10-1-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter
It’s just day 2 of the offseason, so we may not be looking at the complete picture here, but the Pirates moved on from Hitting Coach and Coordinator Andy Haines, Bullpen Coach Justin Meccage, and Conditioning Coach Adam Vish and to just about nobody’s surprise, Pirates fans are dissatisfied.
I think its fair to say most wanted to see at least one of Ben Cherington or Derek Shelton, but again, it was always going to be met with MORE!
I’m not here to tell you you’re wrong if you feel that way, but I’d hope at the very least most people would be honest here. We (fans) are trying to punish the organization for another decade of losing, almost more than what this regime has gotten done and the real target is Bob Nutting, you just know he wasn’t plausible as far as getting got goes.
I’ve made clear my feelings that the entire coaching staff needed replaced. I felt Derek Shelton was a traditional starter coach, meaning the team knew they were in for losing for a while when they hired him and in my mind, 2024 was his opportunity to show he could take what was probably too green a batch of kids and the rest of what they already had to push the team over the .500 hump.
Clearly the Pirates had no such expectation, or maybe more accurately, the Pirates weren’t prepared to put repercussions on it.
Let’s talk a little about each departing member. What they did, what they didn’t do well, and what replacing them is expected to fix and then we’ll circle back to some guys they chose at least so far to retain.
Adam Vish
Adam was the Minor League strength and conditioning coach for the Giants for the better part of a decade before joining the Pirates in 2020.
Anyone who’s blogging and pretends to know why this University of Pitt Alum was let go is probably lying. This is an area even actual experts don’t truly understand.
That said, I do believe the Pirates have had some issues in this department and I’d gather from this firing that at the very least the Bucs didn’t feel Adam was helping enough with.
The Ke’Bryan Hayes back pain drama has gone on for a couple years now and while it appears the club and Hayes have finally found some consultation they both believe in heading into the offseason, one has to ask what their internal staff tried, or if they just didn’t try enough and that’s the change they’re looking for.
Vish didn’t create Hayes’ issues, but he certainly didn’t help keep him on the field either, and much of the same could be said for Henry Davis, who spent all offseason bulking up only to find he showed up for Pitchers and Catchers on just about zero rest from the previous campaign.
Again, I’m grasping at straws, this is one of those positions that no fan really has business pretending they have opinions on.
Justin Meccage
This one caught me off guard if only because Justin is one of the few coaches who survived the regime change form Huntington to Cherington. He’s been with the club in some capacity since 2011, usually as a pitching coach at one of the MiLB affiliates and transitioned from there into the Pirates Minor League Pitching Coordinator in 2017.
In 2018 he was promoted to assistant pitching coach under Ray Searage and then when Cherington arrived he was retained but moved to the role as Pirates bullpen coach right before the 2020 season.
During a season, a bullpen coach is typically the coach that works with the bullpen arms pre- and post game as it comes to analytics and normally they observe and oversee their warm ups so they can offer advice or notice mechanical issues.
That’s not to say Oscar Marin isn’t ultimately responsible or that he doesn’t personally work with relievers, it just means that physically speaking, relievers probably talk to and work with Justin a lot more than Oscar.
I have no problem with this move, I’ve long believed that for whatever reason the Pirates relievers always seemed to need an at bat or two before they really started getting their stuff together. Could a solution really be this simple? Probably not, but moving on from Justin and not Oscar is a sure fire sign he’ll be the scapegoat for the pitching woes.
Andy Haines
The most well known by far, Andy Haines in my mind should have lost his job at least a year ago and further, his performance at his last stop in Milwaukee probably should have helped the Pirates avoid the entire episode.
He’s overseen a bottom 5 offense every year he’s been here and while that certainly isn’t all his fault, there seems to be an almost artificial ceiling on everyone he coaches.
More than anything, he never helped get guys turned around quickly enough. It doesn’t matter if guys got help from outside, he had to allow that and work with those entities and as far as I’ve heard from anyone who matters, he always was more than happy to do so.
Thing is, when something wasn’t working, it was just not going to work for however long because there were no answers coming aside from maybe trying a toe tap for timing or changing hand position. What was never addressed was his overarching ethos that didn’t take into account different players need different approaches to be successful.
There’s nothing wrong with his philosophy and that’s a good thing because Ben Cherington believes in it and will likely bring in another coach who feels the same thing. In fact, I’d bet 90% of his “approach” is replicated in the locker room of 25-29 other teams. The problem has always been primarily that there was no adjustment with anyone until such a time as they desperately asked for it, or he was approving an outside entity’s suggestions.
I could have copied and pasted this from my pitch to have him fired last year or the year before.
I’ve heard this called a scapegoat or sacrificial lamb, and honestly, I don’t care what you call it, I’m just glad he’s gone.
Everyone Else
I wouldn’t be shocked to hear some other changes coming. Tarik Brock has been a pretty poor fielding instructor in my mind for instance. That said, it hardly warrants deep discussion. What would I do, break down how good a 3B coach is at sending guys? C’mon, even I think that’s too granular.
You want to know why Shelton, Cherington and Marin keep their jobs I’d wager.
All I can say is one choice probably saved them all. Bob kept Cherington, Cherington kept his main coaches, and if my sources are to be believed, Derek Shelton was essentially given a lose him or lose yourself ultimatum.
It’s also my understanding even if Shelton was ultimately moved on from, Cherington likely would have wanted to retain Oscar Marin.
Ben Cherington
This has just about always been at least partially about how long everyone involved knew it was going to take to do it the way they intended to do it. If you believe they planned on 2024 as a locked in playoff year back when Cherington was hired, well, I wish you would have read or listened, because we’ve kinda been hammering the timeline all along and 2024 under this ownership was a pipe dream.
That doesn’t mean you have to believe Cherington is the right guy any more than you have to believe ANYONE could win under this ownership, but to me it was always hard to believe he’d be removed after this year.
I kinda look at it this way.
It takes about 10 hours to drive from Pittsburgh to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Just about regardless of when you start unless you’re a numbnuts and hit the Beltway around rush hour.
If I make a lunch meeting in Outer Banks and leave 15 hours before I’m supposed to meet up, then run into construction, and my boss calls me half way through and tells me some roads I planned to use are off the table for me because he doesn’t want to pay for the tolls and if my tire blows I have to make the rest of the trip on a donut regardless, I’d like to think my friend probably understands why I’m late.
GMs get no such understanding.
What they tend to get instead? Is an ability to blame the people they hired to work under them first, and if they choose to not cut deep enough to ensure they’ve removed all the disease, it’s on them.
They either get it turned around quickly or they become the blamed.
The threshold for fans is never as high as it is for ownership, let alone one who probably knows he makes this one of the hardest jobs in sports.
We’re two days in. None of these moves have even been officially announced, so clearly it’s possible they aren’t done here, I just find it incredibly hard to believe they’d wait to make a move with the GM as Bob was rather vocal he waited to long into the offseason to remove Huntington.
Steel City Pirates 