PITTSBURGH (93.7 the Fan) – The Pirates announced today they are temporarily stopping payments to mostly senior staffers 401-K contributions and there are also voluntary pay cuts to try and save money.
"In baseball, and also with the Pirates, it's turned our business upside down," said general manager Ben Cherington about the effect of the shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. "Revenues aren't coming in and cash is still going out. Big focus of ours in recent weeks is to try and figure out how to solve for that problem."
Cherington said when they met, they tried to figure out a way to minimize the impact on the club's employees.
"How can we find savings, because we need to find savings, how can we do that in a way to minimize the effect on people's families and our core activities," Cherington said Tuesday. "There are a whole number of levers that potentially an organization can pull, every organization in baseball, I would say, is mostly looking at some combination of the same things."
The Pirates GM added if they don't find those savings now, it will affect the team in the future.
"We need to find savings in 2020, so that we avoid placing too much long pressure on the business and potentially impacting short or long term goals."
Cherington said they have the full expectation that contributions will go back into effect soon and employees will be back to full pay. The team is also eliminating all fellowship and internship programs for this year.
