Pirates' tiny protest crowd during Paul Skenes start was a horrible sign

The Pittsburgh Pirates' first homestand of the season saw a large number of disgruntled fans booing manager Derek Shelton during introductions and loudly demanding that Bob Nutting sell the team.

Sometimes, however, silence can be the most deafening form of protest.

When Paul Skenes and the Pirates opened their second home series of the season at PNC Park against the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday night, they did so in front of a humiliatingly small crowd of 8,291 people.

The most exciting young pitcher in the game was making his first start of the season at home against a division rival, and even that couldn't draw a decent crowd. "Crowd" might actually be a generous term for the smattering of people surrounded by more than 30,000 empty seats on what should have been a much busier night on Pittsburgh's North Shore.

Pirates' tiny protest crowd during Paul Skenes start was a horrible sign

Those interested in making excuses for the Pirates in what's bound to be another calamitous season will likely be the first to point out that April in Western Pennsylvania doesn't exactly feel like baseball weather. That argument is not wrong – it was 38 degrees and partly cloudy at the time Skenes threw his first pitch on Tuesday – but a quick glance around the league suggests that fans will show up in bad weather for good teams.

Take the Detroit Tigers, for example. Like Pittsburgh, Detroit is a small market, and the Tigers had reigning American League Cy Young award winner Tarik Skubal taking the hill at Comerica Park on Tuesday. They still managed to draw a crowd of 14,156 – a number that's well below average, to be sure, but it was 34 degrees and they had to move up the start time just days earlier due to extreme weather conditions. On Monday, it snowed – like, really snowed – during their first game of the series, and there was still a crowd of 14,132.

The poor turnout for Skenes and the Pirates on Tuesday wasn't about the weather – not entirely, anyway. It was about sending a message to Nutting, criticizing his refusal to spend the necessary funds to build a competitive team around a pitcher who is a generational talent.

If the "Sell The Team" chants didn't get Nutting's attention, perhaps this will.

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