BRADENTON, Fla. – The heart of the Pirates’ player development has been individualized coaching and a more player-centric approach. Applying that throughout the system can be easier said than done.
During the shutdown in 2020, new minor-league pitching coach Vic Black started to work on a OneDrive database for coaches. The goal was to give them a resource so everyone has better access to what each pitcher is doing at this point in their development.
“But then we realized,” Black, now the minor-league pattern and throwing coordinator, said at Pirate City Monday, “Since most of us our ex-players, or at least a lot of us, that we liked to see video of ourselves doing things. It really helped. But at the time, a lot of that video was kept and we didn't get a lot of access of what we wanted to see.”
The idea evolved into a team video database labeled under “Pitching Correctives” (“maybe [we’ll name it] something a little better if we ever get it thrown into an app,” Black joked) where pitchers and coaches can watch individual mechanics and drills that can be tailored to themselves.
“What we’ve done is try to take a collection of all the pitching coaches and say, ‘hey, what’s the way you address this scenario?’ ” pitching coordinator Josh Hopper said. “What did you do to address this movement deficiency on our pitching assessment. What we’ve done is we’ve stockpiled and made a library where coaches can pull from that.”
Hopper says there are already a couple hundred videos in the database. For example, during a bullpen in spring training, Black or a pitching coach will take video of about five different videos of a pitcher’s delivery. Black’s Samsung phone captures video at over 900 frames per second, which is close to a lower-end Edgertronic camera. After guiding how coaches should shoot video, each player will have organized uniform video to refer to at any time.
“It allows for this constant change and variability, which is something that we want, but it does have to target what we're trying to accomplish,” Black said. “So it gives the coaches an easier pathway as well, and then the players are getting something new every day.”
For someone like Brennan Malone, who has worked on refining his mechanics over the past year to help him stay on the field, Black’s Instagram page and the database became useful tools.
“You’re just staying in bed scrolling through,” Malone said. “You find so much stuff that will help you in real life.”
The Pirates have moved on from the previous development system that was less collaborative and more authoritative. Black was part of that system, joining the team in 2009 as a first-round pick before being traded for Marlon Byrd in 2013, before arm injuries cut his career short. After last appearing in the majors in 2014, he spent years bouncing around different facilities across the country, looking for answers.
What he found as a player, and further established as a coach, is that players can usually tell when something is wrong. They want to be affirmed when something is right and look for ways to improve it. The video database is a way to do that.
Black says that the goal is the first players introduced to this will be “running their own show” within two years.
“We're providing them more of a backseat guidance,” Black said. “They can go out and be like, 'Alright, I know I'm starting to feel this in my delivery because it's the middle of the season, fatigue may be setting in before the All-Star Break, I know what I need to do to get it back' and then they can go grab a water bag or they can go grab a med ball, or they can grab plyo and do something to get them back in that position.”
JOSH LAVALEE / PIRATES
Vic Black.
Here are a couple examples of how it could be applied, starting with the player side. Video is taken of a pitchers’ delivery or workout, followed by an accompanying coach’s assessment. After it is broken down, it is organized by subcategories. What was the players’ landing that day? How were their medicine ball workouts? There, they can see what areas they did well and where can they continue to work.
“People may hear that, and you’re like, ‘ok, that sounds like a circus,’ ” Hopper said. “Yeah, maybe a little bit. What the idea is to have so much variety so that guys can draw from things and find out what works for that guy.”
On the coaching side, it gives pitching coaches more background information on what drills and exercises resonate with pitchers. If the Pirates promote a pitcher to the majors, there’s almost always a ripple effect throughout the system. Some goes from Class AA to AAA, High-A to AA, etc. Rather than only having conversations with fellow coaches and the player to try to see where they are with their development, they can visualize it immediately, and sometimes that fresh set of eyes can help unlock something new.
“Whatever they've been doing, there's not a beat skipped,” Black said. “It's hard to keep that fluency throughout an entire system because you have so many personalities coaching, so many players moving around. That's our main goal. If it really is player-centered, we need to know what they're doing when they come to us. We want to keep that ball rolling if it's going in the right direction. Typically when you're getting promoted, it's going in the right direction."
Black points out that the Pirates coaches, at all levels, welcome input from other levels. If a major-league problem could possibly be solved by a coach in the Dominican Republic, they want to turn to the Dominican Republic. There's also a growing database for position players throwing.
This is a resource to help connect levels better, both for players and coaches. That was the original for Black, after all, and he knows “it has to” do that for the player-centric vision to reach all levels.
