Shelton out as Pirates manager; bench coach Don Kelly takes his place

The Pirates announced Thursday that Derek Shelton has been relieved of his duties as manager, a shake-up that had become expected in recent weeks as the team fell further back in the National League Central.

The decision comes after a very slow start by the Pirates, who dipped to 12-26 with Wednesday’s loss, their seventh straight. The team came into this year with heightened expectations but hasn’t found its footing and has not won back-to-back series since last July.

“There's no one thing. We aren't performing the way we need to,” general manager Ben Cherington said after thanking Shelton for his efforts the past six years. “We're not performing in a way that our fans deserve. We know we need to be better. I guess I looked at the end of last year, August and September, and how April and the first few days of May played out. It just became clear that a change was necessary that we were not in a position to win any longer.“

“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. “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.”

Shelton finished with a record of 306-440 in his five-plus years as the Pirates’ skipper. Bench coach Don Kelly has been named the club’s new manager.

This year’s team was hampered by injuries -- most notably right-hander Jared Jones, second baseman Nick Gonzales and first baseman Spencer Horwitz, the team’s most notable acquisition this winter – but the team’s issues extended beyond that.

Shelton was hired in November 2019, shortly after the team made other drastic changes in leadership with the hires of team president Travis Williams and Cherington. Shelton was tasked with navigating the team through a rebuild, as well as improving the culture.

The group struggled mightily its first three years. The Bucs’ 19-41 record in the abbreviated 2020 season resulted in their second-worst winning percentage in the Modern Era. They followed that with a 101-loss season in 2021 and a 100-loss campaign in 2022. The Pirates set franchise records for the number of players used in a single season both years, cycling through many outside acquisitions in hopes of supplementing their Major League core of players like Bryan Reynolds, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Mitch Keller and David Bednar, as well as the core of prospects they had been accruing.

The Pirates opted to stick with Shelton after that stretch and extended his contract early in the 2023 campaign. The team took a significant step forward that year, going 76-86 while promoting many of their top prospects. Shelton also got high marks for his managing that season, handling a young clubhouse and navigating a team that had only two traditional starting pitchers -- Keller and Johan Oviedo -- for the final two months of the season, relying on bullpen games and openers to bridge the gap. An encouraging campaign seemingly put them in a position to compete in the near future.

However, the team didn’t take that next step under Shelton. Despite adding Paul Skenes and Jones to their rotation in 2024, the Pirates finished with an identical 76-86 record. They were buyers at the Trade Deadline and entered August just two games out of a playoff spot, but the season went south very quickly and the club fell out of contention by mid-August after losing 10 games in a row.

The coaching staff did experience some change this winter, with hitting coach Andy Haines and bullpen coach Justin Meccage leaving, but the club opted to keep Shelton, at the recommendation of Cherington.

“I think back to last year and as of the beginning of August, we believed that we were headed in a positive direction,” Cherington said of the decision to bring back Shelton this season. “We believed we were making progress. Not enough. Not fast enough. But we believed we were making progress, and we thought there was evidence for that. Then we had a difficult August. That led to a difficult end of the season last year. But as I look back at that, I felt like, for most of 2024, we were seeing that progress. Then we got punched in the face over the last two months. We all were learning from that. We all did learn a lot from that. I believed at the time we were capable of continuing the progress from July and that we could overcome the difficult thing that happened in August and keep this thing going forward. I believed that Shelty had the will to do that and was going to continue to do all the work that he needed to do to be a part of that. So that was the recommendation I made.

“What’s happened now is we’ve now had a little bit more of a month of very difficult performance that adds on top of the difficult ending from 2024. I think it’s the combination of those two things that ultimately brought us to today.”

This Spring Training, Shelton emphasized that the Pirates would have to “win in the margins” to become a competitive ballclub in 2025. Their season started with three losses in Miami, all via walk-off, making the Bucs the first team to be walked off for their first three losses since the 1924 Pirates. That set the pace for a team that has been unable to find any sort of rhythm.

Kelly was Shelton’s bench coach during his six years in Pittsburgh, and prior to that, he served as the Astros’ first-base coach in 2019. The native of Butler, Pa., went to Mount Lebanon High School in Pittsburgh and Point Park University before playing in the Majors for nine years, debuting with the Pirates in 2007.

Cherington described Kelly’s managerial status as “permanent for 2025” and that they aren’t looking beyond that.

“This is someone who cares way more about the Pirates, the city, cares way more about the people in that clubhouse than he does himself,” Cherington said. “He's just an elite human being and teammate. He comes to the ballpark every day focused on only one thing -- how to help this team get better. It's truly not about him because it never has been. It will have to be a little bit more now as a manager, and I think he understands that. I have so much faith in the combination of the human he is and the skills that he has and the reasons he does the job.”

“Donnie is as respected as any person in our clubhouse and throughout our organization,” Nutting said. “He is a Pirate. He bleeds black and gold. No one is more committed, and no one loves this team or city more than Donnie. He is the right person to manage our team and help get us back on track.”