I don't hate Bob Nutting.

To hate him would be to personalize him—to grant him the dignity of being an actual human being worthy of unique, personal emotional investment. To hate him would suggest that somewhere beneath that bloodless exterior beats a heart capable of feeling shame, or pride, or anything resembling human emotion. But Bob Nutting isn't a person. He's a spreadsheet in human form. He's the ghost reanimated and set loose on a rust belt city that still, against all evidence and reason, believes in baseball.

Nutting is less a man than he is a tax shelter with a pulse. And to give him the honor of hate? That would require acknowledging him as something more than what he is: a nepo baby who inherited a newspaper empire and decided that owning a baseball team would be a nice little side hustle, as long as it didn't require him to actually give a damn about winning.

Let me be clear: Bob Nutting is a villain. Not the fun kind, like the cigar-chomping owner in The Natural who'd sell his own grandmother for a percentage point. Not even the tragic kind, like a once-great competitor with a pulled up from the bootstraps backstory caught up in his own hubris. No, Nutting is the worst kind of villain—the boring kind. The bloodless, MBA-clutching kind who'll let an entire city's dreams rot on the vine because the spreadsheet says it's more profitable to tank than to try.

And if you hear one thing I say, make no mistake the man is spectacularly good at not giving a fuck what you think about him.

Bob Nutting didn't build his billion-dollar fortune. He inherited it. The Nutting family made their money the old-fashioned way: buying up struggling newspapers across Appalachia and squeezing every last cent out of them while the industry circled the drain.

Nutting owned Ogden Newspapers Inc. operates about 40 daily newspapers across 12 states. Small-town papers in places like West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the kind of markets where people still get their news in print because broadband is a luxury and Facebook is what the grandkids use.

He grew up in the bosom of generational wealth, the kind where failure isn't really possible because there's always another zero on the balance sheet to cushion the fall. He went to Williams College—a prestigious little liberal arts school in Massachusetts where the sons and daughters of the ruling class learn to feel good about themselves—and returned home to take his rightful place at the head of the family business.

In 1996, daddy G. Ogden Nutting decided it would be fun to buy a piece of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Not to win, mind you. Just to own. Like collecting rare art or vintage cars, except the paintings don't have feelings and the cars don't have fanbases who bleed black and gold.

By 2007, Bob had consolidated control and became the sixth principal owner in Pirates history. The team was valued at around $289 million then. Today? Forbes says it's worth $1.32 billion. That's a 355% return on investment in less than two decades. Not bad for a guy who's never bothered to spend money on, you know, winning baseball games.

You see, Bob Nutting doesn't just destroy baseball in Pittsburgh. He destroys careers. He's created a graveyard of baseball minds who came to the Steel City with dreams and left with nothing but regret.

Dave Littlefield (2001-2007) presided over the heart of the 20-year losing streak, making trades that looked designed by somebody playing MLB The Show at 3 AM. Neal Huntington (2007-2019) gave us three magical playoff years with McCutchen, Cole, and company—then Nutting forced him to execute a fire sale, trading the franchise's soul for magic beans that turned out to be just regular beans. Ben Cherington (2019-present) won a World Series in Boston but operates here with Nutting's hand in his pocket, assembling a 27th-ranked payroll while Nutting sits on $1.1 billion.

The managers? Jim Tracy, John Russell, Clint Hurdle, Derek Shelton—a procession of the damned, each arriving with hope and leaving broken. Hurdle actually delivered, going 735-720 with three playoff appearances, and got fired for his trouble. Shelton never had a prayer, going 306-440 over five seasons before being mercifully released. Now it's Don Kelly's turn, the Pittsburgh native who probably took the job out of misguided civic duty. He'll give it his all, and in two years, he'll be fired too. The cycle continues.

GMs and managers aside, here's what Nutting has figured out that the rest of us keep forgetting: you don't need to win to make money.

The Pirates receive tens of millions in revenue sharing every year from MLB's central fund. They get money from TV deals, from concessions, from ticket sales—even when the team is terrible. PNC Park is widely considered one of the most beautiful ballparks in America, and on a summer night, fans will show up just for the experience.

And Nutting pockets it all.

A 2022 investigation by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found that Nutting was keeping all TV revenue, all MLB revenue sharing, and all profits from concession sales after payroll as net profits. Not reinvesting in the team. Not signing free agents. Not extending homegrown stars. Just straight into his bank account.

Read that paragraph again. Slowly. Let it sink in.

If there was any shred of real outrage in this city—any ability to create an uprising beyond the boring, clichéd "Pittsburgh is a small market, they just can't compete with the big boys" excuse—this would be the rallying cry. This would be the scandal that media wonks beyond Mark Madden would make their hill to die on. They'd hammer it every single day until Nutting sold the team and split town. But instead? Silence. Apathy. The collective shrug of a city that's been beaten down so long it's forgotten how to fight back.

The Pirates had the fourth-lowest payroll in MLB in 2025, opening the season at just $87.9 million. Only the Miami Marlins ($64.9 million), Chicago White Sox ($74 million), and Athletics ($78.2 million) spent less.

They've never cracked $100 million in payroll under Nutting's ownership. The all-time high was $99.9 million in 2016. Meanwhile, Nutting has repeatedly turned down offers to sell the team—from Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle, from Thomas Tull, and yes, reportedly from Mark Cuban, who wanted to bring the team back to his hometown but was rebuffed because Nutting doesn't want to sell his cash cow.

Why would he? He bought into the team for around $90 million. It's now worth over a billion. And in the meantime, he's been siphoning off profits year after year while the fans watch their team flounder at the bottom of the division.

This isn't incompetence. This is a business model. And it's working beautifully—if you're Bob Nutting.

But hey, at least we get fireworks nights, right?

This is Nutting's genius, really. Give the people just enough spectacle to keep them showing up. Big & Rich, OAR, Boyz II Men—they all played concerts at PNC Park, until even that gimmick died off after 2015. Now it's just fireworks nights and bobblehead giveaways. A Paul Skenes bobblehead. A "Turn Back the Clock" promotion where everyone dresses in 1970s uniforms and pretends the team is good again.

It's all theater. Performance art designed to distract from the fact that the Pirates are fielding a team assembled on the cheap, with no real intention of competing.

The 2024 season was a perfect encapsulation. The Pirates started hot—20-8 in April, raising hopes that maybe, just maybe, this was the year. But at the trade deadline? Nutting allegedly told the front office there was money to spend. Anonymous sources told Pittsburgh Baseball Now that front office employees were "furious" because there wasn't any extra money. Nutting had lied, or at best, dangled false hope.

After the hot start and crickets at the trade deadline, reality set in. They went 8-19 in August, including a soul-crushing 10-game losing streak that obliterated any remaining playoff hopes. They finished 76-86, the same record as 2023. Fourth place in the NL Central. Again.

And so the team trudges on, year after year, a Harlem Globetrotters act where the Pirates are perpetually cast as the Washington Generals—the team that exists to lose.

The real victims here aren't the GMs or the managers. They got paid. They'll land on their feet. No, the real victims are the fans.

The vendor behind home plate who dresses up in vintage Pirates gear and tosses bags of peanuts to patrons with surgical precision, bringing joy to strangers while working for a poverty wage.

The die-hards who've been showing up to PNC Park for decades, through the 20-year losing streak, through the brief flicker of hope in 2013-2015, and through the endless slog of mediocrity that's followed.

They deserve better. Pittsburgh deserves better.

But Nutting doesn't care. Why should he? He's making money hand over fist. He's turned the Pirates into a profit center, not a baseball team. And as long as MLB keeps sending him revenue-sharing checks and fans keep buying tickets to see Paul Skenes pitch once every five days, nothing will change.

Listen, all I'm asking—all we're asking—is that Nutting sell the team. To anyone. To a consortium of local businesspeople. To a faceless hedge fund. To a sentient pile of garbage, as long as that garbage is willing to spend at the trade deadline and try to win.

But Nutting won't sell. He's made that clear. The team isn't for sale, he says. He "cares about Pittsburgh." He "cares about winning."

Bullshit.

If Nutting cared about winning, he'd have spent the money to keep peak Andrew McCutchen. He'd have extended Gerrit Cole. He'd have signed free agents to support that magical 2013-2015 core instead of letting it wither and die.

And don't point to those three years as proof that Nutting's model works. Those three years were a fluke. A perfect storm of homegrown talent all hitting their primes at the same time. And what did Nutting do? He let them walk. He traded them for pennies on the dollar. He watched as the window slammed shut and then congratulated himself for being "fiscally responsible."

The Pirates haven't won a World Series since 1979. That's 46 years and counting. And under Bob Nutting's stewardship, that drought isn't ending anytime soon.

Here's the thing, Bob: You've already won. You've made your fortune. You've pocketed revenue sharing money, TV deals, and concession profits for nearly two decades. You've proven your business model works—squeeze every cent out of a franchise while spending as little as possible. Congratulations. You're rich. You were already rich, but now you're richer.

So why are you still here?

It's not love of the game—you've made that abundantly clear. It's not civic pride—you live in West Virginia and treat Pittsburgh like an ATM. It's not legacy—you'll be remembered as one of the worst owners in baseball history, a man who inherited a storied franchise and bled it dry.

You're staying because you're greedy. Because as long as MLB keeps sending you checks and fans keep showing up to the Best Ballpark in America, you can keep extracting profit without trying to win. You're a parasite feeding on a dying host, and you're too comfortable to let it go.

But here's what you don't understand: You're killing baseball in Pittsburgh. Or should I say, you've killed baseball in Pittsburgh.

Not slowly. Not gradually. You destroy it year after year. Every season you refuse to spend. Every trade deadline where you pocket the profits instead of buying. Every offseason where you watch other teams sign free agents while you peddle bobbleheads. You're teaching an entire generation of fans that caring is for suckers. That hope is a con. That the Pirates exist not to compete.

The Royals went all-in in 2015 and won a World Series. The Rays operate on a shoestring and still make the playoffs. The Guardians, the Brewers, the Orioles—small-market teams that figured out how to win without unlimited budgets. But you? You don't even try. You just point to the spreadsheet and say, "Well, we're profitable," as if that's the fucking point.

It's not the point, Bob. The point is to win. The point is to give a city that's been kicked in the teeth for half a century something to believe in. The point is to honor the legacy of Maz, Clemente and Stargell and all the greats who wore black and gold before you turned it into a tax shelter.

Sell the team.

Not to your buddies. Not to some private equity vulture who'll run the same playbook. Sell it to someone who will actually invest. To Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle, who saved the Penguins and gave Pittsburgh three more Stanley Cups. To Mark Cuban, who wanted to bring a championship home. To a consortium of local owners who understand that a baseball team is a public trust, not a private piggy bank.

The truth is simple: You're standing in the way. As long as you own this team, it will never compete for a championship. It will never be more than a farm system for richer teams. It will never give Pittsburgh what it deserves.

You've made your billions. You've proven your point. Now get the fuck out of the way and let someone who actually gives a damn try to win.

Because Pittsburgh deserves better. It deserves an owner who wakes up every morning thinking about how to build a championship team, not how to maximize profit margins.

It deserves an owner who understands that some things—community, legacy, hope—matter more than money.

You're not that owner, Bob. You never will be.

So do the one decent thing you have left in you:

Sell the team. And disappear.