After leaving most of the front office in place initially, the Pirates significantly shook up their baseball operations department in 2020 as Ben Cherington prepares for his second season with the club.
In that shakeup, the two most significant hirings have been John Baker as the director of coaching and player development, a new take on the traditional farm director role, and last week’s announcement of Josh Hopper as pitching development coordinator.
Hopper is joining an organization with a talented group of pitching prospects – which includes 2019 and 2020 first-round picks Quinn Priester, Brennan Malone and Carmen Mlodzinski – and a bad track record. For years, many of the Pirates’ top pitching prospects have either struggled in the majors or did their best work away from the organization. Gerrit Cole, Tyler Glasnow, you know the list. It’s why the team parted ways with senior pitching coordinator Scott Mitchell and assistant pitching coordinator Tom Filer after the two had held coordinator positions with the Pirates for the better part of a decade.
So what did the ideal coordinator replacement look like?
“We (were) really looking for someone who is able to think about the entire pitching development continuum,” Cherington said recently. “Not looking to go after someone who just is an expert in pitch design or just is an expert in game planning or just is an expert in delivery or just is an expert in throwing program, etc., but someone who has really thought about all those pieces and can help us think about all those pieces. From what a 16-year-old at our academy should be doing to move better and throwing skill and develop [a] throwing program, on up to what Cody Bolton should be doing to command his two-seamer better and everything in between.”
That search brought them to Hopper, who is making the jump from the collegiate ranks to the professional level. Hopper had spent the past three years as the pitching coach for Dallas Baptist University (DBU) and the nine years prior with the University of Alabama-Birmingham in the same role.
DBU manager Dan Heefner is sad to see Hopper go, but feels he is entering a role for which he is uniquely qualified.
“I think the best thing, especially for the position he’s in, he’s very diverse,” Heefner said. “He's pretty all-encompassing from the pitching development side of it. He’s gonna be able to talk to everybody within the organization.
“It’s a perfect fit for him because he has knowledge in all of those areas, and experience.”
Heefner isn’t exaggerating when he says Hopper can talk to everybody. Hopper pitched two years in the Mets’ farm system. He has a masters in biomechanics. He is a certified trainer and strength and conditioning coach. He uses Rapsodo, Trackman and Edgertronic cameras to make sure his pitchers had an analytical edge. As Heefner put it, some pitching coaches or coordinators will give a trainer complete control of an injured player's rehab because they don't have any insight in the area. Hopper can help in the drafting of a rehab schedule and a conditioning program to help prevent a similar injury.
It was all those different insights that helped guide DBU’s pitching staff to 43 wins and being one of nine schools in the country to reach 600 strikeouts in 2019.
“What I’ve found with pitching, is it’s not one thing to help a guy reach his full potential,” Heefner said. “There’s not a silver bullet to it. It’s usually all things work together, and I think that’s what Josh’s strength is. Looking at the entire pitcher, the entire person. If you help a little bit in every area, that’s how they start to make big jumps.”
Since Cherington and manager Derek Shelton were hired, they have talked at great lengths about building a player-centric culture that encourages player input. That collaboration leads to more individualized instruction focusing on maximizing a pitcher's strengths, rather than trying to make players fit a specific mold.
When Heefner explained what made DBU’s pitchers click under Hopper, it sounded remarkably similar to what the Pirates’ leadership has been looking for from their new hires.
“He does a good job giving guys ownership of what they want to do, not just tell them,” Heefner said. “Explaining here’s what we need to do, here’s why, and then giving them some buy-in into it.”
Shelton does not know Hopper that well yet, but mentioned while he was the Twins’ bench coach, their pitching coach was Wes Johnson, who jumped straight from collegiate pitching coach to Major League pitching coach. The Twins’ pitching staff quickly turned around under his tutelage, going from routinely sub-par results to finishing fourth in team ERA (3.58) and second in WAR (9.9) in 2020.
As coincidence would have it, Johnson was the DBU pitching coach a few years before Hopper took over the same position.
“Everything I’ve heard about Hop is he’s really smart, really forward thinking,” Shelton said. “I think he’s going to make our pitching better… I think our development system is in a really good spot, and I’m really excited about the group of coaches and the players that are going to come through it.”
Johnson was a significant hire for the league, establishing that college coaches can take high-level positions within the professional ranks. Hopper is a product of that.
Heefner subscribes to the “pitching is pitching” mindset. It doesn’t matter that he is coming from the college ranks, he believes Hopper is the right fit.
“From the pro side, there’s a lot of data and information to validate the type of person this coach is,” Heefner said. “He’s going to contribute and make an impact in a professional organization.”
MORE PIRATES
• He wasn’t selected by another team during last week’s Rule 5 draft, but Pirates' prospect Travis MacGregor did draw some interest around the league, to the point that one source said they were “surprised” nobody picked him up. MacGregor missed all of 2019 recovering from Tommy John surgery and wasn’t invited to the Pirates’ satellite camp in Altoona, Pa., so teams were hesitant to take someone who had not pitched above Class A. Still, the 23-year-old has a good pedigree, having been taken in the second round in the 2016 draft, and a mid-90s fastball with reliable secondary stuff. Baseball America currently ranks the right-hander as the Pirates’ 17th best prospect. Assuming he comes back from his surgery strong -- word is he will -- he projects as a back-of-the-rotation starter or a potential bullpen piece. -- Stumpf
• News came out towards the end of the virtual winter meetings that Jack Hartman, the Pirates’ 4th-round draft pick this year, underwent Tommy John surgery, but that surgery had taken place well before then. I wasn’t given a date for his procedure, but Hartman was ramping up to go to Pirate City for development camp, which took place in October, when he first felt something was wrong. He did not have any issues when the Pirates drafted him in June. He still went to Pirates City in October, but he had already had the surgery by then. A pitcher’s first Tommy John surgery usually takes between 14-16 months from which to recover and rehab, so it seems very unlikely he will appear in a minor-league game in 2021. Hartman has a mid-90s fastball and high spin breaking pitches, and he profiles as a potential late-inning reliever. -- Stumpf
STEELERS
• The NFL and NFLPA have done an about face on playoff bubbles this week, with the league now saying that it doesn't recommend they be done, but if individual players want to do them, that's fine. That's quite the cop out. The league decided it didn't want playoff bubbles after floating the idea to the NFLPA and getting shot down. The NFLPA wanted some concessions if it was going to agree to playoff bubbles, such as allowing players to stay at their homes during training camp and doing more of the offseason program virtually. That was really a non-starter for a number of teams, most notably the Steelers, who are one of the dwindling handful of teams who still hold their training camp at an off-site facility, in this case Saint Vincent College. At least those were the excuses given. There is always give and take when it comes to negotiations. But this one feels like it came down to simple cash. Many teams aren't necessarily losing money this season, but they're not making it like they are accustomed to, either, with no fans in stadiums across much of the country. Adding a major expense such as putting the entire team and support staff up in a hotel for several weeks would have just been another that just wasn't palatable to some teams. So the league will roll the dice and hope no playoff games are affected by a COVID-19 outbreak. -- Dale Lolley on the South Side
• The Steelers sent out an email to season ticket holders earlier this week telling them it does anticipate some seats being made available for the upcoming playoffs. Obviously, the Steelers need a loss by the Browns Sunday or a win against the Bengals Monday night to clinch at least one home game in the postseason, so it's kind of a big deal. What remains to be seen now, however, is if Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf's administration will permit fans in the stadium for any playoff games. The postseason begins Jan. 9, so there's not a lot of time between now and then. And the state's current stay-at-home closures expire Jan. 4. It was interesting to watch a game played less than three hours away from Pittsburgh Monday night in Cleveland that had 11,974 people in attendance. The crowd, though small, was into that game and the Browns clearly benefitted from it. It's looking more likely that the Steelers will be the only Pennsylvania team hosting a playoff game this season. Putting 12,000 people in a 60,000-plus-seat outdoor stadium is not a "super-spreader event." -- Lolley
• If they were asked once, the Steelers players and coaches were asked 100 times this week about "more padded practices." That was in response to Mike Tomlin saying the team hadn't been physical enough in its loss to the Bills. Here's the thing. The Steelers did practice in pads last Friday. And sure, Tomlin will put them in pads at least once this week. I'm not sure if that happened Thursday because practice was indoors, which means it was closed per new NFL rules. But simply practicing in pads doesn't bring physicality. There is no tackling in practices once the season starts anywhere around the league, nor has there been in the 28 years I've covered the NFL. Also, per the CBA, teams are only permitted to have three padded practices over the final six weeks of the regular season. Tomlin's message to his team was meant to push mental buttons, not physical ones. He was essentially challenging their manhood. They did get pushed around by the Bills, particularly in the second half. He wants to see this team respond to that, not see how they hit each other in practice. -- Lolley
PENGUINS
• Mike Vellucci has a pretty impressive coaching resume, including championships with the Plymouth Whalers of the Ontario Hockey League and Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League. He also was a pretty fair player, with a career that spanned the better part of a decade. Still, he dressed for only two NHL games during his playing days -- both with Hartford in the 1987-88 season -- and is on an NHL coaching staff for the first time. That means he might have to establish credibility with at least some of the players with whom he'll be working as one of Mike Sullivan's assistants, a challenge Vellucci seems ready to embrace. And he believes he has a proven plan to make it happen. "I'm just going to be myself, and that's always always taken care of itself," he said. "I'm going to be honest with them, no matter who it is. If they ask me what I think of their game or where they can improve, I'm going to be honest with them. That's all players look for, honesty and truth. ... I'm going to have to prove myself by (a command of) the details. I know exactly the way (Sullivan) wants us to play. I know every detail about it. When (players) ask questions, I'll have the answer ready for them. I think I'll earn my credibility that way." -- Dave Molinari
• Projections about who teams will lose in the expansion draft that will supply to players to the new team in Seattle in 2021, like the one colleague Taylor Haase wrote a few days ago, are generally interesting and entertaining, but it's a little too early to be taking such speculation all that seriously. There might well be dozens of trades between now and the time that Kraken general manager Ron Francis makes his selections, which means that a player who might figure to be protected -- or exposed -- one day could have his status change when he goes to his new club. And it isn't necessarily true that teams will lose the most talented and/or promising player that they leave unprotected. Seattle will be obliged to have at least 14 forwards, nine defensemen and three goalies among its 30 choices, so it's conceivable that Francis will end up choosing, say, a third goaltender from a particular team to satisfy the rules, even though that club might have exposed a winger with the potential to be more of a contributor. -- Molinari
• Sullivan and his staff had a series of in-person meetings during the first week of this month, but that's the only time the group has actually been together since Vellucci and fellow assistant Todd Reirden were hired. Those sessions were intended to discuss strategies and responsibilities, and to give Vellucci and Reirden a chance to get acquainted with their new co-workers. "It was a lot of fun," Vellucci said. "It was good to meet everybody in person. It was good to get together and talk hockey again." That should happen again soon, if plans to conduct training camps in early January are made official. It also will give the coaches another chance to assess -- or develop -- chemistry within the staff, something Vellucci said the group seems to have. "There's no magic formula to figure out (if it's there), but I can tell you this: I felt very comfortable from Day 1," he said. "One of the reasons I was interested in the job was because of (Sullivan) and how inclusive he is with everyone." Having coaches' personalities mesh isn't mandatory, he added, but it is a plus, which dovetails with a point he made in a conversation with his 23-year-old daughter. "We were talking about when she's going to work, and I said, 'You're not going to be best friends with everybody at work, but you have to respect them and work with them.' HaveI been on staffs where guys have not been best friends? Yes. Does it work better when everybody is best friends and gets along and works? Yes, for sure." -- Molinari