So, a mysterious leak revealed to the world that the Pirates' ownership has made a tidy little profit over the last few years. I believe the estimated amount since Bob Nutting took over as face of the team is something like $35,000,000. People are angry as heck that the owners have the nerve to make any money at all with the way the team has been losing over the years. I don't know what the big deal is about the Pirates net profits over the last few years. I know everyone is suspicious of them pocketing all of their revenues, but even if they spent every single dime of their profits over the last few years it would have made little difference. The Pirates are a business and businesses need to make money in order to survive.
If the team was hemorrhaging money left and right, they would go bankrupt and the Nuttings would be forced to sell. I know a lot of people would love that because they think some owner with huge pockets would just come in here and spend, spend, spend and the Pirates would have a $100,000,000 payroll. Think again. If they're only making roughly $12,000,000 a year with a very low payroll, how would they possibly make any money with a payroll over twice as high?
Baseball's financial model is a joke, but I don't want to get into the whole salary cap issue because I've beaten it to death. Most people who know me are aware of how I feel about MLB and the haves and have nots. I think it's unfair and something should be done about it, but we might see a playoff tournament in division 1 college football before we see a cap in MLB.
There are many reasons why the Pirates have been so bad for the last 18 seasons, but incompetence is right there at the top of the list.
Why have they been incompetent? I don't know, but they obviously have been. However, I think this ownership group is doing the only thing that can be done for a team like the Pirates to someday be competitive.
This group is finally trying to totally rebuild the organization from top to bottom.
I know they've hit rock bottom this year, but it can only get better. When a drug addict goes through withdraw, it's ugly, but once they get over that hump, they're better for it. The Pirates might be bad now, but they're repairing the franchise from the ground up and that's going to take time. This total rebuilding process should have been done at least ten years ago and the fact that it wasn't and the organization was left with such a barren farm system is quite baffling
They are basically purging their system of that incompetence and it's manifesting itself on the field with arguably the worst season in the team's history.
The Pirates aren't the only local team that has gone through this process. When the Steelers hired Chuck Noll, the man who basically changed the course of the entire franchise, the team finished 1-13 in his first year as head coach. And the the Penguins suffered through many rough patches even after drafting their savior: Mario Lemuiex.
Sometimes, detoxing a system can be a very ugly thing.
The Penguins and Steelers are considered class organizations, each with a tradition of winning and excellence, but there were periods in both teams' histories when they were also pretty incompetent.
A lot of Steelers fans think the NFL was invented in the early 70's and the team was always the picture of excellence, but the Steelers didn't win a playoff game for the first forty years of their existence and during that stretch, they cut players like Len Dawson and Johnny Unitas and held their training camp at a horse stable in South Park. The organization wasn't considered the class of the league. It wasn't until they hired Chuck Noll as coach that the franchise started to turn a corner and become what it is today.
And a lot of Penguins fans think the NHL was created in 1984, but before Mario Lemuiex, the franchise had very little to be proud, often playing before very sparse crowds at the then Civic Arena. And even when they did have success, they would do things like blow a 3-0 lead in a best of seven series against the Islanders in 1975. And even after Mario saved the Pens the first time and helped build a winning tradition, the organization was still run with such incompetence that Mario had to come in and save them one more time. And if it wasn't for a new CBA that provided a salary cap along with the fortune of drafting Sidney Crosby, the Penguins might be in Kansas City right now.
I'm not trying to sound like a Pirates apologist, but sometimes all an organization needs is to make one or two competent decisions, along with some luck, and the whole thing can turn around. Maybe the Pirates are in the midst of the one or two sound decisions that will turn things around and make them a class organization, once again.
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