Sitting in last place in the NL Central and with their season spiraling, the Pittsburgh Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton on Thursday.
Shelton was relieved of his duties following a 5-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday, which dropped the Pirates to 12-26 (.316). It was their seventh consecutive defeat and 10th in 11 games, as well as their seventh shutout defeat.
“Derek worked incredibly hard and sacrificed a lot over five-plus years. His family became a big part of the Pirates family, and we will miss that,” Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said in a statement. “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.”
Bench coach Don Kelly has been named manager.
“I believe strongly Donnie is the right person to manage the team right now,” Cherington said. “He has the skills and experience needed to do this job really well and deeply cares about the Pirates and Pittsburgh. I look forward to working with him even more closely.”
Kelly, who played at Mt. Lebanon and Point Park, was drafted by Detroit in 2001 and went on to play 585 major league games with the Pirates, Tigers and Marlins. He began his sixth season as the Pirates’ bench coach this spring, after spending the 2019 season as the first base coach for the Astros.
Shelton, 54, had a 306-440 record in five-plus seasons for a .410 winning percentage, which ranks among the worst in MLB history for managers with more than 700 games on their resume. The Pirates weren’t much better at PNC Park, going 169-206 (.451) under Shelton.
After back-to-back 76-win seasons, the Pirates entered 2025 with expectations to snap their six-year losing streak and make a push for the playoffs. Shelton made it sound like a mandate in spring training, knowing he was on the hot seat and needed a turnaround.
“It’s time to win,” Shelton told TribLive in March. “That’s the only focus.”
Instead, the Pirates continued with the type of sloppy play and losing streaks that came to define Shelton’s tenure. After losing five of their first seven games, Shelton was booed when introduced before the home opener against the New York Yankees on April 4 at PNC Park. So, the Pirates stopped introducing him with the starting lineup.
“Derek is a good man who did a lot for the Pirates and Pittsburgh, but it was time for a change,” Pirates chairman Bob Nutting said in a statement. “The first quarter of the season has been frustrating and painful for all of us. We have to do better. I know that. Ben knows that. Our coaches know that. Our players know that.
“There is a lot of baseball left to be played. We need 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.”
The Pirates hired Shelton in November 2019 following the organizational housecleaning prompted by the 92-loss season in 2019 that included Clint Hurdle being fired before the finale. It was Shelton’s first managerial role, and it came with a major rebuilding task as the Pirates tore the team down to the studs by trading away their top players for prospects to reduce payroll and plan for the future.
All-Star outfielder Starling Marte was the first to go, and the Pirates produced the worst record in baseball (19-41) during the covid pandemic-shortened 2020 season. They were no-hit by Lucas Giolito in a 4-0 loss to the Chicago White Sox on Aug. 25, 2020.
The Pirates dealt All-Star first baseman Josh Bell and starting pitchers Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon that winter, then went 61-101 in Shelton’s first full campaign. That season saw a pair of rookie former first-round draft picks make Little League mistakes. First baseman Will Craig made an epic error when he chased Javier Baez down the first base line toward home plate before making a last-second throw that allowed a run to score in a 5-3 loss to Chicago Cubs that May. Third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes had a home run erased when he failed to touch first base in a 5-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in June.
The Pirates produced another 100-loss season in 2022, which included more gaffes that went viral. Infielder Rodolfo Castro’s phone fell out of his pocket while sliding head-first into third base against Arizona that August, drawing a fine and one-game suspension for violating MLB policy regarding unapproved electronic devices. Hayes drew criticism for taking off his glove to pull sunflower seeds out of his back pocket while a runner rounded third base to score in a 4-3 loss at the New York Mets that September. The Pirates also won a game despite not getting a hit in eight innings against Hunter Greene and Art Warren in a 1-0 win over the Cincinnati Reds on May 15.
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But they made a 14-win improvement in 2023, engineering the greatest comeback in franchise history under Shelton by rallying from a nine-run deficit for a 13-12 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Sept. 23, 2023. To Shelton, the win was emblematic of the team’s resiliency.
The Pirates won the inaugural MLB Draft lottery in the offseason, and selected right-handed pitcher Paul Skenes, who became baseball’s biggest story on his way to starting for the National League in the All-Star Game and winning NL rookie of the year honors.
The Pirates were within 2 ½ games of wild-card contention heading into the trade deadline, which gave Shelton a glimpse of what it’s like to play meaningful baseball games at PNC Park.
“There’s nothing more exciting, if you take from the end of the All-Star break to Aug. 1, the electricity in the city, the electricity in the ballpark,” Shelton said. “That’s what we’re striving for. That’s the energy we want every night, not only from our players but from our fans because there was so much energy at PNC.”
But the Pirates opened August by losing 11 of their first 12 games, including 10 consecutive, to drop into last place. It marked the third time in four years that they endured a 10-game losing streak. Shelton surmised that if the Pirates could have gone .500 during that stretch, they would have remained in the playoff picture heading into September. Then again, they were the victims of a combined no-hitter by Shota Imanaga, Nate Pearson and Porter Hodge in a 12-0 loss at the Chicago Cubs on Sept. 4.
“That’s the place where we need to get better. That’s the place where I need to get better,” Shelton said. “It’s like a lot of my reflection this winter has been on that 15-game stretch, what we should have done differently, what I could have done differently and how we could have handled it differently. If you take away 15 days last year, we’re in a pretty good spot. It’s just those 15 days were really bad. There’s no one that’s thought harder about those 15 days and the decisions that were made than I have.”