Bob Nutting complains that new CBA didn't benefit Pirates as team prepares for another bottom-five payroll

The Pirates have run a payroll at or near the bottom of the league every year since 2018

Pittsburgh Pirates owner Bob Nutting, whose net worth was estimated by the Los Angeles Times to exceed $1 billion as of 2020, is making it known that he's not a fan of Major League Baseball's economic structure or its Collective Bargaining Agreement with the MLB Players Association.

"There's no question the CBA contained several things that were not good for the Pirates and very few things that were excellent for us," Nutting, who purchased controlling interest of the franchise in 2007, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Friday. He noted that he voted for the CBA -- rather than casting a "protest" vote against ratification -- because losing the 2022 season would have been bad for both the league and the city.

The CBA, agreed upon last March, is slated to run through the 2026 season. While Nutting did not get into specifics about what, precisely, he dislikes about the new CBA, it's safe to assume he's not upset about the expanded postseason or the larger bases. He made a vague reference to MLB's economic structure and past comments from Nutting suggest that he would be in favor of a salary cap.

"There's no question that, a market like Pittsburgh, a salary cap would be advantageous," Nutting told the Associated Press in 2009. "And if that were a direction that the industry were moving, it would be advantageous to Pittsburgh, but it can't be the primary focus of how we're running our business this year and next year and the following year. We need to stay focused in the real world and not use that as an excuse."

A salary cap is often portrayed as the silver bullet for baseball's economic disparity, but there's no empirical evidence that it improves parity. In reality, all the cap does is suppress player salaries, with the saved money usually being redirected to parts unknown. Besides, consider that most MLB clubs have, by and large, operated under a de facto cap in recent years in the form of the Competitive Balance Tax. Yet the presence (and adherence) to the CBT has not led to the Pirates being more relevant in MLB's greater landscape.

To wit, the Pirates haven't won more than 40 percent of their games in a single season during the Pandemic Era. They've also ranked 27th or worse in payroll each year since 2018, according to Cot's Contracts, and they are projected to continue that streak this season.