Dodgers' Kyle Tucker deal highlights uncomfortable truth about Pirates’ ambitions

The Pittsburgh Pirates didn’t do nothing this offseason. That sentence alone feels like progress for this franchise.

They traded for Brandon Lowe. They brought in Ryan O’Hearn. They fortified the bullpen with Gregory Soto. They took a real swing on upside with Jhostynxon Garcia. For once, this wasn’t a winter of waiver claims, Rule 5 darts and “internal options.” It was an offseason that said, we are trying to get better right now.

And then the Los Angeles Dodgers gave Kyle Tucker four years and $240 million.

Sixty. Million. Dollars. Per. Year.

In one swoop, Los Angeles didn’t just reset the market — they detonated it. They turned what looked like a serious, earnest Pirates offseason into something that suddenly feels quaint. Like Pittsburgh showed up to a gunfight with a well-organized toolbox.

This is the uncomfortable truth Pirates fans are being forced to sit with: the front office did try. And it still doesn’t matter.

Both things can be true at the same time. Bob Nutting could absolutely spend more. The Pirates could push harder. They could stretch payroll. They could operate like a mid-market team instead of a small-market one. Fans are right to demand that.

But it’s also true that the game itself is drifting into something unrecognizable.

If $60 million per year becomes the cost of entering free agency — not winning it, not splurging, just showing up — then most teams will simply stop trying. We are already watching it happen in real time. Every major bidding war now follows the same script: the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets posture, the industry leaks optimism, and the Dodgers close the deal.

That’s not competition. That’s inevitability.

The Pirates’ offseason looks like a joke next to that. Not because Lowe, O’Hearn, Soto and Garcia aren’t meaningful upgrades — they are — but because the scale of the sport has become absurd. Pittsburgh is trying to build a better roster, but Los Angeles is operating in a different economic universe.

Dodgers' Kyle Tucker signing gives Pirates, other small-market teams an existential crisis

Here’s the truly dangerous part: this isn’t turning fans against owners. It’s turning fans against players.

The Dodgers have accomplished what 50 years of ownership never could. They’ve made fans root for a lockout. They’ve made people talk openly about a salary cap. They’ve made the idea of a work stoppage in 2027 feel not just likely, but necessary.

When fans see one team casually spend a quarter-billion dollars on a single player while half the league can’t even pretend to participate, the frustration stops being abstract. It becomes personal. It becomes existential. What is the point of trying?

The Pirates finally behaved like a team that wants to take a step forward. They didn’t punt the offseason. They didn’t hide behind “future flexibility.” They added real major-league talent. And it still feels like nothing.

That’s not just a Pittsburgh problem. That’s a baseball problem.

Because if the gap between “trying” and “contending” is now measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, then the sport isn’t broken because of Nutting alone. It’s broken because the cost of relevance has become so extreme that hope itself is being priced out.

The Pirates tried to get better. The Dodgers reminded everyone how small that effort still looks. And somewhere between those two truths is a game barreling toward another labor war — with fans no longer sure who they’re even supposed to be mad at.