The Art of Saying Nothing

Whenever I hear Pirates General Manager Ben Cherington speak, the same thought passes through my mind:

Does this man think he’s fooling anyone?

Then, a second thought:

Does he care if he is or not?

Cherington had an end-of-season press conference Wednesday afternoon, and as usual, said plenty of words without actually saying anything. The one “newsy” item from the presser was negative. More on that in a minute.

WPXI’s Jenna Harner asked Cherington why fans should expect things to change for the better moving forward. His entire response is worth reading.

I think there’s clear evidence progress has been made and certainly not enough. We are winning more games, we’re not winning enough, it has to happen better and faster. As I said, I really do believe we go into 2025 already with the strongest, deepest roster we’ve had since I’ve been here, we need to make it better. There are different ways to make it better. Some of it will be through offseason acquisition, some of it will need to be through player improvement. Over time, certainly some of it is going to need to come from continuing to get better at the draft and international and internal development and et cetera et cetera and on and on. I’m confident because I’m fully energized by the job, by the task. It’s hard, it’s a hard job and it’s not supposed to be easy. But that’s why we do it. I understand frustration. I understand there are a lot of people out there who care about the Pirates and a lot of different stakeholders who care about the Pirates, including people in this room, certainly including the fans, people inside the organization and certainly our players, staff and ownership. All of those people care a lot about the Pirates, so when the outcomes aren’t yet what I want them to be, what we want them to be, there is going to be frustration that comes from that. I’m fully aware of that and I accept that. I’m just going to keep focused on what I can do to make it better every day, and I know I need to. That will be our sole focus this offseason.

Done yet? I just stepped away to grab some croutons, dressing and bacon bits. You can’t consume word salad without toppings, after all.

I know you just read all of that, but it’s probably worth actually listening to Cherington talk. Not only are the words themselves empty, there’s absolutely nothing behind them. No affect, no readily apparent sense that the man speaking is doing so for any reason other than the fact that he has to.

It’s bad enough that Cherington talks down to fans when he says the team has made clear progress; it’s even worse that he appears to have all the passion of an accountant in the process. Nothing about the man seems urgent. It’s all just empty. There’s nothing there.

Back to that one negative piece of actual news, though. That would be Cherington revealing that he went to Bob Nutting and made the case that Derek Shelton should stay on as manager because – and I’m paraphrasing here – he and Shelton should be tied at the hip next year.

Even worse, Cherington indicated that Nutting agreed with his assessment. Translation: Shelton is back for 2025. This is a manager, mind you, whose players looked like they were tuning him out late in the season. As I write this, Terry Francona has just agreed to manage the Reds. I have no idea if the Pirates did or didn’t reach out to Francona to gauge his interest in managing, but I know which way I’m leaning.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that this is how things went, though. From the owner on down, it’s lip service and banal platitudes, year after year after year. I actually agree with Cherington that he and Shelton should be tied at the hip, but it should have been on their way out the door, having been handed their pink slips simultaneously.

That would require Nutting to eat a little money – which, to be fair, he did with Neal Huntington and Clint Hurdle – but more importantly, would require him to be plugged in enough, to care enough, to take a hard look at Cherington and Shelton’s work.

He just isn’t wired like that. I assume that when Cherington tells him things are going as planned, he mostly agrees, then goes on about his business. If he is intimately involved with baseball operations, then we can reasonably conclude he’s pleased with what he sees.

The plan isn’t working, of course. This franchise is not making progress. Shelton is a terrible manager who doesn’t handle his bullpen well, presides over a team that makes way too many fundamental errors, and generally doesn’t get the most out of his players.

As bad as all that is, the bigger problem is that Cherington didn’t give him much to work with.

Cherington gets credit for drafting Paul Skenes, because there was real debate about whether Skenes or Dylan Crews, his LSU teammate, was the right choice with the top overall pick. I wanted the Pirates to take Crews. I’m glad they didn’t. Good for Cherington. I think Skenes would have been successful anywhere, but you do also have to give Cherington and his staff credit for how they brought him along. The proof is in the pudding. He’s the best pitcher in baseball already.

Outside of Skenes’ smashing success, what else is there?

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Henry Davis’ career is already at a crossroads. He was never top pick material, but he also shouldn’t be this bad. He looks like an enormous bust in the making. Picking Joey Bart up off the scrap heap eases the sting of that somewhat, but it’s not illegal to ask the Pirates to draft well and turn other teams’ trash into occasional treasure. You’re allowed to do both.

We’ve potentially already seen the best of Jack Suwinski. Ke’Bryan Hayes was supposed to be a franchise cornerstone, but he can’t hit and his back looks like it will be a chronic issue.

Rowdy Tellez was a disaster for two months, good for three months, then a disaster for one more month. Overall? Not a good use of funds. Marco Gonzales got hurt. Martin Perez with the Pirates? A 5.20 ERA in 83 innings. With the Padres? A 3.46 ERA in 52 innings. The underlying numbers suggest he was mostly the same pitcher, just luckier in San Diego, but try telling that to a Pirates fan and see if it eases the sting.

Cherington bungled his offseason – Michael A. Taylor was terrible, Domingo German even being on the roster was embarrassing, Yasmani Grandal was bad, and on and on and on.

He butchered the trade deadline, too. Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s OPS with the Blue Jays was .758. With the Pirates it was .587. Bryan De La Cruz? He went from .707 with the Marlins to .514 with the Pirates. Jalen Beeks was luckier with the Pirates than he was with the Rockies, not better. And Luis Peralta, the player dealt to Colorado in that trade? He threw 12.1 innings for the Rockies, gave up one earned run, struck out 14 and walked just five. Another bad deal.

Outside of Skenes, who is there to be optimistic about? Luis Ortiz is one. Oneil Cruz is another, though I don’t think he’ll ever be a superstar-level player. Bart? Hopefully Jared Jones? Cherington can throw 2020 out the window, but we’re now five seasons into his tenure. The cupboard looks awfully bare, particularly where position players are concerned. Is this franchise any better off than when he took over? Is this team really making progress? They had the best pitcher in the sport for 23 starts, Cruz for the whole season, and won the exact same number of games that they did last year, when they had neither of those things.

An objective look at the Pirates reveals a team that looks content to be mediocre, to maybe get lucky and be playing meaningful baseball games in September. Cherington’s comments Wednesday did nothing to change that perception. He thinks everything is going fine, and apparently, so does his boss.

Press him for specific evidence to back up that sentiment, though, and you won’t get any. Instead, you’ll just get the usual: A whole lot of nothing.