Pittsburgh Pirates fans showed up for the opening series at PNC Park angry, and their target was owner Bob Nutting. Fans chanted, “Sell the team!” as Nutting strolled through the rotunda area and during the game. An airplane flew overhead with a banner that read “SELL THE TEAM BOB” in red capital letters, along with the web address of the group responsible for the banner. The plane reportedly cost $4,000 on top of a billboard campaign that started last year. Through it all, Nutting says he appreciates the fans’ passion but has no plans to sell the Pirates.
Pirates owner Bob Nutting was serenaded with “SELL THE TEAM” chants pic.twitter.com/IPcKcxeTrV
— Barstool Baseball (@StoolBaseball) April 4, 2025
Nutting Not Selling the Pirates
Let’s start with a little quiz. The following are five quotes. Guess the sources and the dates and fill in the blanks where applicable.
Quotes
- “[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.”
- “They don’t want to spend money for a quality ball player, and they let a lot of good people like _______________ go.”
- “If you have two of the best players in baseball and you can’t sign either, you’re not competitive. Let someone who can be competitive own the team.”
- “Boycott ______________, 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.”
- “Have a heart and sell the team. You are not a baseball person, and the people of Pittsburgh are.”
Answers
- 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 “the Galbreaths,” the family that owned the Pirates at the time.
- From the same column, the speaker is a 39-year-old laid-off steelworker. The missing name is Dock Ellis. (Dock Ellis?)
- The next quote is from an August 18, 1991, Press column by Bob Smizik. He’s addressing the Pittsburgh Baseball Partners, a conglomerate of corporations and others that purchased the team from the Galbreaths. “Two of the best players in baseball” referred to are Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla.
- 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.
- 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’s also addressing McClatchy.
The Real Problem with Major League Baseball
Does the reader detect a pattern here? The common denominator through four ownership groups is MLB’s ridiculous economic system, where teams don’t share revenue, and a team like the New York Mets can have a higher payroll than some teams’ gross revenue. I’m in the minority among Pirates observers, but I’ve long felt that the Pirates’ lack of spending has more to do with baseball’s 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’ll see the same comments about the Pirates’ next owner, too, and every subsequent owner until MLB cleans up its act.
The Pirates’ Finances
Last month, there were two detailed reports on the Pirates’ finances. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report purported to be based on an analysis of the club’s audited financial statements. However, it doesn’t 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 published the results of their own long investigation into the Pirates’ finances based on various sources.
I usually find these types of reports laughable. Most sportswriters don’t 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.
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’s an accountant makes it true. After all, who would lie about that?) I understand financial statements and how business works. So, here’s my conclusion. I found the DK report to be cogent and thorough, with a level of understanding not ordinarily found on the sports pages, and therefore credible.
Comparing the Reports
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’t 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’t consider the other costs of operating a major league team.
Furthermore, I noted that there was no mention by the Post-Gazette of balance sheet items that cost money but aren’t considered expenses on the profit and loss statement. For example, loan principal payments aren’t 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 Konnor Griffin, 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 “amortization.” Their clients call it “What was that again?”
On the other hand, the DK investigation considered such items. According to DK, the Pirates lost $2.2 million in 2024 and have taken on three loans in recent years. Still, it’s hard to imagine that the Pirates are a cash cow. As the DK report states, “[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.” However discouraging this notion is to much of the Pirates’ fan base, it would seem the Pirates have a payroll they can afford.
But Do You Believe It?
As expected, this revelation hasn’t quelled Pirates fans’ ire toward Nutting. Fans on social media don’t believe the DK 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.
Moreover, we’re 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.
Mix in the current “attention economy,” 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’s a toxic atmosphere all around in terms of getting people to believe what’s written.
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’ problems on the losers, even if they’re caused by the winners. After all, the winners have achieved the success that we value, so how can they be to blame?
Main Photo: © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
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