The Pittsburgh Pirates are catching some heat from their fans, after it spread online that the team is screening questions beforehand in preparation for fans to be able to interact with several prominent members of the Pirates’ front office and management team.

PiratesFest, which is taking place on January 6th this year, is returning to Pittsburgh for the first time since 2019. The fan-centered event allows Pirates fans to meet and greet team players, enjoy interactive games and attractions, meet alumni, and more.

It also allows fans a direct line of communication to Pirates Manager Derek Shelton, General Manager Ben Cherington, and President Travis Williams.

It’s a chance for fans to ask the management team questions about the team, their future, and what the plan is with their favorite baseball club.

Apparently, however, the team is worried about getting some unfavorable questions asked of them at this event. To eliminate that potential concern, the Pirates are screening questions ahead of time, by asking fans to submit their questions via their website.

Connor Williams, of Bucs Dugout, posted a screenshot of the website section where they are taking questions.

I understand why anyone would want to do this, still pretty cowardly not to have a truly open dialogue with fans at the event that's supposed to be for them. pic.twitter.com/nrVu307uOC

— Connor Williams⚾📝 (@Wins_Williams) January 3, 2024

The news brought reactions from several prominent Pirates’ news/fan accounts, and even drew words from Deejan Kovacevic, of DK Pittsburgh Sports.

“‘Cowardly’ doesn’t begin to cut it,” he wrote on Twitter/X.

From a distance, it’s understandable for any team to screen questions for an event like this beforehand. Crazies exist in ever fan base, and I can already imagine someone going to try and prank the whole thing.

However, for the Pirates, they do not get the benefit of the doubt in this. This is a baseball team that has not fielded a winning team since the 2018 season. And by winning team, I mean solely a barely winning record (82-79). It was downhill for YEARS after that, where they plummeted out of relevancy in 2019, and then played three of the worst years of baseball in the more than a century long-history of this franchise.

They played at a 100+ loss pace in the shortened 2020 season, lost 101 games in 2021, and 100 in 2022.

To their credit, they did improve by 14 wins last season, reaching a 76-86 record, but they still found themselves far away from a .500 season and much farther away from any serious talks for a playoff spot.

Despite the severe lack of progress and winning, the front office has done little to nothing to change anything. General manager Ben Cherington, in his fifth seasons as the Pirates’ GM has made penny pinching moves to bring in rosters of fringe major leaguers and aging veterans.

In fairness to Cherington, he is working for maybe the stingiest owner in Major League Baseball. I understand that it’s not possible for him to go out and throw cash out left and right. But it does not excuse him from being asleep at the wheel, even as the team began to turn a corner this past year.

Every other NL Central team made major strides to improve their team, while the Pirates tinkered around the edges and called it a winter.

They minimally addressed their starting pitching rotation, which came into the winter featuring only one starter (Mitch Keller) after Johan Oviedo was pronounced out for 2024.

Arguably their biggest free agent signing off the mound was Rowdy Tellez, who has shown promise in the past but is coming off an injury-riddled .215/.291/.376 season.

Whether the brunt of fans’ frustration would come at Cherington or owner Bob Nutting, the Pirates’ refusal to even hear their fans is absurd considering the product they have put out for their fans to watch in recent years.

But it also makes perfect sense for them. The organization is self aware; they know that the things I brought up just now is what a vast majority of fans will would have on their minds if they ever got the chance to actually speak to the team’s front office.

So instead of facing the music that they have written and produced themselves, they will only take the comfortable notes that they can parlay into positive press.

If you’re not willing to actually hear the fans, and here their real thoughts and opinions and questions, then you’re better off not having this as part of the event at all.

I don’t want this to be taken as some anti-PiratesFest article. It is an awesome experience for fans with countless cool opportunities.

It just would be a lot more grand if it offered some real transparency for an unwaveringly loyal fan base.