The Pittsburgh Pirates’ 2016 season is in the past, but there are plenty of lessons for their Communications Department to use to promote the 2017 team
As far as I’m concerned, the horse is twitching on the analysis of the on-field and front office gaffes of the 2016 Pittsburgh Pirates. There’s been a lifetime’s worth of bellyaching about all the bads – bad pitching, bad bullpen, bad defense, bad trades, bad contracts, bad coaching.
It’s as if this team can’t do the right thing. That’s the problem with winning, isn’t it? For 20 years Pittsburgh Pirates fans suffered the losses, but stayed loyal. But after three winning seasons and Wild Card appearances, the team has one less-than-stellar season and the rats are jumping off that Pirate ship in epic numbers. Yes, the Buccos can solve the problem of the disenfranchised fan by spending more money, fielding an exceptional team and winning more games. But it will take at least a few months into the 2017 season to see if those tactics pan out. And by then, there’s a lot of revenue left on the table – season tickets not purchased, TVs not tuned in, newspapers not bought, etc.
I’ve never pretended to be a stats whiz, a stellar “slash-line” writer or a typical sports reporter. That’s why I tend to stick to features and other sorts of analysis pieces. But in my “other life” I am a Communications Strategist with over 20 years of experience in journalism, writing, public relations, reputation management, crisis communications and all sorts of other things I could pull from my resume. My point is, while I’m not skilled enough to write about why OPS is the single-most important predictor of a player’s ability to hit opposite-field doubles in a light rain in May when the temperature is between 67 and 79.6 degrees (totally not a thing, by the way), I am uniquely qualified to make this next statement:
There is a lot the Pittsburgh Pirates organization can do to shake off the “bads” from 2016 off the field – and it all comes down to two words: Public Relations.
Love, Clint
By now we’ve all heard about the daily notes Pirates Manager Clint Hurdle sends to players and a select inner circle, affectionately referred to as the Love Clint emails. According to reports, these notes can be lengthy or very short. They may refer to baseball, they might not. They serve as a sort of “centering statement” for the team and the organization. The entire city of Pittsburgh needs a Love, Clint email and it needs to come at the beginning of the season. It could take the form of a commercial on Root, a full-page ad in the local papers, billboards across the region, E-bucs newsletter message or all of the above. Like that clip they play on the scoreboard in the 9th when the team is down, the whole fanbase needs a big “Hoist the colors” message – and there’s no one better to issue it than the Skipper himself.
New Faces
Okay, I said I wasn’t going to get into the whole McCutchen thing, but here I am – getting into it. I have argued that the Pirates can’t/shouldn’t trade him from a pure marketing standpoint – you don’t trade the face of your franchise. Even in his struggles, Cutch still dominates the jerseys in the stands, merits the biggest cheers when he’s up to bat and, from what we can see (that’s key here), is the most-popular Pirate for meeting with Wish Kids and fulfilling charitable requests. If the Pirates were indeed shopping him at the 2016 trade deadline, and if they’re planning to shop him in 2017, either in July or November, they MUST begin transitioning away from him serving in the Face of the Franchise role. It’s the only way to ease fans into the idea of a post-McCutchen era team – and it’s going to take a while for the casual ones to swallow that.
You can see efforts already underway to put Starling Marte more front and center and that’s a step in the right direction (although he’s got to stop hiding behind that translator during interviews) and Gregory Polanco stepped up in a major way toward the end of 2016, doing several post-game interviews (sans translator, natch) and speaking not just about himself and his performance, but for the entire team. Throw amiable and well-spoken Josh Bell, veteran fireball and swoon-worthy Francisco Cervelli and aww-shucks good boy Jared Hughes into the mix and you’ve eliminated the trap of a Face of the Franchise altogether and put a variety of personalities and positions front and center to better represent the team.
It’s not fair that one person should have to carry the weight of an entire team. It’s also pretty obvious from the drastic change in his approach to media during the 2016 season that Andrew McCutchen himself might be growing tired of that role.
A Pitch Man
It’s no secret that the Pittsburgh Pirates need pitching help. In more ways than one. They need a pitcher with PERSONALITY, and a lot of it. They need a guy people buy tickets to see pitch, but as much for his attitude as for his skill. AJ Burnett was a polarizing figure when he first came to the team, but from the moment cameras caught him saying “Sit the F@$k Down” rather forcefully that first time, he had fans on his side and eating out of his hands. He fired everyone up and even during a bad outing, didn’t lose them. The Pirates need another pitcher that fans want to wear t-shirts to support. Jason Grilli, also polarizing, had a similar impact as a closer.
The person doesn’t even need to be loved/hated – Marcus Stroman is practically the King of Toronto on the days he pitches and he’s pretty squeaky clean as far as image is concerned. Bartolo Colon waddled himself to a $12.5 million contract with the Braves at 43 on his “Big Sexy” reputation. I’m not fooling myself here, Colon still has skills and Stroman is only going to get better, but they have cultivated brands tailor-made for baseball fans to embrace and enjoy. Pirates fans need that again.
Make Baseball Fun Again
Okay – I cringed writing that, having taken some issue with Bryce Harper‘s July 2016 allegations that baseball is boring. However, there is a lesson here. The Pirates need to show their fans that baseball is fun. They need to be very serious about winning and diligent about playing a brand of baseball that gets them to the post-season. But they need to share the joy of baseball again. The 2016 team felt flat. They felt tired. They felt beaten down. They felt old. Which is ironic with so many rookies joining their ranks.
They need to do things that make fans laugh and feel included. Things that make fans want to like the game and the team – win or lose. They need to go zooming through the tunnels on their electric scooters again, they need to let fans in on the finger in the air sign they do when they get a hit, they need to bring back the damn Z, they need to do more pre-game dances or encourage fans to get in on the act. The point is, this is not brain surgery. This is not national security. This is baseball – and it should be fun. And no one looked like they were having fun on the field or in that clubhouse last season. That radiates outward.
A place to start? While I’m sure this will be over before mid-December, how about a mannequin challenge video of the guys hanging out in the “talent” room before PirateFest begins? Or have fans AT PirateFest participate in one with the players. Here’s another idea – throw a massive party a few weeks after the season opens (maybe during the Yankees series because it doesn’t matter). Bill it as a Thank You party for the season AHEAD. Sell wristbands if you must. Definitely sell alcohol. Have a kids skill/play area. Bring in a few bands to play short sets say, on a stage at the foot of the Clemente Bridge. Get Steve Blass up on stage singing Beatles tunes. Give away fun Pirates stuff (fans don’t care what it is). Then, bring out Locksley to play “The Whip” – you know, that song they started playing last season when someone hits a homer that goes “Whoa, oh oh, ohh oh oh oh oh oh oh” and have the players get up on stage for a fabulous mid-song sing along. Whip fans up into a frenzy of Pirates love, respect and admiration. We need it, and so does the team.
Be a TEAM Again
I enjoy watching Russell Martin play baseball. When he joined the Blue Jays in 2015, I began watching their games. Almost immediately I made this observation: they feel like a group of individuals playing towards a common goal. This feeling was directly related to my years of watching the Pirates grit and grind through a season after season, all for one and one for all. 2016 didn’t feel that way. It felt as if parts of the team were working together, Mercer and Harrison who dubbed their short and second pairing Salt and Pepper, for example. But watching games day after day, it felt like true “team moments” were those quick bursts of sunshine you get on a cloudy day when a cold front is sweeping in from the northwest – warm and comforting, but gone too soon.
There were hints of dissent among the ranks throughout the season. There were plenty of rumors – offseason frustration regarding the Neil Walker trade, mid-season anger over Francisco Liriano‘s exit and even tales of him refusing to take advice from Ray Searage. There was Cutch’s “core” comment to reporters that sent media in a tailspin of prognostication. There was Marte’s “back injury” that caused him to miss several games at the end of the season and the team decision to place him retroactively on the DL, which could foil his desire to play in the World Baseball Classic this spring.
I don’t know what it takes internally. Maybe a mandatory, team-only whitewater rafting/camping trip, some trust falls in the clubhouse the day before the first game or a pajama party on the team plane enroute to those two exhibition games in Montreal? Externally, they can start showing this togetherness when they’re all in Pittsburgh at PirateFest, when they hop on the buses for the outreach programs they do in the winter and when they report to Spring Training. Go to dinner with their teammates, get a group photo taken in the clubhouse wearing ugly Christmas sweaters and send it to fans as an extra special holiday greeting, workout together, post informal group photos on Instagram – something, anything that emphasizes the idea of TOGETHER.
The saying “perception is reality” is very true in the world of public relations – what people believe is happening shapes their opinions about a person, place or thing – even if nothing of the sort is taking place. If you want to change their reality, change their perception. That’s what the Pittsburgh Pirates need to do with their fanbase for 2017.
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