Who Owns the Game - 28, Pirates

“I’m not going to apologize for running this team in a financially responsible way.” - Bob Nutting

The Pittsburgh Pirates sit at 28, and it isn’t because they are a small market, or because the city can’t support baseball, or because the fans don’t care, since anyone who watched PNC Park in 2013 knows that argument falls apart the moment you try to make it. They sit at 28 because ownership has spent the better part of a decade treating competitiveness like a controlled financial risk instead of something closer to a civic responsibility, and the clearest way to see that isn’t by comparing them to the Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Yankees, but to the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays, franchises operating under similar constraints that made very different choices when their moments arrived.

History matters here in a way it doesn’t for every franchise, because this isn’t some interchangeable brand trying to find relevance, this is Honus Wagner, this is Bill Mazeroski, this is Roberto Clemente, whose presence still defines how the sport talks about responsibility and humanity. The 1971 Pirates changed what a lineup could look like, and the 1979 team carried a city in a way that went beyond wins and losses, which is exactly why stagnation lands heavier here than it does in a place like Miami, because there is something real underneath it that people still recognize.

The city held up its end of the deal. Public money helped build PNC Park, and it isn’t a relic or an excuse or a place that needs to be replaced, it’s one of the best settings in baseball, a civic jewel that gave ownership a stage most franchises would envy. When Bob Nutting assumed control in 2007, he stepped into a situation that already had stability, a new ballpark, and a fan base that had endured two decades of losing but was still waiting for a reason to believe again.

That reason finally showed up between 2013 and 2015, when the Pirates broke through with three straight postseason appearances and back-to-back ninety win seasons, and that Wild Card game in 2013 felt less like a single night and more like a release of everything that had been building for twenty years. That was the window, the moment when the evaluation really begins, because the question shifts from whether you can get there to what you do once you are there.

Milwaukee leaned in. Tampa leaned in. Pittsburgh stepped back.

The Milwaukee Brewers, under Mark Attanasio, recognized their window and treated it like something that needed to be extended, not protected, trading for major league help, locking in pitching, and running payroll higher than strict market math would suggest, not recklessly but with intent, acting like contention windows are meant to be pushed. The Tampa Bay Rays, operating with even tighter constraints and a worse stadium situation, built an infrastructure that keeps them relevant year after year, reaching a World Series in 2020 and treating limitations like problems to solve rather than ceilings to accept.

Pittsburgh treated the window like something to manage carefully until it passed.

After 2015 there was no aggressive reinforcement, no meaningful payroll stretch to extend the run, and over time the core dissolved, with Andrew McCutchen, Gerrit Cole, and Starling Marte all moved without any real signal from ownership that urgency existed. You don’t need to argue it emotionally because the payroll data tells the story cleanly, with the Pirates sitting in the bottom third, and at times the bottom five, across multiple seasons from 2016 through 2025, all while league revenues climbed past ten billion dollars and franchise values surged.

Milwaukee didn’t behave like that. Tampa didn’t behave like that. Pittsburgh often chose to operate near the floor.

Revenue sharing is designed to support competitive balance, not to protect ownership margins, and when a publicly supported franchise continues to run bottom-tier payrolls during a period of league-wide financial expansion, the question stops being about capability and becomes one of intent. The city helped finance the ballpark, the fans showed up when given a reason, and the league structure provided support, so when ownership leans on language like sustainability and patience, it lands differently when the pattern shows consistent caution at the exact moments when aggression would have mattered most.

Even inside the clubhouse, the tone suggests a higher bar than what has been delivered, with Paul Skenes brushing aside nostalgia about the 2013 Wild Card game as if it represents something insufficient rather than something to be celebrated, which is a subtle but important shift because it shows that the expectation internally may already exceed what ownership has been willing to match.

The scorecard reflects that reality more than any single narrative ever could. Competitive intent sits at 28 because the Pirates did not push when they were close and have not sustained relevance since. Fan alignment lands at 27 because the messaging has emphasized patience while the experience has been cycles of rebuilding. Cultural fit comes in at 24 because Pittsburgh will accept hardship but expects visible effort, and caution rarely reads as effort in a city built on grit. Financial integrity lands at 28 given the combination of revenue-sharing support and repeated bottom-tier payroll positioning during a revenue boom. Labor and organizational culture sit at 26, acknowledging improvements in development but also the erosion that comes with constant turnover. Long-term vision lands at 27, where the philosophy is articulated but not executed at the level demonstrated by Milwaukee and Tampa. Integrity and accountability come in at 26, absent scandal but defined by a consistent pattern of conservatism framed as prudence. Relationship to history earns a 22 because Clemente’s legacy is still respected, and that matters. Impact on the health of the game lands at 27, because a historic franchise in a strong baseball city spending a decade largely outside serious contention affects the credibility of the league.

That produces a composite score of 235 out of 270, placing Pittsburgh above Miami and Oakland but still firmly in the bottom tier.

The distinction is straightforward when stripped down. Oakland reflects contraction and portability, Miami reflects instability and broken trust cycles, and Pittsburgh reflects restraint that has hardened into stagnation, while Milwaukee and Tampa demonstrate that restraint does not have to mean retreat because they operate under the same structural conditions and choose aggression within those limits, whereas the Pirates choose caution, and over time that choice becomes identity, and identity becomes record.

That is why the Pittsburgh Pirates sit at 28.