Pirates Made Mistake Not Firing Ben Cherington
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On Thursday, the Pittsburgh Pirates made the decision to move on from manager Derek Shelton after the club's 12-26 start to the 2025 season. While Shelton was a part of the problem in Pittsburgh, he’s not the sole reason for the franchise’s struggles over the last six years.
Managers always get the blame when something goes wrong or a team has a disappointing season, but it’s the general manager who, more often than not, is the most responsible for the product on the field.
Shelton’s record of 306-440 should also be attached to GM Ben Cherington. He has, after all, not produced a single promising hitter internally since taking over for Neal Huntington and has never signed a player to a multi-year deal in free agency.
You know how this works, folks. You get what you pay for.
Last year, hitting coach Andy Haines lost his job and rightfully so. The Pirates struggled mightily to manufacture runs, and when they did get runners in scoring position, the bat got stuck on their shoulder with the passive approach. Now, the blame is being shifted to Derek Shelton, who certainly has his own flaws as a manager. But at the end of the day, he didn’t have much to work with.
A couple of summers ago, the Pirates became the luckiest franchise in Major League Baseball by winning the draft lottery and earning the right to select the generational talent Paul Skenes. There was no need to invest big money into the roster during his rookie season, but after he proved that he’s as good or possibly even better than advertised, it should have struck a competitive chord in Cherington to build a competitive roster around him this past off-season.
What did Cherington do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
After watching how poor the offense was a year ago - again, so bad that the hitting coach was fired - you would think that adding two or three bats would not only be a top priority for Pittsburgh, but something that absolutely had to be done for a regime that knew it had to start winning.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think signing 37-year-old Tommy Pham, a past-his-prime Adam Frazier, and trading for an average Spencer Horwitz (who has yet to play) is going to get the job done.
It’s almost as if Cherington believes he has a lifetime contract as the team’s GM. There’s no sense of urgency whatsoever. Anyone who studied the Pirates' lineup before the season started knew that this team stood no chance. This isn’t some surprise. Cherington, on the other hand, continues to believe that guys are just underperforming according to their analytical projections.
Again, I ask, how do you sit on your hands and do absolutely nothing when you have a generational talent and one that will likely only be in your organization for a few more years?
Is that Derek Shelton’s fault? No, it’s not.
Is it Derek Shelton’s fault that the Pirates farm system has developed exactly zero promising, hitting prospects? No, it’s not.
That is squarely on the shoulders of Cherington, and how he remains in place is mind-boggling. First, it was Haines, then bullpen coach Justin Meccage, then it was director of international scouting Junior Vizcaino, and now, it’s Shelton. Cherington is running out of people to point the finger at. The longer he remains in place, the longer it delays the Pirates from making any sort of progress.
Schuyler Callihan is the publisher of West Virginia On SI and has been a trusted source covering the Mountaineers since 2016. He is the host of Between The Eers, The Walk Thru Game Day Show, and In the Gun Podcast. The Wheeling, WV native moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2020 to cover the Charlotte Hornets and Carolina Panthers.