OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: The Condemned of Altoona

[cheesedanish87]

Great game for Rodriguez, two strikeouts and a double play.

Hurdle needs to give him more reps i guess.

 

[gtpeli2]

Going to be in last place before you know it. This team and franchise is so pathetic. Losers everywhere.

 

[ColePens]

Great game for Rodriguez, two strikeouts and a double play.

Hurdle needs to give him more reps i guess.

Was watching and almost laughed at how disgusted the announcers were that S Rod was even playing. Questioning why he's in when he's struggling. It was rough to watch/listen to.

 

[USMC607]

I have alot of die hard friends who constantly give this ownership passes.

I gave up on them somewhere during the 20+yr under .500 streak.

At the beginning of this yr when they were like 10-0 they were so confident this was the yr and everyone petitioning for Nutting to sell the team were gonna be proven wrong. I just told em there was 162 games.

I'll bite my tongue under the end. But its status quo. Our owner is cheap and doesnt care. They wont get a cent from me until he sells. Even if I like them, he isnt getting a dime from me.

 

[DanielPlainview]

Their fault this year is holding onto to Hurdle. He would have been gone a couple years ago if I had a say, but I could at least understand people giving him the benefit of the doubt. This year is just a complete disaster. No other organization would have kept him after May let alone through two terrible months of mismanaged baseball. I don't blame the players at all for having no energy; their manager doesn't have winning as his top priority.

 

[cookthebooks]

hurdle doesn’t even matter. the whole pitching development and coaching process needs rebooted before they will ever compete again even for a brief window

 

[NewAgeOutlaw]

I have had a well documented hate of Hurdle ever since the Great Rod Barajas Tragedy of 2012. As a matter of fact, Hurdle was the 2nd person in the "people also search for" que when I googled Barajas.

I will never forget those popups.

 

[Coastal Kev]

Even without the SeanRod bull****, I don't know how a team lets this poor performance slide. Is there another team that would still have Hurdle employed right now?

Only if the team was owned by that female owner in Major League.

 

[TNT87]

 

[BlackAndGold87]

Such a joke of a team. Start selling off talent and go for a high pick (again).

Nutting and Hurdle can go **** themselves. Bunch of clowns.

 

[Pens x]

Even Greg Brown is having problems blindly defending this team with the way things have unfolded.

 

[USMC607]

Such a joke of a team. Start selling off talent and go for a high pick (again).

Nutting and Hurdle can go **** themselves. Bunch of clowns.

Meh if they get a top pick they will blow it, or theyll draft someone who was meant to be picked in the end of the 1st beginning of the 2nd just to pay them less.

 

[Pens x]

hurdle doesn’t even matter. the whole pitching development and coaching process needs rebooted before they will ever compete again even for a brief window

Our manager continues to play Sean Rodriguez. He’s not putting them in the best position to win. That’s a serious problem. He just wants to avoid conflict and be buddies with the players.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Meh if they get a top pick they will blow it, or theyll draft someone who was meant to be picked in the end of the 1st beginning of the 2nd just to pay them less.

Precisely.

And that decision goes all the way up to Nutting. Not the exact player mind you, he doesn't f***ing know baseball. But he instructs Huntington on how much he can spend and if he tells him to take a cheap prospect, guess what Neal has to do?

Firing Hurdle and everyone else below the owner does nothing to right the ship. This starts and ends with Bob f***ing Nutting.

 

[AverageJoeFan]

Precisely.

And that decision goes all the way up to Nutting. Not the exact player mind you, he doesn't ****ing know baseball. But he instructs Huntington on how much he can spend and if he tells him to take a cheap prospect, guess what Neal has to do?

Firing Hurdle and everyone else below the owner does nothing to right the ship. This starts and ends with Bob ****ing Nutting.

Sadly Nutting isn't going to sell to anyone as long as he can pocket $20 mil+ each year. He's said before that he wants to leave it as a legacy for his family. I don't normally wish bad on anyone, but I struggle with having any good thoughts for Nutting. Revenue sharing hasn't made the team better. It's made Nutting richer and that's about it.

On the player side of things, we have zero bench depth. It doesn't help that Hurdle plays his weak bench as much as he does, but that is the metric he is using to "rest" players.

I agree this all falls back to Nutting and no matter who you fire in management it's not going to change the outcome.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I'd wager Nutting is making a lot more than 20M each year off the Bucs.

I just don't get the legacy aspect. What legacy? You're already a billionaire dude. You sure as shit aren't leaving a legacy of winning or fielding competitive rosters. You are leaving a legacy, largely of failure and bottom line economics. Look, I get it. At the end of the day the Bucs are a business in all reality but you can tell he has no interest in opening the payroll to allow for real, long lasting improvements. Nobody is saying he should be spending 150M plus each year but it's absolutely absurd to be where we are in a city like Pittsburgh. A city that will show up in droves if you actually gave a shit. He doesn't.

 

[Shwag33]

I'd wager Nutting is making a lot more than 20M each year off the Bucs.

I just don't get the legacy aspect. What legacy? You're already a billionaire dude. You sure as **** aren't leaving a legacy of winning or fielding competitive rosters. You are leaving a legacy, largely of failure and bottom line economics. Look, I get it. At the end of the day the Bucs are a business in all reality but you can tell he has no interest in opening the payroll to allow for real, long lasting improvements. Nobody is saying he should be spending 150M plus each year but it's absolutely absurd to be where we are in a city like Pittsburgh. A city that will show up in droves if you actually gave a ****. He doesn't.

Exactly. Nothing has ever changed with this organization. I'd get called out because I didn't jump on the bandwagon a couple of years ago. Nothing in the organization ever changed, they just managed to finally get lucky with all their years of futility by having reclamation pitchers lighting it up.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Exactly. Nothing has ever changed with this organization. I'd get called out because I didn't jump on the bandwagon a couple of years ago. Nothing in the organization ever changed, they just managed to finally get lucky with all their years of futility by having reclamation pitchers lighting it up.

Bingo.

People got lulled into believing they had finally turned a corner but if you look at the payroll, nothing really changed, despite the massive increase in attendence a few years ago. As you said, the stars aligned with some low budget players (namely pitching) performing above the norm, which coincided with having an MVP talent at the heart of the order.

It's not a bold prediction to say this team will never win with Nutting. It's pretty close to fact. I don't even think a new, lucrative TV deal will do anything to help us in the spending of money, long term. Nothing Nutting has done says he'll ever deviate from being a penny pinching business man.

 

[Winger for Hire]

https://deadspin.com/the-pirates-want-sports-gambling-revenue-to-fund-stadiu-1827102001

 

[ImporterExporter]

https://deadspin.com/the-pirates-want-sports-gambling-revenue-to-fund-stadiu-1827102001

Typical socialists. Make somebody else pay for their shit. The public paid the vast majority of the ballpark to begin with. Now they want a cut of betting money to fix the "premier ballpark"? Shruuuuug.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Besides true predators like Bezos and Musk, I'd be hard-pressed to name more brazen examples of sheer capitalist opportunists than professional sports owners. Even in genuinely progressive sports leagues like the NBA, the owners form a class of identical and equally detestable leeches on the public good. We would do well to see that all sports franchises were more like the Packers.

Nutting is uniquely bad in some ways, but short of some drastic changes in the league, this is how it's going to be.

 

[WheresRamziAbid]

I'd wager Nutting is making a lot more than 20M each year off the Bucs.

I just don't get the legacy aspect. What legacy? You're already a billionaire dude. You sure as **** aren't leaving a legacy of winning or fielding competitive rosters. You are leaving a legacy, largely of failure and bottom line economics. Look, I get it. At the end of the day the Bucs are a business in all reality but you can tell he has no interest in opening the payroll to allow for real, long lasting improvements. Nobody is saying he should be spending 150M plus each year but it's absolutely absurd to be where we are in a city like Pittsburgh. A city that will show up in droves if you actually gave a ****. He doesn't.

Lets assume that this completely speculative and unsubstantiated number is accurate. Which is likely isnt . But you havent and wont actually listen on that note anyway so lets go to phase two...

2. Even if the PIRATES make a profit on a yearly basis, Nutting has not received any of that money. He does not take a salary. And owners havent received dividends in a what a decade? That money if not reinvested in the team/stadium etc. Would literally sit around and do nothing. They only benefit of that would be if Nutting was planning to sell, which he has said many time , he is not.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

In baseball news, I wonder if this series against the Mets will negate the existence of baseball itself for three days. The Mets have been in an even worse situation than the Pirates, for even longer. I can't even process how that's true.

 

[USMC607]

Sadly Nutting isn't going to sell to anyone as long as he can pocket $20 mil+ each year. He's said before that he wants to leave it as a legacy for his family. I don't normally wish bad on anyone, but I struggle with having any good thoughts for Nutting. Revenue sharing hasn't made the team better. It's made Nutting richer and that's about it.

On the player side of things, we have zero bench depth. It doesn't help that Hurdle plays his weak bench as much as he does, but that is the metric he is using to "rest" players.

I agree this all falls back to Nutting and no matter who you fire in management it's not going to change the outcome.

Ya he wont sell. Its sickening too that he is going to leave this for his family.

The only real way he will sell is if the yinzers stop going.

Instead of making an excuse to go like the ball park is nice, it's just something cheap to go out and do in the summer, I like baseball, etc etc. All may be true, but unless majority of people stop going there will be no change.

The crazy thing about it is there are still brainwashed die hards, or older folks that remember the golden years that still give him a pass, and that we all have to Trust The Process.

Even after he did nothing to put us over the edge when we had our window. Then when he slammed the window shut on us.

 

[Shwag33]

Lets assume that this completely speculative and unsubstantiated number is accurate. Which is likely isnt . But you havent and wont actually listen on that note anyway so lets go to phase two...

2. Even if the PIRATES make a profit on a yearly basis, Nutting has not received any of that money. He does not take a salary. And owners havent received dividends in a what a decade? That money if not reinvested in the team/stadium etc. Would literally sit around and do nothing. They only benefit of that would be if Nutting was planning to sell, which he has said many time , he is not.

I love how you trash reports of their reported profits as being inaccurate yet you're wildly speculating about what they do or don't do with the money.