Mark Madden: Pirates' thievery is not a problem for elected officials or MLB

Theresa Kail-Smith is a member of City Council. She wants City Council to have a discussion with Bob Nutting re: what has to be done to make the Pirates a winning team?

Kail-Smith isn’t a baseball person. But she couldn’t have a worse plan than Pirates GM Ben Cherington.

This is just PR on Kail-Smith’s part. It’s not saber-rattling.

An attempt to bully Nutting via connecting a better effort to win with renewal of the PNC Park lease in 2030 wouldn’t work. In a worst-case scenario, Nutting calls that bluff and moves the Pirates to, say, Nashville.

Nutting doesn’t live in Pittsburgh. He’s not attached to the community. It doesn’t matter where his ATM is located.

Without the Pirates, lots of businesses on the North Shore die. Lots of cash stops coming into Pittsburgh.

It’s not the responsibility of elected officials or the Sports and Exhibition Authority to make sure Pirates try their best to win by spending more.

It’s their responsibility to use sports to keep revenue flowing and upgrade the perception of the community. The mere presence of the Pirates in perhaps MLB’s best ballpark helps make Pittsburgh major league.

MLB doesn’t care. The Pirates serve as enhancement talent, somebody to put successful teams over. They thrive financially. Pittsburgh isn’t a key market for baseball. What the Pirates do is just fine by MLB.

The Pirates are privately owned. How they’re run is nobody’s business but theirs.

Those who caterwaul that “Somebody has to do something!” about Nutting prioritizing profit over winning are idiots. Nobody’s going to do anything.

A numbskull called a talk show (not mine) and bleated that, “Nutting doesn’t own the Pirates! They’re a franchise, just like McDonald’s, and MLB can revoke at any time!”

Oh, for (heck’s) sake.

The Pirates’ thievery is not a problem for elected officials or for MLB. It’s a problem for Pirates fans, players who are good enough to win and want to, and nobody else.

Nutting has every single bit of leverage.

He and co-conspirators like Cherington and team president Travis Williams gaslight, and just enough people believe — and/or want to see PNC Park, and/or get stuff, and/or see fireworks — to get 1.5 million through the turnstiles.

The challenge will be when Paul Skenes leaves sooner than you want. Will the marks buy that?

But, hey, no problem: We still got Bubba Chandler and Konnor Griffin! (Until they leave.)

Another caller to a talk-show (not mine) said the Pirates can solve their problems by signing Seattle third baseman Eugenio Suarez, who will be a free agent at 34 after hitting 49 home runs.

But the best offer obviously won’t be from the Pirates.

Suarez won’t want to go from division champion Seattle to baseball’s version of Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” (That sign should hang over the home-plate entrance at PNC Park. Right above where they hand out the bobbleheads.)

Any free agent with a better alternative will take it. Tommy Pham was forced to visit the last-chance saloon for a year, and here’s betting he’s looking for a superior option for next season.

The Pirates haven’t signed a free agent to a multiyear deal since pitcher Ivan Nova in 2016.

The Pirates will never get a big-money free agent. How long does it have to not happen before you admit that it never will?

If it was ever going to happen, now is the time. So they don’t continue wasting Skenes.

But the Pirates’ big offseason move will be trading Mitch Keller for a bat that’s not good enough, then do a big sell job that things are fixed.

Even without Keller, the Pirates will have a playoff-quality pitching rotation.

But they had that this year and lost 91 games.

What the Pirates do with Andrew McCutchen will be tell-tale.

McCutchen’s stats were respectable, but he’s 38 and his mobility is shot. He can’t play the field. A team moving forward and serious about winning doesn’t keep him.

A team selling nostalgia does.

Welcome back, Cutch.