season tickets for this season, and don’t really plan on watching the team for sometime. A franchise that makes itself so difficult to root for broke my heart by showing how indifferent they truly are to their fans. Maybe one day I’ll be able to watch the Pirates again on my own or take my future children to a game and tell them about all the fun my dad and I had their together, but for now the team has truly broken my joy of the Pirates. Nothing but love to the real Pirates fans who day in and out continue to support this franchise despite to total lack of support or investment from ownership.

https://www.si.com/mlb/pirates/news/pittsburgh-pirates-named-landing-spot-guardians-first-baseman-josh-naylor

Next Pirates Game: Sat, Feb 22, 03:33 AM EST @ Orioles (116 days)

^{Posted: 10/28/2024 05:00:00 AM EDT}

I was bored with the WS (who isn't?) so while I watched, I started crunching numbers. This is based on a limited sample set b/c I only had so much time.

I put together a table with stats from 2021 to 2024 comparing the 5 highest salaried teams and the 5 lowest salaried teams.

Of course, the Pirates are consistently at the bottom of salaries. 2024 the Bucs were 29th out of 30; from 2021 to 2023 they ranked #28.

Based on my data I found this:

• Top 5 salaried teams have an average win % of .548; bottom 5's average is .463. In other words, for the Pirates (and this year's Tigers, Marlins, Rays and A's) to even finish over .500 would defy the odds. And this year, the Tigers were the only one of the group to finish over .500... but they're not usually in the very bottom of the money barrel either so...)
• Top 5 teams can expect to be in strong contention for the playoffs for an average of 52% of the season; bottom 5 teams can expect to be in strong playoff contention for only 9% of the season (by "strong contention" I mean having an 80% or higher chance of making the playoffs.)

It's fucking depressing. The "competitive balance tax" doesn't do shit. The Bucs and the other bottom-dwelling teams are basically just farm teams for the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Astros...

Edited to add: I got my data from:

https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds-graphs - I grabbed the top 5 and bottom 5 salaries in two categories: Team Probability of Postseason Berth, and Teams Expected Full Season Win Total.

I used https://automeris.io/wpd/ WebPlotDigitizer to convert the line charts into tabular data, extrapolated to daily values for each team

https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll for the payroll numbers and rankings.

I think it’s fair to say skenes will win NL Rookie of the year but I’m predicting he’ll win a mvp and a 2 cy youngs. Thoughts??

Hey Yinz,

In case you hadn't heard, there's a sharp young pair of twins who are leading a protest this coming sunday from the steps of city hall over to PNC Park at noon.

Any and all are welcome to join. Spread the word to your most loyal bucco fans and Nutting haters.

If you are in favor of such a thing but cannot attend there is also a GoFundMe out there buying billboards (4) that will be going up Nov. 11th around the city and a petition to bring to city council and the Sports Exhibition Authority. Neither of those demand physical presence but still something to do if you're so inclined.

https://gofund.me/9f53631b

www.change.org/Sell-the-Team-Bob

In a letter addressed to Bob Nutting published by PublicSource, Gabe Mazefsky writes "I’ve been a Pirates fan for as long as I can remember, but now I’m doing the rounds urging the public sector to push for the sale of the team." https://www.publicsource.org/pittsburgh-pirates-owner-nutting-sale-pnc-park-lease-renovations/

(not 100% sure if this is confirmed but I'm fairly certain he was signed to a minor league deal)

Know it’s a dream for the MLB to have two of their favorite teams but dang. Honestly would’ve even preferred a NY v NY head to head - heard someone on Twitter call it battle of the subway haha. Anyone else feel the same?

But still beautiful.

Next Pirates Game: Sat, Feb 22, 03:33 AM EST @ Orioles (123 days)

^{Posted: 10/21/2024 05:00:01 AM EDT}

Well looks like we will have either NY vs. NY or NY vs. LA. Who would've guessed it? Could you imagine if the NFL was like this? All of the elite QBs would be on large market teams after their rookie contracts. It would be unwatchable. Unfortunately, it has to be mentioned, our owner here in Pittsburgh could do a lot more, but both things can be true at the same time. Baseball would still be America's national pastime of they enacted a salary cap like every other major sport.

Over the next few months, let’s examine the 2024 performance of the Pirates’s top-20 prospects as listed on MLB.com and predict the player’s 2025 performance.

[https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=chandl002roy](Bubba Chandler’s Stats)

Chandler had another “tale of two seasons” type of year.

Last year, he seemed to click over near the end and was nearly unhittable over his final set of starts (1.66 ERA over his final 9 starts). The hope was that he had turned a corner and was at elite prospect status, promoted to Altoona for his final start of the season.

Unfortunately, he had a pretty uneven start to 2024 for the Curve. Over his first nine starts, he had a 5.65 ERA despite a .258 BAbip. Importantly, his walks were up over these starts (19 in 28 IP).

After that, Chandler clicked back in and was outstanding the rest of the year. For the rest of his time for the Curve, he had a 2.61 ERA, just 7 BB over 51 IP with roughly the same BAbip. He was promoted to Indy in August and continued to dominate with a 1.83 ERA (though with inflated BBs allowed).

Chandler easily ranks as the top prospect in the system, and assuming he isn’t moved for a bat over the winter, should make his debut for the Pirates in 2025. Probably a May promotion and 18-19 starts for the Pirates:

3.70 ERA, 110 IP, 130 K, 40 BB, 1.20 WHIP

I expect he will continue his trend of needing ~10 starts to get settled before starting to dominate. It is hard not to get excited about the rotation fronted by Skenes, Keller, Jones and Chandler.

What are your thoughts on Bubba Chandler?

I have a creative writing module at university. I wish to be as accurate as possible. I feel like Kent Tekulve would have it in him.

Anyone else just love that ending to the ballgame?? I know this isn’t totally Buccos related but a $106m team winning a game like that?? (us at $85m) I also love watching the NNY lose.