Pirates bring back Derek Shelton, is that the right decision?

Should Pirates’ fans expect anything different next season?

Following the Pirates’ last game of the season, several coaching moves were made as hitting coach Andy Haines was fired, along with bullpen coach Justin Meccage and strength and conditioning coach Adam Vish being dismissed as well. In the wake of this, many were wondering if any more dominoes were going to fall. However, this week General Manager Ben Cherington stated that Derek Shelton would be returning as the Pirates’ Manager next season, despite his lack of success.

Cherington went into detail about keeping on Shelton in a press conference from earlier in the week, where he reaffirmed that he was in support of bringing him back in 2025, a sentiment that was shared by ownership, and that they believe he can help them take the next step as an organization.

“I believe he can help lead us toward winning in 2025,” Cherington said. “I believe he already does a lot of the aspects of the job very well and at a high level.”

The word circulating this whole development has been ‘accountability’, something that Cherington wants to achieve in 2025 with Shelton through the next process of trying to build a winning baseball team.

“Like all of us, certainly including me, he has targets that he needs to improve on and I believe he is fully aware of those,” Cherington said. “I believe he’s committed to working on those and I believe he understands the team needs to ultimately respond to him and we’ll go into 2025 together, accountable together. I’m excited for that. I’m excited for the work ahead.”

Pittsburgh is Shelton’s first assignment as a manager in Major League Baseball, raising eyebrows when hired in 2019 as a relatively unknown coaching prospect. Shelton saw time as a hitting coach in Cleveland and Tampa Bay, a quality control coach with Toronto, before heading to Minnesota to be their bench coach in 2018. It was announced in November of 2019 that Shelton would be taking the reigns as the Pirates’ Manager moving forward, and was awarded a contract extension in 2023.

2025 will be Shelton’s sixth season with the Buccos, and given what we’ve seen up to this point, I don’t believe much will change. In five seasons with Pittsburgh, Shelton has never had a winning season and has never finished higher than fourth in the NL Central. The team suffered back-to-back seasons of 100 losses and little has been done to steer the ship. 2023 saw the club improve by 14 wins, but the team failed to build on that in 2024, despite additions like Jared Jones, Paul Skenes, and a healthy Oneil Cruz.

I didn’t want Derek Shelton to come back in 2025. No head coach/manager has ever been given the amount of leash that he has. A 294-414 record over five seasons is laughable, and inexcusable. The mishandling of developing Cruz, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Liover Peguero and others is embarrassing. This team is in need of a fresh face at the top.

With that being said, I cannot realistically pin this all on Shelton. I do believe that Shelton wants to win, but I also believe he is not the guy to get Pittsburgh over the hump. In his defense however, it is hard to compete in modern baseball with the second lowest payroll in the league. Ownership is not doing management any help with getting the players they need to compete, and the coaches are not doing a good enough job developing the players that they have.

But in a league where it’s pay to win, the Pirates are just not going to rise to the occasion, and bad ownership can be an anchor for any organization. Oakland was the only team with a lower payroll, and we all saw how that dumpster fire sadly concluded.

The offseason came early for the Pirates this year, and as the nine-year playoff drought continues, so will the tenure of Manager Derek Shelton and GM Ben Cherington. The Pirates are stuck in 1887, and decisions like these will have them raising a white flag in defeat instead of the Jolly Roger.