Unrelated to the thread, but post gazette article talked about how hayes has gotten a bunch of help from Nunnally at altoona to help with his swing and his alignment. What would yinz think about him as a haines replacement?
maybe he can be the assistant hitting coach under a new hitting coach. or just added to the mlb staff overall. everyone learns differently, so having different teaching styles could be good for the players
It has been a tough year for the Pirate Minor League Affiliates, but also a year where movement of personnel up to the majors has been higher than I can ever remember. A lot of our prospects were called upon to be regulars in a lineup that continued to change due to injuries, trades, etc., and the lineups in the minors were constantly changing to reflect those needs at the MLB level.
I counted around 10 first time MLB'ers in 2023 and, with 30 games remaining for the Pirates, they are two wins from equaling the 2021 Win total of 61, and 3 short of equaling the 2022 Win total of 62.
Is that supposed to be good news? If they continue at their current pace, they should wind up somewhere around 72-90. That sounds better than the last couple of years, but remember they were 20-9 at the end of April so have been 39-64 since. Remove April from the equation and their winning percentage would result in 61-62 wins for the year.
I’d like to believe they’re better and heading in the right direction, but unfortunately reality doesn’t actually support that. They played one month of good baseball but have been terrible since and have shown very little to suggest they’re improving. Blame injuries, bad management or whatever you want, but this is not a good team.
They continue to insist on playing guys who have zero chance of contributing to a winning team with four on the current active roster (and several more who have been) hitting under .215 and virtually nothing in the high minors (especially outfield and first base) to fall back on. There are some good and improving players on the team, but it also has several automatic outs and multiple gaping holes that will keep sabotaging any progress unless they are filled. Cherington has to sign some quality free agents or make some trades for them, or next year will very likely closely resemble this one or even the two previous ones. What will he do? Stay tuned.
Yes, it is good news. Not happy with the product as yet, but most of the roster is made up of players who will be with this franchise for the foreseeable future, and those players are both young and talented. Nice seeing a first year Catcher being the receiver for a complete game victory one night and a 22 year old MI hitting yet another HR the next night.
Nice to see a lineup being led by Reynolds and Hayes (young veterans) and including Endy Rodriguez at C, Liover Peguero at SS, Ji-Hwan Bae at 2B, and Jack Suwinski in RF. Add Oneil Cruz and Jared Triolo, and a boatload of young pitching we will be seeing soon, and it is definitely reason to look forward to 2024. There are holes, but I'd rather watch the kids - that's what I think is a rebuild, not what we saw in '21 and '22!
"They continue to insist on playing guys who have zero chance of contributing to a winning team with four on the current active roster ."
I really don't get the Palacios situation, but he's really the only one. Look at last night's lineup, it's all rookies and players that will be with the team in the future. I guess you could send down Williams and replace him with Triolo, but they don't want Peguero playing ss... they've played too many 2bmen at ss and it really hurts their defense. They have to play Rivas and Joe at 1b because they have no 1b prospects. I really like Endy, but I think it's really telling that Keller has Delay as his personal catcher. His era with Endy is over 10. He's still raw behind the plate but can mask some of it with pure athleticism. I guess the Palacios situation is stemming from Davis being rushed and crashing and burning at the MLB level, to the point where he was an embarrassment. Out of all the things they've done wrong the past 3-4 years, rushing Davis and playing him in a position where he has virtually no experience playing is the biggest clown show.
It really bothers me with Davis because it’s plain to see that he’s really driven to succeed and this organization has added needless levels of difficulty. I half-expect them to put him on the mound in the spring.
My long story short response is that I'm becoming more and more skeptical of this front office and development crew. I think only way the team is going to succeed, is if the player's skills transcend the staff, and players develop enough from outside facilities. The fact Ro had to go to Driveline mid-season for them to realize there's a problem and seek corrections concerns me. It also leads me to believe more that Keller's progress is mostly attributed to Tread than the Pirates.
They need to send some pitching coaches to grad school, say Wake Forest to "The Pitching Lab".
On the hitting side they need someone from outside the organization, that's capable of adjusting timing mechanics, load, pitch recognition, bat path, length of swing, ect....and approach. They got a lot to work on.
Probably should do an overhaul but that's unlikely.
As sad as it sounds, there's a couple teams worse on the hitting development side. For as good as Miami has been on the pitching side, it's a 180 on the hitting. The Mets were smart grabbing 2 young players that didn't have time to get to A+ and learn to regress in the Marlins system. Kinda fill bad for Alderman going there, dude hit over 375 in the SEC and is struggling, so is the 1st basemen from Mich St. and the list goes on JJ Bleday, Jose Salas even Kahlil Watson and Jacob Berry. Once a hitter gets to A ball they become a shell of their former self.
I remember wanting Bleday. The more the discussions of Pirates poor development I keep thinking of guys I wanted them to draft who haven't panned out. Just shows me I know little and most of these cats seem to fail.
I still think Bleday can be fixed, he's swing use to stay in the zone longer, was slightly shorter to the ball and didn't have the more extreme upper cut. I haven't watched him much with the A's but it looked like someone changed his approach based on a pickup homerun derby on a backfield in A ball with the Marlins lol.
Oh, here's another one. Hayes apparently sought out Joe Nunnally from Altoona (per Mackey's story), and Nunnally would drive to Pittsburgh on Curve off-days.
Yep. It's sad when there are some good coaches in the affiliates but a barron wasteland at the top. There's only a couple that should maybe keep a job.
There is a pretty comical interview with John Baker in the P-G today with him trying to put a positive spin on some individual performances and their player development operation. I hadn’t heard that Ro went outside the organization during his break, but that is really damning if true.
As I’ve written before, if I’m Jack Suwinski I am finding the best hitting instructor I can in the off season and developing my own revamped approach. The Pirates development staff cannot be trusted to take talented players and help them reach their potential. As an offensive player Hank Davis should be Austin Riley v2. Is he going to get there in this organization? Doubtful.
Is it that damning if a guy goes outside the organization? Doesn’t that happen with other organizations as well, given the plethora of information out there? Genuine question here.
Don’t read this as a defense of this organization.l and development. Lord knows nearly everyone has gone backwards, so I’m fine with the lions share of blame going to this group. Baker certainly is good at spin.
And that's the big argument, cause a lot of players do. But it feels like the Pirates are dependent on the outside influence. If something goes awry, oops.
Good point. The old blame someone else unless it goes well. I say just fire all the developmental guys in the organization and let each player "shop around" for what best fits their learning/development style. Dudes will gravitate to whoever has the best approach. I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes but I can't think of many people improving dramatically at hitting a baseball once drafted by the Pirates.
With the absolutely enormous difference in private sector coaching in mind, can anyone really argue this dev team has performed better than the one they replaced?
What coulda been during the 2011-2015 era with this kind of outside influence.
What's blowing my mind (and I think you even mentioned it the other day), they hired an outside firm for this. They may have actually taken a step backwards. Nutting may be cheap, but he actually paid monies to a firm, to find his next GM, only to end up with what is a carbon copy of NH. If even that.
That's just it, Suwinski has been going to RYP hitting in off-seasons. They "changed/fixed" his swing. Is that why he got off to such a hot start? Did he get into a funk that then the Pirates hitting coaches couldn't fix?
Gorman put out an article saying Shelton "had hitting coaches Andy Haines and Christian Marrero do what Suwinski called a “deep dive” of diagnosing his problem areas."
And it's like, he did that, now? Not earlier? Will there be progress in the last month+? It's just the positive examples are getting few and far between, if any at this point. Is Hayes' turnaround because of them? Who knows.
So as luck would have it, Jason Mackey has answered the question re Hayes. Guess who? Jon Nunnally, the Altoona hitting coach, who someone close to Hayes says “10,000%” should be on the major league staff:
I think he's better than Haines. There hasn't been a lot of success stories on players in Altoona but double A is a level that weeds out players that doesn't have the ability to make it in the majors.
Liover seemed to develop under him and is starting to regress under Haines.
Don’t forget they found an issue with Ro’s delivery only about 8 weeks after he started throwing meatballs and losing velocity! Such a quick diagnosis.
Which is reminiscent of the previous regime taking 3/4ths a season to finally tell Gregory Polanco to take a step off the plate when he couldn't handle pitches inside all season.
I get they may not have "all the tools and equipment", but, first question, why not? Second question, why do your coaches still have jobs? I'm at a point of, "Oh, no. We have a whole front office of Elon's. Rich dumb guys, surrounded by yes men".
Nutting hired a firm, to find his next GM, and somehow managed to go backwards. Pirates aren't screwed cause Nutting is cheap, they're screwed cause he's incompetent.
Unrelated to the thread, but post gazette article talked about how hayes has gotten a bunch of help from Nunnally at altoona to help with his swing and his alignment. What would yinz think about him as a haines replacement?
maybe he can be the assistant hitting coach under a new hitting coach. or just added to the mlb staff overall. everyone learns differently, so having different teaching styles could be good for the players
I'd like it better than Haines, still think I would look outside the organization for fresh eye's.
Agreed, like agent00's thought of maybe adding him to the mlb staff and bringing in a new head hitting coach
Bradenton already postponed Tues and Wed games. They’re gonna try DHs on Thurs and Sat.
Looks like rain in Greensboro possible too. Maybe they can roll back one to when I'm there so I get an extra game?
It has been a tough year for the Pirate Minor League Affiliates, but also a year where movement of personnel up to the majors has been higher than I can ever remember. A lot of our prospects were called upon to be regulars in a lineup that continued to change due to injuries, trades, etc., and the lineups in the minors were constantly changing to reflect those needs at the MLB level.
I counted around 10 first time MLB'ers in 2023 and, with 30 games remaining for the Pirates, they are two wins from equaling the 2021 Win total of 61, and 3 short of equaling the 2022 Win total of 62.
Is that supposed to be good news? If they continue at their current pace, they should wind up somewhere around 72-90. That sounds better than the last couple of years, but remember they were 20-9 at the end of April so have been 39-64 since. Remove April from the equation and their winning percentage would result in 61-62 wins for the year.
I’d like to believe they’re better and heading in the right direction, but unfortunately reality doesn’t actually support that. They played one month of good baseball but have been terrible since and have shown very little to suggest they’re improving. Blame injuries, bad management or whatever you want, but this is not a good team.
They continue to insist on playing guys who have zero chance of contributing to a winning team with four on the current active roster (and several more who have been) hitting under .215 and virtually nothing in the high minors (especially outfield and first base) to fall back on. There are some good and improving players on the team, but it also has several automatic outs and multiple gaping holes that will keep sabotaging any progress unless they are filled. Cherington has to sign some quality free agents or make some trades for them, or next year will very likely closely resemble this one or even the two previous ones. What will he do? Stay tuned.
Yes, it is good news. Not happy with the product as yet, but most of the roster is made up of players who will be with this franchise for the foreseeable future, and those players are both young and talented. Nice seeing a first year Catcher being the receiver for a complete game victory one night and a 22 year old MI hitting yet another HR the next night.
Nice to see a lineup being led by Reynolds and Hayes (young veterans) and including Endy Rodriguez at C, Liover Peguero at SS, Ji-Hwan Bae at 2B, and Jack Suwinski in RF. Add Oneil Cruz and Jared Triolo, and a boatload of young pitching we will be seeing soon, and it is definitely reason to look forward to 2024. There are holes, but I'd rather watch the kids - that's what I think is a rebuild, not what we saw in '21 and '22!
"They continue to insist on playing guys who have zero chance of contributing to a winning team with four on the current active roster ."
I really don't get the Palacios situation, but he's really the only one. Look at last night's lineup, it's all rookies and players that will be with the team in the future. I guess you could send down Williams and replace him with Triolo, but they don't want Peguero playing ss... they've played too many 2bmen at ss and it really hurts their defense. They have to play Rivas and Joe at 1b because they have no 1b prospects. I really like Endy, but I think it's really telling that Keller has Delay as his personal catcher. His era with Endy is over 10. He's still raw behind the plate but can mask some of it with pure athleticism. I guess the Palacios situation is stemming from Davis being rushed and crashing and burning at the MLB level, to the point where he was an embarrassment. Out of all the things they've done wrong the past 3-4 years, rushing Davis and playing him in a position where he has virtually no experience playing is the biggest clown show.
It really bothers me with Davis because it’s plain to see that he’s really driven to succeed and this organization has added needless levels of difficulty. I half-expect them to put him on the mound in the spring.
But hey, at least he's earning service time and that's clearly what matters.
My long story short response is that I'm becoming more and more skeptical of this front office and development crew. I think only way the team is going to succeed, is if the player's skills transcend the staff, and players develop enough from outside facilities. The fact Ro had to go to Driveline mid-season for them to realize there's a problem and seek corrections concerns me. It also leads me to believe more that Keller's progress is mostly attributed to Tread than the Pirates.
don't forget, the pirates had a chance to hire a hitting coach from driveline to lead the system. turned it down cuz they 'liked what they had' 😂
Everything strung together paints an ugly picture
They need to send some pitching coaches to grad school, say Wake Forest to "The Pitching Lab".
On the hitting side they need someone from outside the organization, that's capable of adjusting timing mechanics, load, pitch recognition, bat path, length of swing, ect....and approach. They got a lot to work on.
Probably should do an overhaul but that's unlikely.
I vote you. I really wonder if dudes are pissed when the Pirates draft them. Maybe not big bonus ones but the others. I would be.
As sad as it sounds, there's a couple teams worse on the hitting development side. For as good as Miami has been on the pitching side, it's a 180 on the hitting. The Mets were smart grabbing 2 young players that didn't have time to get to A+ and learn to regress in the Marlins system. Kinda fill bad for Alderman going there, dude hit over 375 in the SEC and is struggling, so is the 1st basemen from Mich St. and the list goes on JJ Bleday, Jose Salas even Kahlil Watson and Jacob Berry. Once a hitter gets to A ball they become a shell of their former self.
I remember wanting Bleday. The more the discussions of Pirates poor development I keep thinking of guys I wanted them to draft who haven't panned out. Just shows me I know little and most of these cats seem to fail.
I still think Bleday can be fixed, he's swing use to stay in the zone longer, was slightly shorter to the ball and didn't have the more extreme upper cut. I haven't watched him much with the A's but it looked like someone changed his approach based on a pickup homerun derby on a backfield in A ball with the Marlins lol.
Oh, here's another one. Hayes apparently sought out Joe Nunnally from Altoona (per Mackey's story), and Nunnally would drive to Pittsburgh on Curve off-days.
I'm sorry, but, this entire staff needs to go.
Yep. It's sad when there are some good coaches in the affiliates but a barron wasteland at the top. There's only a couple that should maybe keep a job.
There is a pretty comical interview with John Baker in the P-G today with him trying to put a positive spin on some individual performances and their player development operation. I hadn’t heard that Ro went outside the organization during his break, but that is really damning if true.
As I’ve written before, if I’m Jack Suwinski I am finding the best hitting instructor I can in the off season and developing my own revamped approach. The Pirates development staff cannot be trusted to take talented players and help them reach their potential. As an offensive player Hank Davis should be Austin Riley v2. Is he going to get there in this organization? Doubtful.
Is it that damning if a guy goes outside the organization? Doesn’t that happen with other organizations as well, given the plethora of information out there? Genuine question here.
Don’t read this as a defense of this organization.l and development. Lord knows nearly everyone has gone backwards, so I’m fine with the lions share of blame going to this group. Baker certainly is good at spin.
And that's the big argument, cause a lot of players do. But it feels like the Pirates are dependent on the outside influence. If something goes awry, oops.
Good point. The old blame someone else unless it goes well. I say just fire all the developmental guys in the organization and let each player "shop around" for what best fits their learning/development style. Dudes will gravitate to whoever has the best approach. I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes but I can't think of many people improving dramatically at hitting a baseball once drafted by the Pirates.
With the absolutely enormous difference in private sector coaching in mind, can anyone really argue this dev team has performed better than the one they replaced?
What coulda been during the 2011-2015 era with this kind of outside influence.
What's blowing my mind (and I think you even mentioned it the other day), they hired an outside firm for this. They may have actually taken a step backwards. Nutting may be cheap, but he actually paid monies to a firm, to find his next GM, only to end up with what is a carbon copy of NH. If even that.
That's just it, Suwinski has been going to RYP hitting in off-seasons. They "changed/fixed" his swing. Is that why he got off to such a hot start? Did he get into a funk that then the Pirates hitting coaches couldn't fix?
Gorman put out an article saying Shelton "had hitting coaches Andy Haines and Christian Marrero do what Suwinski called a “deep dive” of diagnosing his problem areas."
And it's like, he did that, now? Not earlier? Will there be progress in the last month+? It's just the positive examples are getting few and far between, if any at this point. Is Hayes' turnaround because of them? Who knows.
So as luck would have it, Jason Mackey has answered the question re Hayes. Guess who? Jon Nunnally, the Altoona hitting coach, who someone close to Hayes says “10,000%” should be on the major league staff:
https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/pirates/2023/08/29/pirates-ke-bryan-hayes-jon-nunnally-help-surprising-place-august-resurgence/stories/202308290095
I think he's better than Haines. There hasn't been a lot of success stories on players in Altoona but double A is a level that weeds out players that doesn't have the ability to make it in the majors.
Liover seemed to develop under him and is starting to regress under Haines.
Yeah, I just mentioned that above lol cause I had just seen it myself. This is bad
Don’t forget they found an issue with Ro’s delivery only about 8 weeks after he started throwing meatballs and losing velocity! Such a quick diagnosis.
Which is reminiscent of the previous regime taking 3/4ths a season to finally tell Gregory Polanco to take a step off the plate when he couldn't handle pitches inside all season.
Wonder how much it would take to just hire Tread to exclusively work with the pitchers in the system lol.
Oh wait i mustve missed that Ro went to driveline? Sounds like they need to either poach some coaching/development staff from one of these places
I did too, till Ethan pointed out to me that Alex Stumpf specifically mentioned it back in early July
The Pirates tried to keep it quiet.
I get they may not have "all the tools and equipment", but, first question, why not? Second question, why do your coaches still have jobs? I'm at a point of, "Oh, no. We have a whole front office of Elon's. Rich dumb guys, surrounded by yes men".
Nutting hired a firm, to find his next GM, and somehow managed to go backwards. Pirates aren't screwed cause Nutting is cheap, they're screwed cause he's incompetent.
They have way too many tools.
And, yeah, the real issue with Nutboy is that he’s just a terrible businessboob.
And cheap.