Some change is coming to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Over the last month, the team has fired long-time manager Clint Hurdle and President Frank Coonelly, and today the news came out that GM Neal Huntington is out of a job as well. Owner Bob Nutting is still the one making the calls in Pittsburgh, but the team has hired a new President, with former Pittsburgh Penguins hockey executive Travis Williams taking over the business side of the operation in hopes of duplicating his success with the city’s hockey team. As for Huntington, his departure signals a major change in operations for the Pirates. But a change in operations doesn’t necessarily mean a change in direction, and some skepticism regarding the latter is warranted given the last few decades of Pirates baseball.

Every franchise experiences inflection points, where the team charts a new course in an attempt to move forward. The Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2018; a year later, they fired Dave Dombrowski and brought in Chaim Bloom to help sustain his predecessor’s success while avoiding the failings that precipitated Dombrowski’s departure from Detroit. After sustained failure, the Cubs hired Theo Epstein and the Astros brought in Jeff Luhnow. Both were enlisted to tear down and then rebuild their respective franchises in the hopes of striking out on a new path and contending for the playoffs and championships. It’s not entirely clear that this is what’s happening in Pittsburgh. The club missed its opportunity to capitalize on its three-year playoff run from 2013 to ’15, and faces a future that doesn’t look too different from most of its past.

While the organizational changes were certainly precipitated by a poor 2019 season (the Pirates lost 93 games), the team wasn’t expected to be particularly good, the culmination of a half-decade of mismanagement. As Dan Szymborksi noted in his elegy for the team, some misguided moves precipitated the 2019 team’s failure, and the forecast doesn’t look any better next season. The team’s 1.5 million attendance figure isn’t due to the poor 2019 campaign, but rather to a series of events that eventually caused the front office and on-field changes coming now. To provide some context as to how the Pirates got here, it can be helpful to look at what similar franchises have done when presented with fairly equivalent situations:

In 2014, the Kansas City Royals made a surprising trip to the World Series. The next season, the team increased payroll by $30 million, drew 700,000 more fans, and won a World Series title. Those actions resulted in top 10 payrolls in 2016 and 2017 for some middling teams, but the team won a title and the 7.5 million fans the team drew from 2015-2017 was the most in franchise history over a three-year period.

In 2016, Cleveland nearly won the World Series. The next season, they increased payroll by $34 million as the rest of the league refused to spend. They maintained those increases in 2018 and were rewarded with nearly 500,000 more fans per year and two more division titles. When they reversed course in 2019, the fans departed and Cleveland missed the playoffs by just a handful of games.

In 2017, the Milwaukee Brewers were competitive after two fourth-place finishes. That offseason, the team signed Lorenzo Cain and Jhoulys Chacín and traded for Christian Yelich, increasing payroll by more than $40 million. They won the division in 2018, advancing to the NLCS and drawing 2.85 million fans. The Brewers then added another $25 million in payroll in 2019 by signing Yasmani Grandal and retaining Mike Moustakas. They were rewarded with even more fans at the park and a return trip to the postseason in a very competitive division and playoff race.

We see three smaller-market teams with similar financial disadvantages to the Pirates who achieved contention, and then made further investments in the team. Those franchises were rewarded with more fans and more wins. We could throw the A’s and Rays into this mix of smaller-market teams trying to compete and provide an alternative strategy: constantly moving players and contracts so as not to increase payroll and hoping to hit on enough moves to stay ahead of the pack. When faced with these decisions in 2013, the Pirates chose not to pursue either strategy. Unlike Kansas City, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, when Pittsburgh first tasted success in 2013, the team made no meaningful investment in the team. Payroll went from $75 million in 2013 to $78 million in 2014. That is technically an increase, but when payroll league-wide increases by $10 million, it works as an effective decrease. Thanks to great seasons by Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte, great free agent finds like Russell Martin, and a breakout from Josh Harrison, the team made it back to the playoffs.

After two consecutive seasons of postseason baseball, and more fans in attendance at PNC Park in every year save for the inaugural 2001 campaign, the Pirates increased payroll by $17 million. Over two offseasons, the Pirates increased payroll by $21 million as the average payroll increased by $18 million. Thanks to another great find in Francisco Cervelli and the emergence of Gerrit Cole as an ace, the team again made the playoffs and broke the single-season franchise record for attendance. In response, as payrolls increased league-wide by more than $20 million, Pittsburgh increased its payroll by $14 million. When the Pirates made their great run in 2013 to revive the franchise, the team ranked 25th in payroll. In the six seasons since that run, they’ve ranked 27th, 24th, 24th, 24th, 27th, and 29th.

The Pirates either mistakenly believed they could keep pulling magic out of a hat by churning through reclamation projects as generational talent and MVP Andrew McCutchen declined, or they just didn’t care. Fans have seemingly taken the latter view based on attendance the last few seasons. We can point to Ray Searage and an organization that found it difficult to develop pitching consistently. Andrew McCutchen’s ill-timed 2016 season didn’t help. Jose Tabata, Gregory Polanco, and Josh Harrison failing to make star-turns set the team back. The McCutchen, Cole, and Archer trades didn’t yield needed results. While those issues could be chalked up to bad luck, all teams are subject to luck. The Pirates ownership and front office simply gave the team no margin for error. The team could point to the Rays and A’s as a potential model for success without raising payroll, but that runs counter to moving Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole at the nadirs of their value while trading a set of prospects once considered the future for Chris Archer.

Given the past few seasons, expecting Neal Huntington to recreate the magic of 2013-’15 wasn’t very likely, so moving on isn’t exactly the worst move. However, if expectations are simply to recreate 2013-’15, Pirates fans are likely to remain leery. The organization has a decent set of prospects and no onerous long-term contracts. If a few of those prospects to hit, and they have better luck or skill developing pitchers, they will be in position to return to contention within the next few years. It’s hardly a guarantee, but with some good fortune, finding 2013 again is possible. Owner Bob Nutting is about to put a new person in charge of making that possible, but with only Huntington’s resources at the next GM’s disposal, the task of getting to contention will remain difficult and staying there near-impossible.