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The Pittsburgh Pirates have fired manager Derek Shelton 38 games into the season. They named his successor, bench coach Don Kelly, at the same time that they announced the firing.
The Pirates have begun the 2025 season with a 12-26 record, and sit 10 games back in the NL Central. They’ve also lost seven games in a row, and are just 1-9 in their last 10 contests. That Shelton has been fired following a disappointing second half in 2024 and a poor start to this season is not a surprise, but whether Kelly will be what fixes the Pirates, as team owner Bob Nutting suggested in a statement on the joint firing and hiring, is another question altogether.
While Shelton’s time with the Pirates concluded with a 306-440 record (.410 win percentage), three last-place finishes and zero postseason appearances, it’s not as if he introduced these problems to Pittsburgh. The 2019 team finished 69-93, in last place in the NL Central. The 2018 and 2017 squads both finished in fourth place, with the former just squeezing in over .500 with 82 wins. The Pirates haven’t been to the postseason since 2015, when they lost in the NL wild card game to the Cubs. That team had a higher Opening Day payroll ($90.1 million) than 2025’s club ($86.5 million), despite the general rise of player cost and the addition of a 26th roster spot in 2020.
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“There is a lot of baseball left to be played. We need to act with a sense of urgency and take the steps necessary to fix this now to get back on track as a team and organization,” Nutting, owner of the team since 2007, said in the statement. There are much larger issues with the Pirates than just who the manager is, however. As FOX Sports’ analysts Rowan Kavner and Deesha Thosar recently put it, respectively: “Until or unless Nutting decides to actually invest in his team — or sell it — it’s hard to imagine a regime switch will yield meaningful change,” and, “In an ideal world, a top-to-bottom regime change should be in order.”
As for Shelton, general manager Ben Cherington, architect of these teams since November of 2019 – the entirety of Shelton’s time as manager – said in the same team statement that, “Derek worked incredibly hard and sacrificed a lot of five-plus years. His family became part of the Pirates family, and we will miss that. He’s an incredibly smart, curious, and driven baseball leader. I believe he was the right person for the job when he was hired. I also believe that a change of scenery is now necessary.”
This is of course also occurring at the same time as the announcement of a new pope chosen by the Vatican. Some things just can’t wait for the Friday news dump.
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