Bob Nutting And Knowing How Long To Wait

Best thing management can do right now is lock up Cutch. That will start to hush the critics.

Yes, I am convinced that Nutting pockets a very significant portion of the profit sharing, and further think this is not disputed by anyone.

Actually, it’s disputed by everybody who’s ever looked at any of the facts, including the Union, which has explicitly said that the Pirates are in compliance with their obligations for spending their revenue sharing. You can and will believe what you want, but there isn’t a shred of evidence to support you.

Bob and the management refuse to reveal the actual amount to the fans, so you know that I cannot give an estimate.

Distributions to ownership were revealed in the documents leaked to Deadspin. Those documents showed the distributions had been limited, mostly just in one year, and amounted to no more than a small fraction of the amount of revenue sharing the team is receiving. Dejan Kovacevic has also confirmed with the other partners (yes, contrary to what most of the team’s birther-type critics like to think, the Nuttings have partners) that in the years he asked them about no money was distributed to the team’s owners.

So I’m staying the fuck away until the team performs competitively on the major league level.

That is, of course, your prerogative.

Yes, I am convinced that Nutting pockets a very significant portion of the profit sharing, and further think this is not disputed by anyone

Depends what you mean by “significant”, I guess. The leaked books don’t seem to support that statement as I’d tend to interpret it.

And yes, he should be spending money out of his own pocket, if he has confidence in his own ability to lead the team forward.

Spending more money than you take in, on spec, isn’t a great way to run a team. Look how it ended for Howard Baldwin.

Finally… yes, I do think that this site has those inside the Pirate organization that write to protect their interests there

I’m not sure exactly what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?

I’m happy to state, for the record, that I have no formal or informal role of any kind with the organization. I work in the marketing department of a real estate company, and help run the site in my free time because I like baseball and like reading and writing and talking about it.

Similarly, I’ve met Charlie, Dave Todd, and WTM in person at the annual get-together, and can confirm that none of them are secretly Neal Huntington in a mask. Same goes for a fair number of the regular posters: bucdaddy, cocktailsfor2, lfhlaw, etc. I do know of one member of the front office who posted on the site… One time. In 2007. (See here.)

the absolute lie by ownership saying that their payroll should be with the Reds and Brewers (which is what Nutting said 2 years ago to Dejan in PG, Brewers close to a 100 million dollar payroll now) of the world

This market should be able to sustain a payroll of that level at some point, but right now, the team’s revenue stream isn’t large enough to support it. Last year, the Pirates sold 1.94 million tickets, in a significant bounce up from 2010. Last year, the Reds sold 2.21 million, and the Brewers sold 3.07 million. Not to mention the fact that our average ticket prices are significantly lower than theirs. Or that our media rights are worth less.

the continued talk of the FO hinting to reporters that its possible if a trade offer knocks us off we could trade McCutchen (FC said this to either Erie or Altoona paper that I read again last week)

If another team offers us enough for Cutch, we SHOULD be willing to trade him. The price should be very high, of course, because he’s a very good player, but even for the best player in the world you’d eventually get to the point where not making a deal would be stupid.

I don’t know of any rational person who gets upset about every loss in baseball so either he’s a fricking idiot that knows nothing about baseball or he’s trying to fake his caring to the naive fans out there.

I have no trouble believing that’s true. Glenn Hall was a Hall-of-Fame goalie with an 18-year NHL career, but he still threw up in the locker room before every game, because he was worried that he’d lose. Some people are just wired that way.

Nutting still might be lying about it, of course, or gilding the lily a bit. But it’s not inherently implausible.

I don’t give him any credit for building any Dominican Academy because I expect that from baseball organization…

All organizations have some kind of Dominican academy, but our new one is a whole lot nicer than the old one. The old one was, to be blunt, a piece of shit. The weight room, for example, was a one-hour motorcycle ride away from the field. Maybe we should have been doing that kind of thing for years before Nutting took over… but we weren’t.

Similarly, I think it’s worth noting that the Pirates are currently the only MLB team that bothers to provide its Dominican signees with a formal education. They get four hours of classes a day, and last year, had thirteen players earn their high school degrees (link). That’s more than just the bare minimum, and it’s something we didn’t do until Nutting took over.

I don’t think he’s a saint, or anything like that, but a lot of things are being done very differently now than they were five years ago.

I think the way the Reds and Brewers do business in similar markets like the Pirates shows how far away they are from building a winner (although I do acknowledge neither of those have won a championship but again they have had winning seasons in the past few yrs)

If you go back and check, the Brewers actually built their team almost the same way that we’re trying to build ours. Their payroll was fairly low until they developed (through good scouting and drafting) a critical mass of young talent like Fielder, Braun, Weeks, and Gallardo, at which point they opened the wallet to fill in the holes.

We may or may not be doing a good job of executing that plan, but it’s the same strategy.

Ron Burkle and Mario. I believe Burkle saw this franchise as an undervalued asset when he offered to buy it in 2010. I believe he would have taken the franchise to where the Brewers operate and would make an effort to rid this sad ERA of losing baseball immediately.

The Pens’ ownership made virtually no capital investment in the team until they had acquired their core talent through the draft. If they followed a similar strategy with the Pirates (as seems likely), they would have done the same things that the current front office is doing.

Also he would have built his own television network combining the Pens and Pirates which would have helped this franchise considerably (yes I understand it would not be as lucrative as YES or NESN but it would put us in a better position that our ROOT deal is)

A fair point.

I will say the way the franchise is run it is the only way to go. Still whether the right people are being taken by the top decision makers is up to debate.

Very true.

Therefore its up to this ownership to show me that they are committed to building a championship ball club by going out and signing Cutch to a long term deal. They do that maybe I’ll start to have a different opinion of this ownership.

We’ll have to see how it shakes out. My current understanding is that Cutch is not yet willing to sign a long-term deal that would cover any of his free agent years (and who could blame him for that, as many losses as he’s seen?). If the team shows further signs of progress this year, maybe he’ll change his mind.

…between a rant (which usually has some facts in it somewhere) and repeatedly saying “sale the team” and meaning it.

We all know that Nutting isn’t going to sell the Pirates -he has even been quoted as saying he plans on handing the team down to his children – and so that, I think, is part of the “specious argument” that Charlie is talking about.