PITTSBURGH (AP) — There is an optimism to Don Kelly. A buoyancy. A lightness. How could there not be?
The Pittsburgh-area native has spent the last two-plus decades authoring an unlikely success story that has carried him from a downtown liberal arts college to nearly a decade in the big leagues as a utility player who got by more on intelligence than innate talent.
Now comes a task far different but no less daunting than any Kelly faced as a player: trying to find a way to breathe life into his hometown team’s flailing season.
The last-place Pirates are a mess, both on and off the field. On Thursday, general manager Ben Cherington fired manager Derek Shelton and handed Kelly a mop, asking the club’s longtime bench coach to bring some of his “teacher’s heart” to the job as Shelton’s replacement.
It’s equal parts humbling and exciting for someone who grew up 5 miles south of Three Rivers Stadium and used to trick-or-treat at Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland’s house in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
So there were butterflies as Kelly made the drive to PNC Park on Friday ahead of the start of Pittsburgh’s weekend series against Atlanta. A touch of anxiousness, too.
Those jitters will soon fade away as the 45-year-old Kelly tries to coax more out of an underperforming roster that hasn’t played like the group most in the organization felt was on the cusp of contending when the season began six weeks ago.
The Pirates took a small — very, very small — step in the right direction in Kelly’s debut, using a pair of homers from the bottom of the lineup and six shutout innings from Bailey Falter to edge the Braves 3-2.
Kelly received the customary postgame celebration, getting doused in ice-cold water that did little to dampen his enthusiasm after one of the more solid performances by Pittsburgh this season.
“It’s safe to say that I feel like everyone was kinda playing for (Kelly) tonight,” Falter said.
Playing with emotion is nice. But everyone involved knows it will take far more than that for Pittsburgh to climb out of the hole it has dug itself. The Pirates entered the weekend 10 games out of a playoff spot thanks largely to an offense that ranks among the worst in the majors in every important category.
It’s one of the reasons why Shelton’s dismissal wasn’t surprising, not even to a player who hasn’t even been in the majors a full calendar year.
“We’re 12-26,” reigning National League Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes said a few hours before Pittsburgh improved to 13-26. “Someone’s got to be held accountable. And unfortunately, right now, it’s him. That’s just kind of how it goes. But I don’t know that it fixes the root of the issue, which is we need to play better.”
Enter Kelly, who played collegiately at Point Park University, a small liberal arts school a few blocks across the Allegheny River from PNC Park. A stint in a college summer league between his sophomore and junior years convinced the Detroit Tigers to select Kelly in the eighth round of the 2001 draft. He spent nine seasons bouncing around from team to team — including the Pirates — as a 6-foot-4 version of duct tape: willing to patch a hole wherever needed.
Kelly retired after the 2016 season and spent some time as a scout before going into coaching full-time with Houston in 2018. By the end of 2019, he was back home as the bench coach on Shelton’s staff.
Kelly isn’t sure what kind of impact he can have over the final 120ish games of the season. Yet he has no plans to change who he is or how he goes about communicating with players now forced to see him in a different light.
“When the players know you care about them and they know that at the bottom line you care about the team, you care about winning, that’s what it all ties back too,” Kelly said.
Care, however, only goes so far. While Pirates franchise icon Andrew McCutchen praised Kelly’s understanding of the game, McCutchen also knows things won’t change just because someone new is sitting in the manager’s office.
“He’s going to do his job,” McCutchen said. “But at the end of the day, he’s not on the field playing the game. We, the team out there, have to do our job.”
How Pittsburgh makes enough progress to salvage 2025 remains to be seen. Some of the injuries that have contributed to the offense’s slow start — most notably to first baseman Spencer Horwitz and second baseman Nick Gonzales — are starting to heal. At some point, the Pirates might be able to put out the starting lineup they envisioned when they reported to spring training.
That hasn’t happened yet. It’s uncertain when — or if — it even will. That is out of Kelly’s control. What he can do is try and set the tone for a clubhouse that has often felt and sounded like a library at closing time.
It worked on Friday, when Kelly won his first game as a major league manager, capping a near-perfect day with hugs in the hallway from his sons.
“I don’t know if it really even has fully (sunk in) yet,” Kelly said. “Maybe … when I’m walking out, it will set in. (I’ll) get some time to drive home and get ready for tomorrow.”
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