Lemieux owner of the Pirates? A Good Thought, but Highly Unlikely

There was a report by Dejan Kovacevic in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Mario Lemieux and his co owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins Ron Burkle made an offer to buy the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Pirates owner Bob Nutting said he the team is not for sale.

Why would they be?

Even though the Pirates are a private organization and their books are not made public, ESPN.com writer Jason Stark has reported that small market teams receive about $80 million in revenue before they sell a ticket. Compare that to a $48 million dollar payroll and you have major profit.

This business venture has been a success to that standpoint. But, the product on the field has left little to be desired.

The Pirates set a Major League Baseball record for futility last season, completing their seventeenth consecutive losing season. With the Nutting's strategy this record will continue to get larger.

The Pirates current ownership group has admitted their current payroll, which is expected to fall again by $10 million again this year, does not allow them to compete for championships. Nutting stated in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, "Do we have enough talent? Absolutely not. We need another great draft. We've had two good ones, and we need to do it again And again and again."

We have seen this charade before. The Pirates have tried to build through the draft, but have not faired well. The 2002 draft is an example of this. The Pirates had the first overall pick and selected Bryan Bullington a Pitcher from Ball State. They selected Bullington because he was someone they could afford to sign and passed on the likes of Scott Kasmir, Cole Hamels, Prince Fielder, B.J. Upton, Jeff Francis, and Matt Cain. All of these players have made a major impact in the Majors while Bullington pitched just over 18 innings with the team and is no longer in the organization.

Would a Lemieux/Burkle ownership group change the fortunes of the Pirates? They may not, but I guarantee they would try harder to rectify the losing than the current group is. When you look at the Penguins when Lemieux took ownership in 1999 the Penguins were in disarray. The team was in need of a new arena and the team was losing. The team kept losing when he first took over the team, but after building solid talent through the draft and acquiring key free agents the Penguins built a championship team.

The only difference with hockey and baseball is the salary cap. The Penguins were able to acquire free agents because of the salary cap. This is a much tougher feat in baseball with player salaries escalating out of control and putting a burden on small market teams.

But the Pirates payroll is well under teams that play in similar city sizes. According to a list of figures from the USA Today the Pirates payroll was about half of what Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Cleveland were in 2009.

If the Pirates ownership group was willing to pay a similar payroll to those teams they could contend for a division title. Lemieux and Burkle might just pay that with getting the right talent for the right price while Nutting and his group have shown that they so far are not willing to do that.

After seventeen years of losing many Pittsburghers have grown tired of watching the Pirates, but if the Nutting's continue to spend little money and make money at the same time, the losing will not change.