Amid the team's best start in three decades, the Pittsburgh Pirates have signed manager Derek Shelton to a contract extension, GM Ben Cherington confirmed Saturday. Contract terms were not disclosed.
"I am very excited to have a chance to continue to work with him," Cherington said (video). "I really believe that he's the right person for the job. He's worked tirelessly for over three years now to help put us in a stronger position to win. All of the work that goes into building our culture, the way we prepare for games, the way we treat each other, the relationships that we build. I think we're starting to see the fruits of that labor."
Shelton, 52, is in his fourth season with the Pirates and 2023 was the final guaranteed year on his contract. Pittsburgh enters play Saturday riding a five-game winning streak that has improved the club's record to 14-7 record with a plus-22 run differential. Here are the last five times the Pirates won 14 of their first 21 games:
1992
15-6
96-66 (won NL East)
1991
14-7
98-64 (won NL East)
1990
14-7
95-67 (won NL East)
1988
15-6
85-75
1980
14-7
83-79
The Pirates are in the early stages of transitioning from rebuilder to contender, and Shelton inherited a team that lost 93 games in 2019. Pittsburgh went 19-41 during the pandemic season in 2020, his first year as manager, then lost 101 games in 2021 and 100 games in 2022. The club is 156-249 (.385) in the Shelton era.
Obviously the Pirates were not expected to contend from 2020-22, however, so Shelton shouldn't bear the blame for the team's poor record. He was hired to guide and develop the team's young players and, now that those young players are starting to arrive, the Pirates want to keep Shelton around to continue their development.
"We've worked really hard over three years. We've made some difficult trades, we've acquired some people, we've taken our lumps," Shelton said Saturday (video). "So the fact that organizationally, the commitment to how we've gone about the plan we put in place four years ago, it's working. We've worked really hard over three years. We need to continue to focus every day to get better."
Prior to joining the Pirates, Shelton worked as a minor league manager with the New York Yankees in the early 2000s, hitting coach with Cleveland (2005-09), hitting coach with the Tampa Bay Rays (2010-16), quality control coach with the Toronto Blue Jays (2017), and bench coach with the Minnesota Twins (2018-19).
