Throughout the past 14 seasons, the Pittsburgh Pirates have been the poster children of futility, going through four previous managers before arriving at the, thus far, lackluster Jim Tracy. Couple that with horrible free agent signings, inconsistent performances from players declared “team leaders” by the organization, and a slew of injuries to nearly every first-round pick this decade, and it’s easy to see why the Pirates have been unable to catch up to anyone.

Last season, the Pirates slogan became “We Will.” When this slogan was presented and everyday since then, “We Will” has always been followed up with words like “entertain” and “compete.” Nowhere has the mention of winning come to light. It’s very difficult to sell people to come watch the home team lose more than 50 percent of the time when the organization seemingly does very little to change the losing mentality. The Pirates have many flaws currently, but a few of the major flaws stem from the management and the owners. The two flaws that seem the most obvious are the hiring of Jim Tracy as manager, and the use of the excuse of being a small market team as a reason the organization cannot compete.

The Pirates hired Jim Tracy before the start of last season with the hopes that he and his staff, who had great success with the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, would be the right, winning mentality to bring the team over the hump towards a winning season in what has been an appropriately labeled weak National League Central Division.

Everything seemed great in Bucco land as Tracy and his staff slowly started to exude influence over the team in order to get a winning mentality across to an organization that quite possibly had forgotten how to win. But Tracy was coming from a Dodgers team that was laid back, knew how to play the game right, and didn’t find ways night in and night out to blow leads and not get timely hits. Anyone who went to Pirates games last season
(I attended three) or listened to the radio broadcasts of the games (I listened to 100+) could realize that Tracy and company were not the right fit. Tracy’s bad habit of not realizing that a pitcher was struggling cost the Pirates at least 30 games in which they had a legitimate shot of winning. Tracy would let the pitcher stay out a few batters too long and what was a close game would turn into a blowout.

Not only did Tracy not understand his pitchers, but pitching coach Jim Colburn wasn’t even close to understanding them either. His tinkering with the mechanics of Zach Duke have resulted in Duke becoming the most hit pitcher in baseball, and things have gotten so bad between Colburn and Ian Snell, that Snell does not want to see Colburn at all during games, claiming the he doesn’t help the situation when he comes to the mound. If that is not a clear sign that maybe the wrong people are in place, then maybe the Pirates are content with losing. To be fair, Tracy has improved with his knowledge of the pitching staff, as starters are being pulled before major damage can occur more often than before. However, with mistakes like the pulling of Tom Gorzelanny with a 7-1 lead only to watch it vanish due to a John Wasdin nightmare of a relief performance, it’s hard to forgive Tracy for these mental gaffes.

Mental gaffes seem to be the way the Pirates do business, but it seems that the fans are the ones suffering the most. The Pirates, over the last two seasons, have been slowly trying to raise payroll to the $50 million-per-year range. This season, they have a payroll of roughly $38 million on the active roster. This payroll ranks as one of the lowest in the league and does prohibit the Pirates from signing top-tier free agents who could help the organization win. However, the organization’s claim that it is a small-market team and therefore cannot compete with the teams like the Cubs, Cardinals and Astros is ridiculous.

Being in a small market means little to nothing. I don’t care how small a market is, if the team wins games, people will fill the stands. The problem is that the Pirates owners, mainly newspaper mogul Bob Nutting, are unwilling to put money into a team that doesn’t win. But in order to acquire players that give the team the ability to win (and I certainly don’t mean Tony Armas Jr.) you need to spend money. This Catch-22 has haunted the Pirates since the payroll slash of 1997, when the Pirates’ major league roster had a combined payroll of $9 million. Ironically, that team has performed the best of any Pirates team in the past 14 years. Putting aside that run, the Pirates have spent money on has-been free agents, or one-year rental players who they planned to use for trade bait when they inevitably fell out of contention by the end of June. The Milwaukee Brewers play in a smaller market than Pittsburgh, as do the Minnesota Twins. However, the Brewers payroll is $70.9 million and the Twins sit pretty at $71.5 million. So there it is, the answer to the Pirates’ problems. How do you make money in a small market? Spend it.

So as the Pirates, fresh of a sweep in Atlanta, head to what is going to be consecutive losing season number 15, think back to their slogan, “We Will.” The Pirates have filled that blank with many words, but unless the organization makes a legitimate effort towards putting a winning product on the field, they will continue to play in front of 12,000 fans most nights. The fans need more than “We Will,” but all the fans will get is “We Won’t”

Yahoo! Sports recently posted the top conclusions to the “We Will” phrase. You can check them out by clicking here.