PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton, but much of the discussion came about general manager Ben Cherington.
Shelton and Cherington came in late 2019 and, up until May 8, worked for five-and-a-half years together on working to build a winning product with a rebuilding Pirates team.
So far, neither has been successful in doing so, as Shelton accrued a 306-440 record and is no longer the manager of the team.
Cherington is still employed, despite that record and a 12-26 start to this season, which puts the Pirates 10 games back behind the Chicago Cubs in the National League Central Division and is the third worst record in the MLB.
He defended his effort and work as general manager for the Pirates and that he believes he can get the franchise to win once again.
Yeah. I feel just as much energy and commitment to this job as I have from the day I got it,” Cherington said at a recent press conference. “I do this job only to serve the Pirates. Only because I wanna be part of delivering a team that our fans our proud of. That’s it. Period. That’s the reason to get up. That’s the reason to come in here, do the work to do that.”
“I believe that’s going to happen. I know that there’s frustration and maybe anger that it hasn’t happened yet. I believe it’s going to happen. I believe strongly I am going to be a part of making it happen. I have a lot of confidence in our baseball operations group. We’ve got to get better. Period.”
Cherington also understood why people might want him to go alongside Shelton, whose failures he also took responsibility for.
Still, Cherington backed himself to turn things around and get the Pirates back to winning ways, even with the struggles so far in his tenure.
“Yeah I think I sort of referenced it before, but I understand it. It’s part of the deal right,” Cherington said.” “If you accept this job and you’re in it for this long and the results aren’t there yet, that’s going to be there. Simple terms, it’s just about winning more games, we’ve got to find a way to win more games. You can do the forensic thing on every front office in baseball and find things that go well and find things that don’t go well.”
“We’ve got to improve. We’ve got to improve our results. I do this job because I love the work and I love the opportunity to help the Pirates in a way that serves our fans and delivers to our fans. I don’t do it for any other reason.”
