Charington will bloviate and NOTHING positive will happen. He's a frontman for Nutting, so Nutting can stay out of it and collect his money!

Why are we surprised guys we do this to ourselves every year around this time looking at free agents that would be a great fit for us and then being disappointed that the Pirates fill the hole with a cheaper more cost-effective option

Thumbnail on point! #AbandonShip

There may be a plan.. New Bullpen coach Perez takes over by All Star break if not sooner!!

Looks like another 100 loss team

We’ve seen this before, some guys will come up and be long relievers at best for us if we even see them in the next 2 years. Why sell on the known commodities. We dont have a log jam at pitcher and we probably never will.

The NL Central is the weakest division in MLB. The Porayes finished last in this divosion. Don't expect any improvement in '25. Tje Reds and Cards are working to imprpve, while the Pirates are NOT!

Maybe Cherington can sign some guys like Roberto Perez or Austin Hedges. Literally the worst hitters in mlb.

finally catching these guys live?

Shelty feels strong the Bucs are returning to the “ Glory Days”. How about breaking the longest playoff drought in the NL first. Only the Angels have a longer one by a year. This season is it for Shelty and Ben. Playoffs or Bust.

I give until the All-Star break!

MLB must really hate the pirates fans to give them such a klller schedule while giving the Yankees a bunch of Bakery items cup cakes and cream puffs.

(A long post-- feel free to ignore!) The Pirates are seriously between a rock and a hard place in regard to acquiring and keeping impactful talent (I'm referring to "positive" impactful talent). It's not just the inability of Ben Cherington to assess -- without it being accidental -- which specific players would be the best fit for the team in terms of truly elevating it. There's also the parallel issue of Cherington not keeping players he _should be_ keeping long enough. In addition, there's the conundrum of talented MLB players potentially not wanting to play for the Pirates organization at all. Bob Nutting, Ben Cherington, Derek Shelton, etc. have clearly demonstrated during the past five years that guiding a franchise into becoming a very successful and consistent "winner" clearly isn't in their wheelhouses. Otherwise, there would've been very solid and sustained improvements, and visibly promising team results overall by the end of the 2024 season. As an example, the failure of Cherington in letting go a talented and very professional leader like 1B Carlos Santana was mind-boggling to me-- particularly when Santana indicated he'd like to return (one of the critical reasons being that he wanted to continue mentoring the younger Pirate players). Cherington has zero aptitude for legitimate and proactive team building, especially when he couldn't even prioritize keeping a player as valuable as Santana was to the Pirates (for a variety of reasons). There would've been no reason for Cherington to acquire Rowdy Tellez , and then recently give up Luis Ortiz and others to acquire Spencer Horowitz -- a question mark right now -- to play 1st base in 2025. That's NOT straightforward and _competitive_ team building. Imagine if Cherington -- in a frantic attempt to save his job -- had decided to go after a player like Pete Alonso or Christian Walker to play 1st base in 2025 and he had the money to do it. As highly motivated competitors, would Alonso or Walker really want to play for this franchise? I just don't see how any talented, smart, and competitive MLB player could take someone like Cherington seriously. He's far from a visionary, he's not particularly competent, and I don't how see he could convince any rational person that he's _genuinely motivated_ to win, and that he suddenly has an intelligent and cohesive plan to do so. The fact that Cherington is oblivious to the reputation that Pirates ownership and management currently have in MLB -- and is also oblivious to what he HASN'T accomplished during his tenure -- shows such an amazing lack of awareness. In my view, he doesn’t deserve more time because he hasn't demonstrated enough competence doing what he's still being paid to do. That goes for Derek Shelton as well. They've more or less been coasting (in my opinion), and they've gotten away with it. The NL Central is going to be much more competitive as a whole in 2025, which means the Pirates are going to have to elevate their game like they never have before. I'm not convinced that Cherington and Shelton will be up to the task-- there's just been too much team volatility for too long. That includes poorly constructed rosters, player underperformance, player regression, and continued deficits in hitting, defensive skills, baserunning, and erratic game planning. When declining execution is occurring among multiple players over the course of a season, there's a MUCH larger problem that desperately needs to be addressed.

Raygun Shelton can't win with an easy schedule..... Da'wreck can't win, period!! This is just wasting time....They will fire Raygun, and he will never manage again in the majors!

Imaging trading 10 man-years of Bell Taillon Frazier Marte Musgrove and not getting a single good hitter back

Do you mean to tell me the 2025 season is over? Here o thought we had a World Series team.

Don't expect any meaningful FA signings or trades for better and more expensive players. SS a payback for "Sell The Team Bob" he's going to show the 106 remaining die hard Pirates fans just how low that payroll can go which is a lot lower than it has been in recent years.

Based on the schedule they may be out of it by memorial day

What good player would want to come here for a bargain basement deal

John670 is right, DK. December's grey skies and the Jersey Drones underscore your bah hum bug message, I'm afraid.

They will not finish above the Cardinals.

Your lack of impartiality and anti Pirates bias is starting to make you unlistenable. Maybe try to leave your weird vendetta against the organization out of your content.

Good Morning DK..What’s going on with Cutch?

I hope they give him a chance to play everyday and stop the platoon stuff. You have to see lefties to hit them. Look at how Cruz got better if hitting lefties when given the chance.

Way too much for a 27year old “platoon” guy cmon now

My god not Triolo… He needs to go

Jones is too small in my opinion to hold up for the long haul….. his arm won’t last so I wouldn’t be devastated if they got a #1 OF prospect for him one bit

Solid on base numbers throughout his career

I like the young players the pirates brought up and I see upside in all of them plus endy rodrigez should be back its not as bad as a lot of fans think it is ! shelton ,cherrington , and marine are terrible get rid of them and the pirates might have something that can contend !

Good point about innings pitched.

Salary Cap is hand-in-hand with a Salary Floor.

If you want to go the free agent route, Max Kepler, while not great, would be a significant upgrade in right. Ha-Seong Kim could be signed to play short (though he did have shoulder surgery late last season). The two of them together would not cost $30 million annually. You would still have a good deal of money left over to fix the bullpen. That's if you want to do this strictly with free agents. As you say, trades can also be made.

What does J1Q mean?

What took so long? DK, this is not hard to figure out. He was blocked in the Blue Jays organization by a mediocre, just-a-guy player you may have heard of: Vlad Guerrero Jr. Did you even look at Horwitz's career body of work? You're usually better than this, DK. You didn't do your homework here.

Everybody that keeps busting out the advanced stats saying don't worry, Ortiz sucks....he got RESULTS more often than not, and had a good attitude being overlooked all the time. Horwitz seems interesting but I'd have rather kept Ortiz in the rotation where he belongs.

Need a GM and definitely need a Manager Period

He looks like Mitch Trubisky. Great.

Meh.

Thank you DK. Great listen today for me, I wonder what's next.

Shelton you're a manager, so when are you going to start managing? Stay within your lane, that's more than ENOUGH for you!

I'm done. I WILL NEVER STEP FOOT INSIDE PNC PARK as long as that POS OWNER is still breathing & owning this once great organization

The Pirates is The Pirates. Enough said.

Sign Skenes to a long term deal. The longer they wait the more it will cost.

It was nice to see Ortizs development over the years. I hope they love him in CLE. He deserves it

The guy put up good numbers with Toronto as a rookie. Give him a fricking chance. People are thinking we gave up Nolan Ryan in Luis Ortiz. Ortiz was expendable with all the pitching coming. The other two are 2 to 3 years away if they make it at all. I'm not a fan of Cherington but I think this is a good trade a everyday first baseman for a number 4 or 5 starter who makes 30+ 5 or 6 inning starts. With Strom and Hague coming in hopefully they'll make some improvements in the major league roster

Horowitz will be back in the minors by July joining Jack Suswinski and Henry Davis as career minor leaguers.

Horowitz is a good pickup with plenty of control, but the Pirates overpaid. The trade should've been Ortiz for Horowitz only.

He is selling the team…one good player at a time.

When your power hitting first baseman isn't even 6 feet tall, hopefully he is the greatest fielder since Mike Squires!

Sell the team commercial LoL. How appropriate. It will be funny if he no-hits the Pirates in April.