Pittsburgh Pirates: Fairing after Firing

Pittsburgh Pirates fans are growing weary of losing. Not since 2015 has the team been to the playoffs and since then it’s been losing season after losing season. Team owner Bob Nutting had seen enough this season and had no choice but to fire manager Derek Shelton. Many thought General Manager Ben Cherington should have been axed as well but only Shelton was given his pink slip.

On the job for a little over five years, Shelton was replaced by coach and Pittsburgh native Don Kelly. Buccos fans should be pleased with the choice of Kelly because he grew up in Butler, Pennsylvania just outside the city of Pittsburgh. A graduate of M. Lebanon High School where Kelly played baseball, his senior year was capped off with a Class AAA state title. His teammate at the time was another future Major League Baseball player, Josh Wilson.

Kelly would go on to play ball at a Pittsburgh college, Point Park University. Kelly was  a fine player with a .413 batting average over three seasons and only struck out 20 times in over 500 plate appearances. Now he’s the skipper for his hometown team and rest assured this is a job he will not want to surrender this job in any form or fashion.

With Shelton gone and Kelly onboard, Kelly is following a line of former managers who were either fired or left on their own free will. How their replacements did reveal managers who had particularly good won/loss records and others who simply failed at the job. Ahead is a list of those fired managers and others who simply walked away from the job and how they performed as a manager.

Honus Wagner (1917). By most experts’ opinions, Wagner is the greatest shortstop in the history of professional baseball. If you own his baseball card, you are very wealthy. Obviously a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Wagner took a stab at being a manager and lasted just five games in 1917 after which he told then owner Barney Dreyfus the job wasn’t for him and he walked away for good.

Replacing Wagner was Hugo Bezdek who would stay with the team through the 1919 season and left behind a won/loss record of 166-187.

The next manager to be hired replacing Hugo Bezdek was another talented player for the Bucs and that was George Gibson. Gibson held the managerial reigns on two occasions. First, from 1920 to 1922 he had his first go round. Then re-hired in 1932 only to be fired two seasons later when his intolerance of player’s mistakes resulted in his lashing out and that cost him a job. The Pirates management also felt Gibson was going against team culture so another talented player was hired to replace him and that was third baseman Pie Traynor.

Traynor would manage for six seasons until 1939, handing the job over to yet another talented player, Frankie Frisch. As for Gibson, in his two stints as the Pirates manager his teams won 401 games while losing 330. Pie Traynor managed the Bucs to 457 victories and dropped 406. Gibson was barking the signals when the Pirates got demolished by the 1927 New York Yankees “Murderer’s Row” considered by most as the best team in the history of Major League Baseball. 

In between Gibson and Traynor was Bill McKechnie who many might recognize as the name placed upon Pittsburgh’s Bradenton, Florida spring training stadium. McKechnie would manage five seasons and had an impressive 409-293 won/loss record. McKechnie was the manager for the 1925 World Series Champion Pirates.

In 1940 former player and future hall of famer Frankie Frisch took over for Virgil Davis who was interim manager after Traynor for just three games. Frisch would be the manager for a full seven seasons leading the Pirates to 539 victories but also losing 528. Frisch would finish his managerial career as one of the top 10 best managers in Pittsburgh Pirates history where he remains today.

Of the managers listed in this article, five ended up in the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1947 Billy Herman was one of those five and was the manager of record in 1947. Herman failed to make it to the end of the season after his squad won only 61 games and lost 92 at which point Herman resigned with just one final game remaining. Taking over was Bill Burwell and in his only game as manager, the Pirates won on that final day in 1947. The Cincinnati Reds were the losing team by the score of 7-0. Burwell stayed with the club as a scout and minor league coach for several of Pittsburgh’s minor league teams.

There would not be another manager fired or replaced until 1968 when Larry Shepard was leading the team through the 1969 season until he was fired on September 26 of that year and replace by Alex Grammas who would be in charge for the final five games of the season winning all but one.

One of the memorable and fan favorite managers in Pittsburgh Pirates history was Danny Murtaugh. The old man had two stints with the Bucs as field manager his final one coming following Pittsburgh’s fourth World Series triumph in 1971. Taking over for Murtaugh was yet another former Pirates player, Bill Virdon. Murtaugh only resigned because of poor health. Virdon failed to make it through two seasons fired in 1973 as he and the team were dealing with the tragic loss of Roberto Clemente who perished in a plane crash on December 31, 1972.

At the time of his firing, Virdon and the Bucs were in third place with a 67-69 record. Despite his health, Murtaugh made another go-round replacing Virdon. He would remain in the dugout until he retired once again in 1975 giving way to one of our greatest managers ever, Chuck Tanner. Tanner would be the manager of record when Pittsburgh won its last league title in 1979 with Willie Stargell leading the way and the “We are Family” theme.

Lloyd McClendon was named manager in 2001 and with his hiring, he became the first African American manager of a Pirates team in history but also the first manager or head coach of any of Pittsburgh’s professional teams. Six years later, the Steelers hired Mike Tomlin. McClendon was fired on September 6, 2005, after taking the Buccos through five seasons and a losing record of 336-446. Pete Mackanin filled in as manager after being a bench coach since 2003 and would be making the calls for the last month of the 2005 season finishing with a 12-14 record. He was not kept on in the managerial role instead being assigned as a manager in the  minor leagues at Pittsburgh’s facility in Bradenton.

Next up following McClendon was Jim Tracy. He too received a pink slip from Pirates’ management, his firing coming on October 7, 2007, after two complete seasons and a 135-189 record. 

John Russell was given the next shot at the job in Pittsburgh after a playing career that lasted from 1984 to 1993 with the Phillies, Braves, and Rangers. 10 years after his career ended, the Pirates hired him as a coach. Russell would be hired by Baltimore for eight seasons before getting the call from Pittsburgh in 2008. But on October 10, 2010, the Pirates’ front office had seen enough and after a season that saw the Bucs lose 105 games, Russell was canned. 

After Russell it was former player Clint Hurdle who took over the reins. As a player I can still see Hurdle’s picture on the front cover of Sports Illustrated as he was being projected as a next great player. It is Hurdle that got the Pirates to the postseason the last time they were in the playoffs. Hurdle led the team on a nice three year run that was made infamous by the well-known “Cueto game.” After four straight losing seasons culminating in a 2019 season where the team’s record when he was fired stood at 69-92, Tom Prince managed the final game of that season. 

This brings us to 2025. Derek Shelton replaced Hurdle and began his stint in 2020 during the covid mess with the Pirates posting a 19-41 record that year. In his first full season in 2021, the Pirates lost 101 games. The next year came another 100 losses. Two back-to-back 76-86 seasons led us to this season where after 28 games, Shelton was given his walking papers and Pittsburgh native Don Kelly has taken over. Shelton’s won/loss record for his six seasons was a dismal 306-440.

When fired, Shelton left the team in last place and at 12-26. As of this writing Kelly has the team winning four out of seven. But pitching ace Paul Skenes has lost five games and won only three in 10 starts. Coming off a Rookie of the Year award, Skenes while pitching rather well, his record is a disappointment. 

What remains to be seen is how long Don Kelly will remain manager. One thing is for certain. The lack of success by the Pirates has nothing to do with whomever is the manager. Talent on the team is lacking highly, and no manager could make this team a consistent winner. I can say in confidence that Kelly will not go down as one of the great managers of the Pirates. Unless he pulls some miracle and gets this current team to start winning and make the playoffs, he might in fact be a good skipper, but it won’t show in the standings.

As far as history is concerned, Fred Clarke has posted the most victories in Pittsburgh Pirates history with 1,422. With 969 losses his won/loss percentage is .595. That is also the best in club history, topping Bill McKechnie’s mark of .583. Clint Hurdle, Frankie Frisch, and Pie Traynor could only lead the Pirates to a second-place finish for their best record ever. 

On the contrary, Lloyd McClendon in five seasons never finished above fourth place. Clarke managed the most games with 2,424 and Murtaugh came in second with 2,068. For his Pirates managing career, Frankie Frisch was ejected from a game 51 times topping Clint Hurdle’s 42 ejections. Before Derek Shelton was fired, the Pirates finished no better than fourth place in each of his five seasons. 

The most victories in one season by the Pittsburgh Pirates came in 1909 when Pittsburgh became league champions by defeating Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Seven years earlier the Bucs also won 103 games both seasons with Fred Clarke as a playing manager. 

The most losses in a season by the Pirates pre-1900 was in 1890 when the team was known as “Allegheny City” and the final record on season was an embarrassing 23-113. The manager was Guy Hecker. Then in 1952 with Billy Meyer leading the way, Pittsburgh won only 42 games while dropping 112. 

So, there is a brief history of the revolving door of managers in Pittsburgh Pirates history. With five World Series titles, and nine players who have had their number retired (Billy Meyer, Ralph Kiner, Willie Stargell, Bill Mazeroski, Paul Waner, Pie Traynor, Roberto Clemente, Honus Wagner, and Danny Murtaugh), as well as 13 past players enshrined in Cooperstown, New York, the state of the Pirates since 2015 is pathetic. A once proud franchise is being demolished in front of our eyes. The Pirates simply cannot compete with the big guns of Major League Baseball and sadly no end is in sight.