Tim Benz: Pirates’ offseason spending should be embraced, even if cynical explanations are accurate

With spring training getting underway, a lot of Pittsburgh Pirates fans are eagerly debating how much the club’s offseason moves will improve 2026 results from a year ago.

Did you catch those words I just tied together in that sentence?

“Fans.” “Eagerly.” “Improve.” “Pirates.”

Yeah. Uncharted waters around these parts this time of year, for sure.

The likes of Marcell Ozuna, Brandon Lowe and Ryan O’Hearn are all good players. They have all been All-Stars at least once over the past two seasons and have been recently acquired by the Pirates.

Let’s not get carried away, though. None of them are considered franchise changers. Yet, as a collective, they should help an offense that finished last in runs scored, home runs, OPS and slugging percentage in 2025.

Pasting those three guys onto the roster — plus Gregory Soto, Jhostynxon García, Jake Mangum and Mason Montgomery — equals $38.4 million in salary added to the 2026 payroll. OK, $29.4 million if we discount what Tommy Pham and Andrew McCutchen made last year, and assume they won’t be back.

That’s still significant, considering the Pirates’ entire opening day payroll last year was $86.4 million.

So why the change of heart from the normally thrifty Pirates front offense? Why the sudden willingness to open the purse strings at least a little bit?

The most obvious baseball-related inspiration for doing so is that they have a short window to exploit with Cy Young winner Paul Skenes in his prime and on an entry-level, affordable contract. They need to build a worthy offense to support him and a burgeoning, young pitching staff.

That makes a lot of sense. But when has Pirates owner Bob Nutting ever been moved to spend during the offseason by the piddly quest of … you know … winning?

Pfft!

Another possibility is that eight straight losing seasons and frequent public relations missteps have eroded public faith, and the bottom line could be suffering. Nutting might be realizing it’s time to spend money in the hopes of making money.

The most likely explanation, though, is that, with a likely labor stoppage looming after the season, the Pirates are feeling heat from agents, the MLB Players Association and other high-revenue teams for not spending enough on the MLB payroll given the revenue sharing dollars they are getting.

Another cynical reason is tied back to that potential work stoppage. If MLB owners really are hellbent on getting a salary cap in place once the collective bargaining agreement expires in December (as recent reports have indicated), then a floor is going to have to go in place as well.

That means the Pirates would be wise to have some money on the books for 2027. Whatever the new labor agreement mandates, there is going to be some sort of bolstered language when it comes to spending minimums for these low-revenue MLB teams.

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There will either be a hard floor that the Pirates have to spend up to meet or increasingly stringent revenue reallocation mandates that the Pirates will have to follow. You don’t want to come out of a situation like that so far beneath the threshold that you are throwing good money after bad players just to meet the minimum payroll.

Especially if the labor stoppage lasts all of 2027, and you are jumping into 2028 off of a year with no revenue and likely no clue what your local television contract will look like.

O’Hearn is already slated to cost $15 million for 2027. Ozuna has a mutual option with the team for 2027 at $16 million. If Lowe works out well the first few months, extending him midseason could help that cause as well.

So, come to think of it, maybe one man’s cynicism is another man’s pragmatism. Frankly, I don’t see the need to split hairs between the two interpretations.

Nor do I care how “pure of intent” the reasons are — or are not — for Nutting’s decision to start spending.

I’m just glad he’s finally doing it.

Listen: Tim Benz and Kevin Gorman discuss the Pirates efforts to reshape their roster in 2026