Pirates President Frank Coonelly: 'We're Reinvesting Resources" In This Club
BRADENTON (93-7 The Fan) – Pirates President Frank Coonelly sat down with The Fan Morning Show at spring training in Bradenton this week to chat with the guys about the state of the organization as the 2015 season draws near.
The Pirates' payroll this season is likely to be over $90 million and when Jim Colony told Coonelly that he's one of the people who believes it could be even higher than that, Cooenlly responded by saying the money the franchise is making is going back into the team.
"Everybody could say it should be more," Coonelly said. "What I can say is that we're reinvesting the resources that the organization is generating back into the club. The payroll took a very large jump this year, and to keep this core together, it's going to have to take another large jump next year and moving forward."
Coonelly went on to talk about the financial stability the Pirates' organization is looking to achieve and why that's such an important part of their continued success.
"One thing that is very important is that we have financial stability in the club so that we're not strapped and have to make bad baseball decisions in order to get ourselves back to stability," Coonelly said. "That's happened in the past with other clubs, it's happened in the past here in Pittsburgh and that's where you make your worst baseball trades, that's where you make your worst moves because you're forced to move payroll off the roster. We can't put ourselves in that position again."
Click the audio link below to hear more from Coonelly as he talks about the clause they would not give Jung-Ho Kang in his contract, Will Ferrell playing in five spring training games and if he thinks he could step into a batters box and hit a major league fastball.
The interview can be heard here:
