During Ben Cherington’s introduction as general manager last November, he laid out the four pillars for making the Pirates a successful ball club: Identification of talented players, acquisition of players, player development and how they are used and deployed.
In his first year as GM, the Pirates showed improvement in three of those pillars. Identification and acquisition? Baseball America ranked their draft as one of the best and their international free agent class was one of the largest. Check and check. Deployment? While the major-league offense had problems, the pitching generally improved, mostly due to coaching focusing on more individualized approach that focused on their strengths. Check.
Player development? That’s been trickier.
The minor league season was cancelled this year due to the pandemic, meaning that with the exception of a few weeks during spring training in February and March, players in the farm system have mostly been away from formal, in-person instruction for almost all of 2020. There was an alternate training site of players in Altoona, Pa., creating a pool of players the Pirates could pull from, but it was a pool of just 60 active players, 28-30 of which were in the majors. There were some opportunities there, but not many.
That’s why the instructional development camp in the team’s Bradenton, Fla. facilities has been important. For most of the regular season, Cherington hoped the Pirates would be able to have some sort of in-person group instruction, but there was no guarantee. Now they are getting that chance.
“We do think there’s real improvement happening here, first and foremost, and I think the staff has done a really good job partnering with the players that are here,” Cherington told me Saturday. “Even before the camp started, to assess and identify a priority, an area to improve on during camp. I think they’ve done a good job partnering to design practice and drills to move towards that. I think there’s skill improvement happening. Important skill improvement happening.”
The group in Bradenton is larger than the Pirates usually have in an October camp, totaling 55 players. All of them received instruction over the past months virtually, both by sending video to positional coaches and holding group Zoom calls with mental skills coaches, and Cherington said he believes some players were able to still get better this year despite the obstacles.
But virtual coaching can only go so far.
“We can talk about that [how we can help players] a lot on zooms,” Cherington said. “We can draw up what the framework looks like on paper, but there’s something about doing it live and getting the reps.”
So these prospects are getting some in-person instruction at the end of 2020. What happens to them in 2021?
To paint with a broad stroke, for a normal player’s progression through the minors, if they spent most of 2019 in Bradenton, they would probably be promoted to class AA Altoona for the start of 2020. If that happened, they could start the 2021 season in class AAA.
At the moment, 2020 still counts as a full year when calculating when a player needs to be added to the 40-man roster or promoted to the majors. Even if Major League Baseball doesn’t count this year for minor leaguers, players still got a year older.
As a result, it looks like there is a good chance some players may skip levels in 2021.
“The simple, basic answer is it’s going to have to be case by case,” Cherington said. “I don’t think we can draw a straight line between this year and next year’s placement. I think it will be, as it always is, some combination of factors, but I would emphasize that players certainly had the capability to get better this year, and we believe that some actually did.
“We don’t just need to assume that if you were on track to go to [Class A] Greensboro this year that you’re necessarily going back to Greensboro next year. It certainly could work out that way for some, but I think we will just continue to see where players are as we get closer to spring training and in spring training.”
To speculate on two players who could potentially make a leap, infielders Nick Gonzales and Liover Peguero are both in development camp and spent the regular season at the alternate training site in Altoona, Pa. They received about the same amount of days of in-person coaching as they would in a normal season at this stage of their careers, but as Cherington noted, they haven’t been in as many game situations.
Many of the decisions of which class players will be assigned won’t be made until spring training 2021. First, they want to finish camp and have exit interviews with players -- which will consist of them talking to a skill coach, an athlete or mental skills coach and a team analyst -- and see who continued to improve during the offseason.
But it will be impossible to know for sure how much a player improved until they get back into game situations. Until they have to adjust as an opposing batter or pitcher does. Until they hear fans cheering in high leverage moments again.
“I really hope they get that chance next year,” Cherington said.
