{"id":179099,"date":"2025-09-30T02:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T02:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/179099\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T02:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T02:44:07","slug":"ben-cherington-to-remain-pirates-gm-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/179099\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Cherington To Remain Pirates GM In 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pirates GM Ben Cherington told reporters (including Alex Stumpf of MLB.com<\/a>) earlier this afternoon that he has \u201creceived assurance\u201d\u00a0that he\u2019ll remain in his current role with the club going forward. Cherington\u2019s contract with the club runs through the 2027 campaign, as was reported<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

The news that Cherington is remaining in the organization doesn\u2019t register as a massive surprise after news broke earlier today that the Pirates were signing<\/a> manager Don Kelly<\/a> to a contract extension after he took over for Derek Shelton back in May. While Pittsburgh\u2019s 71-91 record this year is impossible to view as anything other than a major disappointment, the team went 59-65 under Kelly. That\u2019s still six games below .500, but the club\u2019s .476 winning percentage under Kelly would be their best since 2018 if carried across a full season.<\/p>\n

That stat makes it easy enough to understand why Pirates ownership would think it worthwhile to see how a full season of the partnership between Kelly and Cherington would look, but it also highlights the fact that the team\u2019s issues run deeper than leadership in the front office or dugout. Cherington will begin his sixth year at the helm of Pittsburgh\u2019s baseball operations department in November, and while the team hasn\u2019t had much success during his time at the helm those struggles must be viewed through the lens of the budget he\u2019s had to work with throughout his tenure.<\/p>\n

RosterResource<\/a> estimates the club\u2019s payroll at $87MM this year, more or less identical to the club\u2019s 2024 payroll. While the organization ran payrolls between $90MM and $100MM from 2015 to 2017 according to Cot\u2019s Baseball Contracts<\/a>, they began steadily dropping in 2018 before the trend line started to reverse in 2023. Even if the team\u2019s payroll got back up to the $100MM range, however, that would still leave them as a bottom-five team in the sport by payroll (according to RosterResource<\/a>). That would be a modest improvement over their current bottom-three status, but wouldn\u2019t change the organization\u2019s reputation as a financial bottom-feeder.<\/p>\n

Of course, it should be noted that even getting out of that bottom-three range and back into the territory of around $100MM does not seem likely at this juncture. Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette<\/a> reports that the team\u2019s payroll isn\u2019t expected to go up much in 2026, if it does at all, and that it might even wind up lower than it was in 2025 after attendance dropped this year relative to last season.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, that still leaves some room to maneuver given that the team has just $31MM on the books for next year between the contracts Bryan Reynolds<\/a> and Mitch Keller<\/a> are currently signed to. That doesn\u2019t include arbitration raises for players like Johan Oviedo<\/a> and Joey Bart<\/a>, not to mention Oneil Cruz<\/a>\u2019s first arbitration-level salary, however. It also doesn\u2019t include the roughly $19MM the club would be spending even if the roster is filled out with players on the major league minimum. That could leave Cherington\u2019s front office with around $25MM or less to work with as they try to build an offensive nucleus that can support Paul Skenes<\/a> and the rest of the team\u2019s young pitchers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a lot to work with in a market where the majority of above-average regulars command eight figure salaries. With those constraints, it seems likely that Cherington will have to lean on the club\u2019s highly-rated farm system to execute trades and bring in big league talent without having to dip into free agency in a substantial way. That\u2019s how the club acquired its top bat of 2025, as Spencer Horwitz<\/a> came to the Pirates in a trade where they surrendered right-hander Luis Ortiz<\/a> and posted a strong 119 wRC+ in 108 games as the team\u2019s everyday first baseman. Another successful trade or two like that could go a long way to creating the offense needed to get the Pirates back into playoff contention, though that of course will surely be easier said than done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pirates GM Ben Cherington told reporters (including Alex Stumpf of MLB.com) earlier this afternoon that he has \u201creceived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[50482,49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-179099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ben-cherington","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}