North Shore Nine

As stated on wNS9+ on February 7th, Alex Stumpf of MLB.com, the Pirates have a rough payroll target of $80 million for the season. Most recent estimates have the Pirates already at about $78 million. Meaning the Pirates don’t have a lot of wiggle room to add players before the season starts, Hooray! (read with heavy sarcasm).

The fans can wail and gnash their teeth to the bitter end at the fact that the Pirates do not spend more money.  The fans can become pessimistic every time management says they will meaningfully spend on this team.  The fans can scoff when they say they are spending it in other ways like development and facilities and the like.  But if the fans are all honest with themselves, what they want to see is a playoff team.

If they are being even more honest, fans want a certain trophy in the trophy case. Fans want the parade to end all parades, they want a parade that makes Carnival in Rio look like the St Patrick’s Day parade in Hot Springs Arkansas.  Is it too much to want these things? No. Fans across all of baseball, hell, across all sports, want the same for their franchises. But promises were made. Fans were told to come to the park, and if they did, the payroll would increase.  Fans were told when the Pirates start winning, the front office would spend to push them over the top. To an extent that did occur.

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In 2013 the Pittsburgh Pirates went 94-68 and played the greatest game in PNC Park history. It happened, the Pirates made the NLDS, and fans came to the park in droves. The next year, payroll increased, as did the number of fans who attended games. The year after, both were true again and a third trip to the playoffs occurred. Then, in 2016 fans saw the highest payroll they have seen in the last decade, though there was a dip in the overall attendance numbers. Then the payroll started to shrink, as did attendance. The rebuild was once again on. Below is a chart of attendance vs payroll vs record over the years starting in 2010 through 2023.

Year	Attendance	Payroll	Record
2010	1,613,399	$34,943,000	57-105
2011	1,940,428	$45,047,000	72-90
2012	2,091,918	$63,431,999	79-83
2013	2,256,862	$66,289,524	94-68
2014	2,442,564	$78,111,667	88-74
2015	2,498,596	$85,885,832	98-64
2016	2,249,201	$99,960,499	78-83
2017	1,919,447	$94,637,833	75-87
2018	1,465,316	$87,860,654	82-79
2019	1,491,439	$76,589,154	69-93
2020	Covid	$42,119,000	19-41
2021	859,498	$45,559,000	61-101
2022	1,257,458	$38,575,000	62-100
2023	1,630,624	$60,787,500	76-86

To an extent, fans can excuse the 2020 covid season, maybe even the next two as the Pirates were in ‘rebuild” mode. Going into last year, an increase was evident in the payroll from 2022. Which is good because if it hadn’t, there would have been legitimate riots. Regardless, let’s pretend the 2023 season was the same turn in the cycle as 2011 was, meaning fans should see the same 40% increase in salary this season. If we got that then we would sit at roughly $85 million, which is not completely outside the realm of possibility to start the season.  However, one could argue that with inflation that number should be much higher.  If you take the 2012 payroll and run it through the inflation calculator you get a payroll for the 2024 season of $84,182,761. 

Clearly Nutting and company can do math and are following a specific formula. Let us hope that is the case because if so, here are the next few years of potential payroll.

Year	Payroll	% Increased based on Historical precedent
2025	$88,391,899	5%
2026	$104,302,440	18%
2027	$113,689,660	9%
2028	$133,016,902	17%

The problem with all of this is it is logical, it is calculated, but is it realistic? But will fans believe it? The answer there is, “seeing is believing.” Fans want to hear the roar of the crowd; they want to see wins on the field at home and on the road.  They also want to believe the Pirates will spend “when the time is right”.  What they see instead is Bobby Witt Jr. signing an 11-year, $288 million deal to an MLB team with a similar market. What they see is the chart below of their NL Central rivals and what they are paying out for salaries this year. To further compound issues they see the market size of those division rivals. CBS Sports ran an article in February of 2023 where they discussed US markets with MLB teams ranked by size, also shown below.

Team	Payroll
Chicago Cubs	$199,649,978
Cincinnati Reds	$93,688,306
Milwaukee Brewers	$102,144,928
Pittsburgh Pirates	$74,262,473
St. Louis Cardinals	$169,231,644

Team	US Market Rank by size
Chicago Cubs	3rd
Cincinnati Reds	24th
Milwaukee Brewers	25th
Pittsburgh Pirates	20th
St. Louis Cardinals	19th

So, the Pirates are in a similar market to St. Louis, and a better market than Cincinnati and Milwaukee, yet their payroll is 26% and 38% less than those last two, respectively. It should be noted that of the three only Cincinnati has a similar game attendance. Milwaukee has more on average, and St. Louis far more than the Pirates.  However, Milwaukee has also gone to the playoffs five of the last six years, which might have something to do with it. Though, even before that they were out averaging the Pirates attendance by 400,000 to 1 million most years. Again, this is the logical approach but by even taking that, the Pirates should see at least the same level of spending that the Reds have been doing.

However, much of these can be laid at the feet of the powers that be in the MLB front offices. The competitive balance tax was put into place to help “curb” spending, clearly that hasn’t stopped the big market teams.  Looking at the Ohtani deal this past offseason, teams are going to find any way around this that they can. They tried to help the small market teams through the competitive balance draft picks, where the 10 smallest markets and lowest revenue clubs can get extra draft picks. This was after the smaller market Pirates started spending more than the big market teams causing the whole system to be changed a decade ago. There is a large inequity in MLB. Every time a system gets changed it appears to help the Goliaths and hurt the Davids, while the optics that are put out scream the opposite.

They claim they are giving the sling to the Davids, when really, they are lining the pockets of themselves and the Goliaths. The simple fix would be a system like what the NBA does with the soft cap. But that won’t happen, nor would an NHL or NFL system where a hard cap is involved. The players’ union would not want a cap on what they can earn.  Furthermore, owners, some at least, would not want a cap on what they can spend attempting to win. Then what about the addition of a salary floor to the current MLB system, forcing teams to spend money? The problem there is some owners do not want to spend money, as Pirates fans have seen. Regardless, for whatever reason none of these will be put into place. MLB will remain the Wild West of the US sports world leaving the massive inequity in place to further pile on to some beleaguered fan bases. In the end what is going to change when it comes to the Pirates?

It starts with the Pirates winning games and continues if fans start coming back to PNC Park in the amount we have seen in the recent past. That should make it harder for the organization not to spend more money on its payroll.  However, as stated a few times, it is hard to think logically when so much data points toward other organizations within the division doing what most feel the Pirates should be doing.

When it comes down to it, maybe it would be best for Pirates fans to send their ire and vitriol elsewhere. Otherwise, when we reference the Pirates front office, we will start quoting Edward “The Comedian” Blake from The Watchman, “It’s a joke. It’s all a f***in’ joke.”