MLB Players’ Association Files a Second Grievance Against the Pittsburgh Pirates

The MLB Players’ Association is looking to initiate a second greviance vs the  Pittsburgh Pirates.

A new, and surprising story has just broke from the MLB Players’ Association involving the Pittsburgh Pirates. The association is looking to file their second grievance against the Pirates over revenue sharing.

This is nothing new, as the MLBPA filed a grievance last semester against a handful of the teams who usually sit in the bottom of payroll rankings, and this obviously included the Pirates. The Pirates, along with the Tampa Bay Rays, Miami Marlins, and Oakland A’s were also part of the grievance.

The official grievance challenges Bucs’ owner Bob Nutting’s use of revenue-sharing funds. However, it seems to be over 2018-2019 off-season, and not the most recent one, while the first grievance was over the 2017-2018 off-season.

During each of these off seasons, the Pirates signed three Major League deals (Lonnie Chisenhall, Jordan Lyles, Jung-Ho Kang) in ‘18-’19, and none in ‘17-’18, aside from two minor league contracts. Their lack of activity in ‘17-’18, aside from trading their two biggest names in Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen, likely was the start of the questions being asked.

Over this past off-season, the Pirates didn’t add to the payroll, but instead subtracted. After longtime outfielder Starling Marte was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks last month, their payroll sits at $51 million. Only the Marlins and Baltimore Orioles own a lower payroll. The team’s highest paid player is Chris Archer at $9 million, with outfielder Gregory Polanco coming in at a close second at $8.6 million.

This is a far cry from the heights the payroll was at in the mid-to-late-2010’s. From 2015 to 2018, the Bucs’ payroll never went below $80 million. It’s peak was in 2016 when their payroll exceeded $100 million at $101 million. The lowest mark was $84 million in 2015.

This development comes just a day after news of the Pirates interest in extending their young players. The team’s interest in extending their players is likely also an attempt to raise the team’s payroll from the lowly $51 million it sits at now.

However, this hasn’t been a usual off-season for the Pirates. Former general manager Neal Huntington’s firing to start the off-season left the front office without a leader for all of October and most of November. After Ben Cherington was hired, he had to first find a manager to lead the team, and also aid in the hunt for a pitching coach.

While Cherington hasn’t added to the payroll, he has at the very least attempted to add depth to the team, something that Huntington didn’t do much of in the past couple of off-seasons. Since his hiring, Cherington has added eight different players. In the past two off-season, the Pirates had a combined 11 total free agent signings.

However, the current payroll that owner Bob Nutting has given Cherington to work with is unknown. But Cherington did state in an interview that he expects the payroll to increase overtime. After all, that seems like it’s highly possible. Right now, the Pirates are entering a rebuild phase, and, from a business point of view, Nutting doesn’t have a really good reason to spend like he was in 2015-2018.

But $51 million is the lowest the team’s payroll has been since 2011 when it sat at a measly $45 million. Just to show how low the current payroll is, the New York Yankees signed former Pirate All-Star Gerrit Cole for $36 million a year. That is roughly 70% of the Pirates’ entire payroll.

While I am not saying that the Pirates have to go out year after year and sign a handful of high-priced free agents, the current payroll status does give the union some reason to be suspicious. Before yesterday, the Pirates never really stated an interest in extending their young players, even though I think they had a chance to extend slugger Josh Bell and Joe Musgrove last off-season.

This grievance is not a good look on Pirates ownership. Hopefully, the interest in exploring extensions is more than just talk, and they do seriously make an attempt to extend to give contracts to guys like Bryan Reynolds, Mitch Keller, Kevin Newman, Musgrove, and Bell. Another course of action they could take to raise the payroll is to ‘buy prospects’ by taking on bad contracts to improve the Bucs’ future and farm system. Regardless, many fans hope that this is the incentive ownership needs to show that they are more willing to spend even if it’s not at Yankee or Los Angeles Dodger levels.