By Donald Laible
With 23 regular season games left on the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 2025 schedule, management still has time to do the right thing. The club’s rookie manager Don Kelly has earned a contract extension for 2026.
Forget that Pittsburgh is in the National League Central basement at 62–77. Disregard that the Pirates are 23 games behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers. Ignore those “Sell the team, Bob” chants heard early and often at PNC Park directed at Pirates’ chairman of the board Bob Nutting during home games. Erase all the negativity surrounding baseball in Pittsburgh. There is hope on the horizon in Western Pennsylvania.
Once the final out is made during the season’s finale in Atlanta, with the Braves and Pirates meeting on Sept. 28, a new, and hopefully more successful chapter in Pirates baseball will be underway.
Planning for 2026 starts with retaining Kelly’s services with a contract that sends a message throughout the Pirates’ clubhouse: Come spring training in February at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla., there will be no guessing as to who will be running the club.
The Pirates are responding to Kelly’s leadership, as he went from bench coach to moving into the manager’s office. The success achieved over the past 10 games, where Pittsburgh has won seven games, demonstrates a “no quit” attitude, this late into the season.
The current Pirates’ homestand has the National League West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers and Brewers visiting PNC Park. How Kelly’s club responds by playing opposite two of the better MLB clubs should tell just how much pride they have, as they look closer to Game 162.
On Tuesday, the first of three games with Los Angeles, the Pirates struck first with a 9–7 victory. Pittsburgh has an impressive 40–30 home record. However, its road record of 22–47 will no doubt be addressed by management this offseason. But progress has been made since Shelton’s departure.
All aspects of Pittsburgh’s baseball operations are familiar to Kelly. Along with Nutting, Travis Williams, the Pirates’ president, is also aware of the first-year skipper’s strengths as a leader. After a year as the Houston Astros’ first base coach, Kelly was brought on board as the Pirates’ bench coach for the 2020 season. Coming from Butler, Pa., less than an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh, Kelly is the “hometown guy” Pirates fans are rooting for.
Aside from the Pirates’ fan base demanding that ownership spend more on free agents this coming offseason (Pirates are 26th in MLB team payroll—$87,645,246 among 30 clubs), there is light at the end of this season. With only two winning seasons over the past decade, Pirates’ fans are anxious for the club to return to the postseason.
With Shelton as the skipper in Pittsburgh, the Pirates scored two fourth-place finishes, and in three seasons, they finished in fifth (last place) in the National League Central.
A stronger, more consistent club in 2026 should translate into drawing more fans out to PNC Park. Since the Shelton regime began in 2020, the highest home attendance in Pittsburgh came last season, with 1,720,361 fans coming through the PNC Park turnstiles. With 11 home games remaining, with the Pirates having drawn a total home attendance of 1,344,641, reaching the 2024 total will be an uphill struggle.
Kelly, as well as Pirates’ fans, have to be excited about who is in the club’s minor League pipeline. There are MLB clubs, such as the Tampa Bay Rays, who have a payroll under $100,000,000 ($79 million-plus), and who are competitive, year in and year out. Not all successful MLB clubs have to spend $300 million-plus, as do the New York Yankees and New York Mets. It’s not how much a club spends, but how they spend what they have, that continues to be a recipe for success. The Milwaukee Brewers, in the smallest MLB market, have the best record in 2025.
The club Kelly inherited in May is significantly different in September. At this July’s MLB trade deadline, Pirates’ general manager Ben Cherington unloaded Gold Glove third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes to the Cincinnati Reds, all-star reliever David Bednar to the Yankees, starter Bailey Falter became a Kansas City Royal, and lefty reliever Caleb Ferguson went to the Seattle Mariners. This past week, starting shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa was placed on waivers and picked up by the Toronto Blue Jays.
Filling the third base and shortstop positions come spring training, as well as looking for a bounce-back season from former all-star outfielder Bryan Reynolds hitting .244 (nearly 30 points below his career average of .272), along with a stacked pitching staff led by Paul Skenes, should allow Kelly to mold the club as he thinks best.
With no interim label attached to his title, Kelly continues to impress those around the MLB by doing more with less. With more talent added to Pittsburgh’s roster come 2026, Kelly, who grew up a Pirates fan, should be able to mold a Pirates roster that will create special moments for the fan base. Baseball promises to be fun again in Pittsburgh with Kelly at the helm.
