(File Photo: Source for Photo: Pittsburgh Pirates manager Don Kelly stands on the dugout steps during the first inning of a baseball game against the Chicago Cubs in Pittsburgh, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Don Kelly feels like he spent his first couple of months as the interim manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates drinking from a fire hose.
At some point after the All-Star break, the pace of the job started to slow down. And a season that was on the verge of careening out of control when he was promoted following Derek Shelton’s firing on May 8 began to get back on track.
Enough that the Pittsburgh-area native earned something that was a rarity during his playing career: stability.
The Pirates extended Kelly’s contract on Monday, confident the leadership he provided during a turbulent year is what the club needs as it tries to emerge from a decade of irrelevance.
Pittsburgh was 12-26 when the Pirates jettisoned Shelton in early May, part of an embarrassing stretch in which the club had problems hitting on the field and avoiding public relations disasters off it.
The Pirates went 59-65 once Kelly took over, including a 32-33 mark after the All-Star break. General manager Ben Cherington pointed to the trust Kelly built during his five-plus seasons as bench coach and his “tenacity” as key factors in deciding to retain him.
“I think really over the course of the last five months, it’s just become very clear … that this is the right choice,” Cherington said.
Kelly isn’t the only one sticking around.
Cherington and team president Travis Williams will also be back in 2026. Both were hired as part of an organizational overhaul in late 2019. The Pirates have yet to finish .500 since, and actually took a step back in 2025.
Yet there is internal optimism the team can contend next summer behind a pitching staff that features reigning National League Rookie of the Year and leading Cy Young Award contender Paul Skenes.
“Our goal is to win in 2026 and to make the playoffs, period, full stop,” Williams said.
How they get there is a little murky. Under owner Bob Nutting, the Pirates annually have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. Their deal with a regional sports network is modest, and attendance actually dropped this season even with Skenes available all year.
While Cherington said the team will be open to everything when it comes to improving the worst offense in the majors, he added that free agency is not an “open ocean” where the club would have a legitimate chance to land anyone on the market.
“We’ve got to be prepared to chase down every single thing that we think has a chance to help this team win more games in ’26, execute on the ones we can get to and just be dogged about it all offseason,” Cherington said.
The Pirates were in a similar position a year ago and opted to focus on overhauling some of the coaching staff rather than investing in proven major league talent. While first baseman Spencer Horwitz was solid after being acquired in a trade with Cleveland last winter, and veteran Tommy Pham recovered from a miserable start, Pittsburgh finished dead last in every significant offensive category, including runs, home runs and OPS.
“We need to be making bets on guys who are not proven,” Cherington said. “We may be able to make some bets on guys that are proven, and we’ll pursue that too, but some of the targets have to be guys who are unproven.”
Cherington acknowledged there were times this year when “we got into patches where we just didn’t have enough options to create good matchups up and down the lineup.”
The Pirates played in a major league-high 60 games decided by one run and lost 35 of them, also tops in the majors. A little run support might go a long way for a starting rotation loaded young talent, including Skenes (23), Bubba Chandler (23), Braxton Ashcraft (25), Mike Burrows (25) and Jared Jones (24), who missed all of this season after having Tommy John surgery.
Shortstop Konnor Griffin, all of 19, hit a combined .333 across three levels of the minors this season.
“We have the best young pitching staff in all of baseball,” Williams said. “We have a great core of young position players, and in addition to that, we have one of the best farm systems in baseball, the top prospect in baseball. And at the same time, we know that we need to be better.”
Kelly can at least exhale knowing he has the job in the city where he grew up. He remembers having his heart torn out when Atlanta’s Francisco Cabrera drove in the deciding runs in Game 7 of the 1992 NL Championship Series.
Thirty-plus years later, that remains as close as Pittsburgh has gotten to a World Series since it won the title in 1979. Kelly wants to be part of the group that makes the team matter again.
“I will work tirelessly fighting for you, fighting with you to help make the Pittsburgh Pirates the best team possible,” Kelly said, “and to bring playoff baseball back to the city of Pittsburgh.”
