The Pirates announced Monday morning that hitting coach Rick Eckstein has been relieved of his duties as major league hitting coach.
Derek Shelton said he and Ben Cherington made the decision on a new organizational hitting program this weekend, which would require new leadership. Since they made the decision now, they decided it would be best not to have Eckstein serve as a lame duck for the final month of the season.
Shelton said it was ultimately his decision to part ways with Eckstein.
"This decision was based off the leadership moving forward and the direction we want our hitting group to go in, not only at the major league level, but organizationally," Shelton said during a Zoom call Monday afternoon. "That was the reason why. To say it was specific hitter-based or group-based, it was more about how we want to move forward with our hitting program and finding a different leader to do that."
The search for a new coach to lead that hitting program will begin this offseason.
"We have general ideas of how we want this to look," Shelton said. "I think that will be down to specific candidates and what their skill sets are. But we definitely want to get better about practice design, about learning, about learning, approach-based is going to be a big part of that. It’s going to be a full, encompassing job, as the hitting coach job is. And it’s a very challenging and difficult job. I can tell you that from personal experience. But that’s going to be a part of it. I think as we go further in this and continue to talk about specific candidates in the offseason we’ll have a better idea."
The club will not have a formal interim hitting coach to take his place this season. Assistant hitting coach Christian Marrero remains with the organization. Analyst Tim McKetiahn, major league field coordinator (and 2020 assistant hitting coach) Mike Rabelo and bench coach Don Kelly will assist in hitting coach duties over the final month of the season as well.
"We're gonna do it collectively as a hitting group moving forward for the last month," Shelton said.
Eckstein joined the Pirates' coaching staff in 2019 under previous manager Clint Hurdle's tenure with the club. He was one of three holdovers from that coaching staff when Shelton took over as manager, along with third base coach Joey Cora and bullpen coach Justin Meccage.
Before joining the Pirates, Eckstein had served as the Nationals hitting coach, an assistant hitting coach and scout with the Angels and a minor-league hitting coordinator with the Twins, which he held from 2017-2018 before joining the Pirates.
While Eckstein's first year with the Pirates yielded good results -- highlighted by Josh Bell breaking out into an All-Star and the spectacular rookie seasons of Bryan Reynolds and Kevin Newman -- the offense has struggled mightily the last two seasons. That included all three of those breakout cases having horrible follow up seasons in the abbreviated 2020 season.
While it was a shortened 60-game season, that 2020 Pirates team had an OPS+ -- which compares offensive output and compares it to the rest of the league -- of 73. That was the franchise's worst offensive output since they joined the National League in 1882.
Shelton and Cherington opted to make no formal changes to the coaching staff after last season though, not wanting to overhaul the group for the second year in a row. The only changes were the addition of Marrero and making former assistant coach Rabelo the major league field coordinator.
This season, the Pirates rank last in baseball in runs (470), home runs (101), slugging percentage (.362), OPS (.665), OPS+ (80), average exit velocity (87.5 mph) and batting average with runners in scoring position (.213). Historically, it is set to be one of the weakest offenses in franchise history.
Those results were secondary to wanting to change the direction of an offense that, even before Eckstein joined, consistently ranked in the bottom-half of the league.
“I appreciate Rick’s tireless work ethic and his passion for our players,” Shelton said. “Despite the challenging season, Rick always put in the effort to connect and help our players. He is a great person who we will all be rooting for in his next opportunity.”
“We are grateful for Rick’s dedication to the team and our players,” Cherington said in the club's press release Monday morning. “This was a difficult decision as we have a great deal of respect for Rick. Making the decision now gives us the opportunity to use the rest of the season to focus on improvements in our hitting program while also starting the process of looking for a replacement. We wish Rick all the best moving forward.”
