Pirates fire Shelton, say move is to ‘fix this now’
The Pirates have fired manager Derek Shelton following a rocky opening month to the season that saw Pittsburgh quickly slip into last place in the National League Central.
General manager Ben Cherington made the announcement Thursday. Bench coach Don Kelly will take over for Shelton, who is the first manager fired across Major League Baseball this season.
The decision comes with Pittsburgh riding a seven-game losing streak that saw its record fall to 12-26 and the team drop 10 games back of the Chicago Cubs in the NL Central. Shelton, hired by Cherington in November 2019 as part of a franchise-wide reset by owner Bob Nutting, went 306-440 in five-plus seasons with the Pirates.
“Derek worked incredibly hard and sacrificed a lot over five-plus years,” Cherington said in a statement. “His family became a big part of the Pirates family, and we will miss that. He’s an incredibly smart, curious, and driven baseball leader. I believe he was the right person for the job when he was hired. I also believe that a change is now necessary. I wish Derek and his family all the best in their next chapter.”
Noting there is “a lot of baseball left to be played,” Nutting said the team needed to “act with a sense of urgency and take the steps necessary to fix this now to get back on track as a team and organization.” He said the first quarter of the season had been “frustrating and painful for all of us.”
The Pirates, ranked 26th out of 30 MLB teams in Opening Day payroll, began the season hoping to contend behind reigning NL Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes. Though the 22-year-old Skenes has been solid and the starting rotation in general has been steady, Pittsburgh’s offense has languished near the bottom of the NL all season, sitting ahead of only the Colorado Rockies in batting average and runs scored.
Pittsburgh is in the middle of a difficult stretch that began with the team getting swept by both San Diego and St. Louis. Pittsburgh’s next nine games are against NL powers Atlanta, the New York Mets and Philadelphia.
Kelly, a former major league player who entered the big leagues with Pittsburgh and is a native of the city, had served in his previous role with the Pirates since 2020.
“Donnie is as respected as any person in our clubhouse and throughout our organization,” Nutting said. “He is a Pirate. He bleeds black and gold. No one is more committed, and no one loves this team or city more than Donnie. He is the right person to manage our team and help get us back on track.”
The Pirates haven’t made the postseason since 2015. That is the second-longest active postseason drought in baseball, ahead of only the Los Angeles Angels, who haven’t reached the playoffs since 2014.
The Pirates gave Shelton, a former minor league catcher, his first major league managing job after he served as a coach in various capacities in Tampa Bay, Toronto and Minnesota.
Cherington tasked him with setting a new foundation for a club that has been an also-ran for the past three decades, save for a brief three-year stretch from 2013 to 2015 in which the Pirates returned to prominence.
The consistently upbeat Shelton oversaw a clubhouse with an incredible amount of churn during his first four seasons as Cherington traded away most of the established major leaguers on the roster — Joe Musgrove, Josh Bell, Jameson Taillon to name a few — to restock the club’s prospect pool.
Pittsburgh won less than 40% of its games in Shelton’s first three seasons before taking a step forward in 2023 when it won 76 games. Skenes’ arrival last May gave the franchise another jolt, and the Pirates were in playoff contention until an August swoon.
The club’s lack of offense in 2024 was its biggest issue. Rather than invest in proven major league talent — the team’s biggest offseason pickups were acquiring first baseman Spencer Horwitz (who is still rehabbing from wrist surgery over the winter) and signing Tommy Pham and Adam Frazier — Cherington instead retooled parts of the coaching staff and scouting department, including firing hitting coach Andy Haines and replacing him with Matt Hague.
Results have not followed. Pittsburgh is near the bottom of the majors in runs (29th), OPS (29th), home runs (28th) and average (27th) with no signs of improvement. The Pirates have scored a total of five runs in their past five games while getting shut out twice.
They are even struggling when Skenes is on the hill. The top pick in the 2023 first-year player draft has a respectable 2.77 ERA in eight starts in 2025, but the Pirates are 3-5 in those games, including a 2-1 loss to St. Louis on Tuesday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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