PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Pirates manager Derek Shelton announced during the Cook and Joe Show on 93.7 The Fan on Tuesday that hitting coach Andy Haines will be back next season. To the critics of that decision, Shelton said succinctly.
“Being a hitting coach is really hard,” Shelton explained. “Being critical of a hitting coach is really easy.”
Shelton would know as a former hitting coach himself. He said it’s a place where a lot of people go as a reason for a poor season. The Bucs manager defended Haines saying he thinks there are a lot of things they’ve done and he’s helped a lot of young players get better.
GM Ben Cherington explained, even though they are bottom third in the league in a number of categories, they’ve only had a handful of position players who have been with the team the entire season. He said those guys-Andrew McCutchen, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Bryan Reynolds, Connor Joe, have either performed close or above expectations and they have improved as the season has continues, which is a credit to the hitting coach.
“If you look at it on a team level, all of the categories that I think we’d all mostly look at from a team-performance standpoint, things that are visible to all of us, have all improved year-over-year,” Cherington said. “We’re on track to score more runs. We’re getting on base more. Our slug is higher. Our walks have improved. Our strikeouts have come down. In those categories, we’ve shown improvement year-to-year on a team basis.”
“There’s also other stuff under the hood that is less visible that we track, that we see improvement on, too. Swing decisions. Quality of contact, etc. On a team basis, we’ve made improvement, we think, across the board.”
The Bucs GM noted they’ve had a ton of young players this season. Nearly 30 players have had multiple at bats at the MLB level this year. Cherington notes young position players are not always going to track on a straight line. There have been highs and lows, but Cherington gives merit to the relationships that are being formed between the young players and Haines.
Related
“What’s the culture in the cage?” Cherington said. “What are the things we’re exploring? Andy, like many others on this staff, we believe is constantly looking for ways to get better, constantly pouring into relationships with players, constantly open to new ideas. That’s the criteria we’d be looking for with any coach. You marry all that together, and we just feel like we’re very confident in what he’s doing, as we are with lots of other members of the staff.”
Shelton said what he really appreciates about Haines is his positivity.
“And that's hard, man,” Shelton said. “It's a grind because you can be working on something and you hit three balls hard and get no hits. Or you just miss-hit two balls and they go straight in the air and everything that you worked on is right, but you don't get the results. Or you hit two balls right where they're standing and if they're a foot one way or another, then they're hits and everybody's happy.”
Related
“It's a really challenging thing and that's why being positive is something that's really important. Again, know that first-hand and that's hard to do at times, but that's the key to it.”
Unlike a pitching coach who can have a starter go eight innings and a closer finish it, even on the best nights, someone in the lineup will likely struggle.
“When you're a hitting coach and you go home, you don't worry about the guys that had great nights,” Shelton said, a hitting coach from 2003-16. “You don't worry about the guy that went 2 for 4 and had a double and a homer. Even when you win, you worry about the guy that went 0 for 3 because the next day, that's the guy you're gonna have to deal with. That's why I got a lot of gray hair, number one. Number two, that's why being a hitting coach is very challenging and being critical of a hitting coach is very easy. You can always go to the one person that didn't have a good night that night when there are a lot of positives that happened.”
It wasn’t a high bar set last year, but the Pirates are ahead of last season in several categories
· Batting average 14 points higher
· OBP 22 points higher
· OPS 47 points higher
· With 24 games left-have scored 10 fewer runs, 22 more doubles, one more RBI, 7 more walks, 283 fewer strikeouts, 23 fewer home runs
· The runs per game (4.21) are the highest in the last four seasons
You can point to improvement in most numbers in year two under Haines and there will be year three. And Pirates management believes it’s not all his fault when it goes sideways.
“We gotta get better,” Cherington said. “We’re not satisfied with where we are. It starts with me. This is a team effort. We all have a part in it.”