The wait is over. The Pirates have announced Ben Cherington as their next general manager.
On Monday afternoon at PNC Park, the team introduced Cherington through a formal press conference, after which he, Bob Nutting and new team president Travis Williams sat down for a separate session with DKPittsburghSports.com‘s Dejan Kovacevic, Matt Sunday and me, as well as independent magazine writer Jim Lachimia, to answer questions about the hiring, the state of the franchise and Cherington's plans
Below is a full transcription of the interview:
Nutting: We're not going to do opening statements, but I sort of like this informal approach. And nobody's taken more advantage of it than you (DK) have. (Laughter.) But I think it plays well to the detail that you like to get into, so hopefully it works for you.
DK: What you're saying is you appreciate my candor, Bob?
Nutting: I do.
DK: Opening with a payroll question, then, of course: Ben, when you come into this situation, do you have assurances or confidence that you'll be able to ... not so much spend a zillion dollars right off the bat, but -- and we go back to the 98-win season in 2015 -- when things are good, that it's time to load up, that it'll be there?
Cherington: Yeah, I'm really confident in the resources that are available across the baseball infrastructure, including the major-league team — based on what I know to be fact, seeing it on paper. And also based on getting to know Bob and Travis, and just getting that deep feeling of how committed they are to this team and this city. So, yes, confident in the level of resources, confident that the support's there to build a winning team.
DK: In that context, then, for Bob and Travis, one thing that people like me will write about occasionally is that revenue sharing from Major League Baseball will offset local losses, like lower attendance here at PNC Park. Is building a winner a more profitable endeavor for the Pittsburgh Pirates than ... let's say, 2019 was? And I think you know what I'm asking, because that perception certainly exists.
Nutting: I think the simple answer is that, obviously, yes, revenue sharing offsets 34 percent of revenue lost. It's not dollar for dollar. It's a portion. And so, clearly, the best thing for us to do from every standpoint is to put a winning team on the field.
Our commitment is -- and the reason Ben is here -- to have the right people in place, the right process in place, the development system, the talent evaluation, the commitment to have our players get better at every level including the major-league level ... those are the pieces that will drive winning here in Pittsburgh again. Those are areas where, as you know, we've fallen short. We had some real success in 2013, 2014, 2015, and that success may have blinded us a little to some of the deeper challenges we had in the organization.
I'm confident that, with Ben's leadership on the baseball side and Travis' on the business side, we have a team that's going to drive us forward. It's a team that I have faith in, that I hope you have faith in, and that I really hope our fans develop faith in.
Williams: You used the word 'profitable,' and it's not about profitability.
DK: Yeah, that's fair. I didn't mean to load that.
Williams: No, no, I just wanted to clarify that point. Because I think profitability ... it's a tempest in a teapot right now as we talk about that. It's really more about winning. Winning, obviously, attracts more fans, brings more people to the ballpark, which generates more revenues. But that allows us to invest that in the organization. And that can be directly into payroll, but it also can be into player identification or traction. There are lots of different ways we look at it as a full investment, as opposed to specifically in looking at payroll or one budget over the other. It's across the entirety.
Alex Stumpf: (During the press conference) You talked about how you have to talk to everyone in the organization, get a feel for what the infrastructure is at the moment. Do you have a general sense what it's like coming in and is there any common thread that you'll be looking for, either across all departments or individual ones?
Cherington: My belief at the moment is there are really good people here and that the Pirates are already doing certain things pretty well, and that there are going to be opportunities to make improvements and adjustments. Whether that's in any of those four activities we talked about — identification, acquisition, development, deployment — I think a lot of the short term opportunities are going to be driven by where our hirings are happening. So we've got a major league manager to hire, we've got a major league staff to build around that manager, we've got a support staff to build around that manager. So in that process, that's a huge opportunity to identify certain types of expertise that will help us improve in the way that we help players improve and perform at the major league level. That is an area we want to make better.
So that's a sort of natural, short term focus. The other parts of the baseball operations picture will become more clear over time. Like I said, I'm confident there are really good people here. I'm also confident that there may be a certain type of expertise or experience that isn't here yet that we may need to go find and bring in. But a lot of the improvement will come from within.
Lachimia: Baseball operations people talk a lot about objective stats — analytics — and subjective, what your eyes are telling you, and balancing those two. How do you look to balance those two with your work in baseball operations?
Cherington: With help from a lot of smart people. Again, if you think about those four activities, let's start with identification. If we're identifying players, whether that's international or amateur or professional players, we need to build a collaboration consisting of different perspectives, varied experiences, varied expertise. People who maybe have more experience in data analysis or sort of objective modeling, and also those who have more experience in using their eyes and their long history in the game and making insight from that. And there's eight or 10 other inputs into that, too.
So it's not one or the other. It's not so much a balance. It's everything. The job is then we need to make the inputs, themselves, as strong as possible. The old 'garbage in, garbage out' thing. So we've got to make sure the inputs themselves are as strong as possible, and then we've got to weigh those inputs effectively to deliver as precise as possible evaluation on whoever that player is. And so my job in that is to help people, and help find people and help develop people to do that, and then rely on those people, rely on those teams of people to do that.
DK: John Schuerholz once wrote that the most important talent that you have to evaluate is your own. The Yankees and other teams have put some of their best scouts, their best evaluators on their own system. To evaluate their own players. Now, one thing I can tell from some subtle hints from Bob over the past month, is that he'd like to see talent within your own organization recognized and then mature properly in Pittsburgh. How do you achieve that? How do you execute that?
Cherington: Yeah, that identification has to exist for our own players as much as it does for someone else's. It's the same process.
DK: Right. I'm wondering what exactly that looks like for you, that process.
Cherington: Well, we're looking to assign a value to a player. Whether that's an international player, a draft prospect, a pro, or if it's one of our own players, it's the same process. It's a collaboration of different sets of expertise and experiences, and we're pulling those inputs in, weighing them appropriately, and getting to the most precise possible valuation that we can.
The advantage with your own players internally is that you have more character information because of the time around them. You ought to be more precise on your own players, in theory. So it is important, I agree with you. But I don't see the process of evaluating them as any different than how you would outside the system. You just have more information.
DK: Does development stop in Triple-A?
Nutting: If I can ... to your question ... because I think Ben's already learned that I don't give 'subtle hints' on expectations. (Laughter through the room.)
DK: OK, I meant in this direction.
Nutting: I think we've worked through that already. We wouldn't be sitting here, the three of us, if we weren't laser-clear on what expectations are. We know those, and we're moving forward. So, no subtle hints about what expectations are.
And I think the other piece within this is the personalization of development plans, how you really take someone and move them from Single-A to Double-A to Triple-A, as well as how you continue that development every single day at the major-league level.
Cherington: Yeah, and you asked if development stops in Triple-A. I believe in a player-centered lens. And within that, I believe that development is, fundamentally, individual. In some senses, there have been stories over the years about the Cardinals Way or the Orioles Way, where there was a formal manual of how to do things ...
DK: And all it takes is one Tim Lincecum to blow it up, right?
Cherington: Well, that model that applies one set of standards across a large group of players is not effective enough anymore. And if we're looking at this through a player-centered lens, that absolutely has to be individualized. Every player at every level of the Pirates organization needs to have a plan. And similar to player identification, that involves a collaboration of people to work with the player on that plan.
That plan certainly exists in the minor leagues, but it absolutely continues in the major leagues. The process, the tactics might change some as the player gets older, but the best players in the game -- and you know this -- are improving right up to the day they retire. So yes, player improvement in the major-league culture is critical.
DK: Within that, though, Ben, there comes the issue of multiple voices. A guy like Pablo Reyes played for the Pirates in 2019, and it's reasonable to say he's exceeded expectations by even being in the majors. And he made it in part because of extensive work that was done with him by Omar Moreno when he was in Altoona. So, how individualized do you mean? Because it can be one person, or it can be a lot of people offering conflicting information.
Cherington: OK, to be clear here, individual means individual. The Pirates Way will be individualized.
There are some things that you can apply broadly. For example, running out a ground ball ought to be applied broadly. (Laughter.) There are aspects of team fundamentals that you apply broadly, such as how we defend bunts. But in terms of individual skill ... it needs to be just that. So yeah, sometimes it can be one person who's making an impact on an individual player, making a real connection. In that case, that is the right kind of expertise for that player at that time. Other times, it can be a collaboration.
Maybe the best way here is with a literal example: So say there's a hitter, he makes a lot of contact, but he hits the ball on the ground a lot, he's not hitting for a lot of power, and you're trying to improve power production in some way. There might be an adjustment in approach, through a conversation with the hitter. He needs to start looking at different pitches, different counts, ones he can hit in the air. Maybe there's a biomechanical adjustment, something in his swing path that needs to change to make contact at a different point, increase angle, etc. Maybe it's something in his hips where he can't get into that swing because of mobility or strength.
So again, it's a collaboration, looking for a way to unlock that skill that you're trying to improve. The player-centered part of it, in my view, means that you avoid -- maybe not perfectly -- the confusion of multiple messages because it's all about one goal.
AJS: On the biomechanical changes, we've seen other teams go with more untraditional hires to find executives like that. [Brian] Bannister in Boston, Carson [Cistulli] in Toronto, someone like Kyle Boddy in Cincinnati. Identifying front office people. It's only been four years since the last time you were a GM, but it feels like it's a completely different world that everyone has a FanGraphs blogger or someone who had a hitting cage that a Justin Turner rebuilt themselves in. Do you see that change coming to Pittsburgh as well? Or a better way to phrase this is how do you view those changes in those four years and how do you intend to adapt?
Cherington: I think very positively, because I think they're all about helping players get better.
AJS: Player centered.
Cherington: And that doesn't mean it's all done perfectly. We still have to be really careful and thoughtful about who are the people from those different backgrounds, and types of experiences and expertise that we're bringing in. Not every person that's running a private hitting center is the right person to hire, but there are certainly some of them who are adding a lot of value. Not every blogger is the right [hire]. I guess where I would start: With [being] incredibly open-minded about the avenues where we're pursuing and hiring people from. There is no bucket we shouldn't be looking in for people who can help the Pirates get better, whether that's in coaching or scouting or front office. You name it.
JL: Ben, if I've done my math correctly here, you were 37 years old when you got promoted to the GM's job in Boston. What do you recall the most about stepping into that role at that time?
Cherington: Feeling younger. [Laughter.] Probably less mature. Look, I grew up in New England. I grew up rooting for the Red Sox. So it was a pretty strong attachment to that team, and I worked for 13 years before I got the job, which also means I knew all the people there really well. So in some sense, it was a disadvantage because it was sort of harder to look objectively at it. To be sort of this clear-headed about where our opportunities were to get better. I was so emotionally invested in what we had done. And to some extent, I think my hiring was a statement of continuity; of, we're trying to continue this and we'd had success, let's keep going. So I was grateful for the opportunity. I feel way more prepared for this one because I've had more professional and life experience since then.
DK: Ben, you come with a reputation as preferring to build from the ground up. I think pretty much any sports executive would feel that way, so I'm not sure that'd make you an outlier.
Without asking you to do some sort of deep dive of organizational analysis right after you've been introduced, I have to bring this up: It's an unusual situation here. Because there are younger players on the 25-man roster who definitely don't stink: Bryan Reynolds. Kevin Newman. Josh Bell. Is there such a thing as a hybrid form of rebuilding, if you will?
In other words, is there a way to build the minor-league system up -- because that's a long, slow process -- while still keeping the major-league team competitive?
Cherington: Well, let me address the ground-up thing first: I have said that. But when I've said it, what I've meant is less about players and much more about the entire baseball structure. It's about wanting to be great at every little thing, whether that's scouting every 16-year-old in the Dominican or coaching or hiring an intern ... you name it. In that sense, that's building from the ground up. That's building a culture from the ground up.
From the player standpoint, yeah, everything we do needs to be about pursuing winning. That's why we're here, to build a winning team. And there'll be player evaluation opportunities along the way that we'll have to look at through that lens: Is this helping us get to being a winning team?
DK: OK, but there's winning and then there's winning in all capital letters.
Cherington: Right, but you've got to get to the winning before you get to the capital letters.
DK: Sometimes you don't, though. Sometimes you go backward to go forward, and that's what I'm asking here. You can float around at .500 forever. Is there a way to do this where the current team, over the next couple years, doesn't have to be a disaster? But also, allowing you to get the pieces that you need in the minor leagues to win a World Series.
Cherington: I guess I'd say that -- and this is not specific to the Pirates -- there are examples of both of the paths you're describing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're describing either stripping it way down, and the other is to build more incrementally and win that way.
DK: Yep. Blow it up or not.
Cherington: So then you're asking what's the bigger bang long-term. And I'd say there are current examples of teams that have followed both paths, and neither one is foolproof. So I think what that means to me is going back to the underpinning of doing the things that drive success long-term no matter the market, but particularly in places like Pittsburgh, we've got to do those things exceptionally well.
