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Gajtka: Pirates’ Approach to Retooling Might Be Prudent, But Something’s Still Missing

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This article is Matt Gajtka’s second column with Pirates Prospects, and it’s a free article. Matt will be providing coverage from Bradenton in a few weeks, and will join Alan Saunders to give you all of our Major League coverage this year. We’re offering a discount to new subscribers so that you can read Matt’s work all year, along with everything else on the site. Use the code “GAJTKA” to get 10% off an annual subscription. Or use the code “GAJTKA3” to get 10% off a Top Prospect Plan. This offer will only be available for a limited time.

BRADENTON, Fla. – Ever since I started covering Pittsburgh’s sports teams on a professional basis, I’ve been mindful of not losing the perspective of the fan.

Not only are those of us with press passes serving at the fans’ pleasure, teams and players must understand that the paying customers are ignored at one’s own peril. Without interest from the masses, there is no pro sports.

We’re clearly not in danger of that doomsday scenario occurring in Major League Baseball, considering the sheer amount of capital currently coursing through its veins. Even though traditional television ratings aren’t what they used to be, more people than ever are engaging with the sport at its highest level, whether in person at the 30 big-league ballparks or via various new media avenues.

But, as I had the increasingly rare opportunity to simply watch a game from the stands last Saturday at LECOM Park, I was starkly reminded how strained the relationship between the Pirates and the majority of their fan base is.

Prior to the Grapefruit League home opener, chairman of the board Bob Nutting and team president Frank Coonelly were introduced on the field as part of a ceremony honoring 50 years of Pirates Spring Training in Bradenton. Not even on a brilliantly sunny, unseasonably warm late-February afternoon could those two beleaguered men escape jeers and catcalls.

If you were like me and didn’t think anyone ever got booed in Spring Training, this scene disabused you of that notion.

For those into poetic moments, this also functioned as a fitting conclusion to an offseason that featured zero free-agent signings and the largely unpopular trades of Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole. I didn’t need to hear that rough reception to grasp the public perception of another winter of treading water — a quick perusal of Facebook or Twitter will do — but as they say, there’s just something about being there.

As my wife and our one-year-old son climbed to the top row of the bleachers down the first-base line, the Gulf Coast breeze blew snippets of conversations our way. Old-fashioned social media, if you will.

Some of those chats, like a lament about Nutting’s failure to sell the Pirates to Mario Lemieux several years ago, at least inspired a chuckle. Others triggered a knowing nod.

“I was talking to Frank,” said a middle-aged man a few feet from us. He smiled as he recalled a pregame chat with Coonelly in front of the home-plate grandstand.

“I said, Why didn’t you go ‘all-in’ after 2015? He said, We signed (Iván) Nova.”

First of all, full marks to Coonelly, whom I brushed past 30 minutes prior to first pitch as he gamely engaged another, uh, inquisitive customer. At least he was out there taking the proverbial slings and arrows. That’s more than can be said for Nutting, who memorably skipped PiratesFest this winter, only to brazenly show up courtside for Pitt’s home basketball game against West Virginia later that same night.

More importantly, my afternoon sitting alongside the Pirates’ faithful reinforced something else to me. In my three years covering the Pirates as a reporter, I’ve asked Nutting, Coonelly, and Neal Huntington about the sense I got that simply winning wasn’t enough for some fans. They each have responded with what I believed to be a company line, emphasizing that the only way to get fans back to the ballpark and/or watching more frequently from afar is to challenge for the postseason.

On the surface, there’s no disputing the truth of that statement. Who here really believed Russell Martin, Edinson Volquez, or J.A. Happ were destined to lead the Bucs’ charge in their three playoff years? But there’s also something called hype, something called buzz, that this explanation ignores.

For someone like me, who responds to tangible data over most anything else, it might seem disingenuous for me to be talking intangibles to such a degree. However, just because I can’t quantify enthusiasm in the Pirates’ product doesn’t mean I don’t believe enthusiasm exists.

By the way, I don’t use the word ‘product’ in a detached, post-modernist way. The Pirates are literally selling a product, and all the talk in the world about how they outperformed their PECOTA projections in 2013, ’14 and ’15 won’t fill one more blue seat at the corner of Federal and General Robinson this summer.

And even though the Astros won it all last fall largely on the backs of players with zero-to-six years of major-league service time, even though there are still a bevy of bonafide big-leaguers left unsigned as spring ball begins, even though it’s been well established the Pirates’ most reliable path to victory is to develop their own productive players, there’s still something missing from the formula.

Regardless of how many people like us pore over numbers and metrics and projection models, we will always be in the minority in the group the Pirates are attempting to captivate. Much like my jitterbug son predictably lost interest by the second inning last Saturday, most fans aren’t dedicated enough to stick it out through the latest roster recalibration.

Baseball is a science. Baseball is an art. For a select few, baseball is life. But for the majority, baseball is simply one entertainment option in a world full of alternatives.

One question I keep revisiting is this: Even if everything comes together for the Pirates in 2018, recalling the breathtaking rise of five years ago, will it be enough to get latent baseball fans back on board? Some will return, no doubt. With a mere six playoff appearances in nearly four decades and zero postseason series victories over that span, a winning Pirates team won’t go ignored, no matter how humble the beginnings.

Will a winning Pirates team captivate as much as it could, though? You may disagree with me, but I doubt it. I wouldn’t have thought it possible as this decade began, but this is a different, more jaded baseball market than it was a few years back.

Does it matter? If you want the Pirates to succeed as much as possible as a business, especially as it pertains to regional TV ratings, PNC Park attendance and the like, I think it does.

Meanwhile, back in the top row of Section 16 at the former McKechnie Field, the aforementioned man stopped talking about his impromptu confab with Coonelly. Josh Harrison had just taken a four-pitch leadoff walk, stealing the fan’s attention away from vitriol and back toward baseball.

Anything’s possible, I suppose.

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