Derek Shelton needs no reminder that Pirates aren't playing, only a look at his phone

Derek Shelton doesn’t need a reminder that he’s missing his first season as a major-league manager.

He gets one every day.

The Pittsburgh Pirates first-year manager still has the regular-season schedule set up on his phone, so he receives daily notifications of what he’s missing because of the coronavirus.

“How often do I think about it? I think about it every day,” Shelton said Tuesday on a conference call with reporters. “I get a reminder at 7 o’clock — or this past week, when we were supposed to be on the West Coast — what time the games were starting.”

So, Shelton is well aware that the Pirates would have played 23 games and counting, following a nine-game road trip starting April 10 in Baltimore and a swing to Arizona and Los Angeles with a six-game homestand against the Milwaukee Brewers and Dodgers.

And he can’t help discussing with bench coach Don Kelly what they might have done in game situations, instead of Shelton being quarantined with his family in Florida. Shelton said some other members of his coaching staff are conducting video-game simulations. They are all thinking about baseball strategy.

“Do I replay it in my head differently? Yeah, I think so,” Shelton said. “Every day I think about something different. I have conversations with guys on my staff about specific things. … A lot of conversations about different things.”

Shelton has spent some of his downtime watching Pirates games from last season, when their 69-93 finish prompted the resignation of team president Frank Coonelly and the dismissals of general manager Neal Huntington and manager Clint Hurdle.

“I have watched previous Pirate games from last year and managed along with them, using the materials that we feel we’re going to use during our games this year,” Shelton said. “Anything to keep our minds sharp and to watch the game. I feel like everybody’s doing it a little bit differently throughout the game, having talked to other managers and how they’re doing it. I have engaged in conversations with other managers, what they’re doing about the game and asking questions.

“I’ve watched a ton of the older games that the MLB Network is playing. I watched the ‘84 World Series, a couple other series. They showed the ‘79 (Game 7), which was kind of cool to see.”

Shelton continually emphasizes that he’s putting the public health ahead of his own worries amid this global pandemic, but that hasn’t stopped the self-deprecating skipper from exchanging wisecracks with friends in the game while waiting to learn if and when MLB will eventually return to play in this suspended season.

“I’ve received a lot of texts from people saying that I’ve done a nice job not losing a game yet,” Shelton said. “I text back and say, ‘I haven’t screwed anything up yet.’ I’m sure I will, too. Not making a joke of it, I have played it through my head. When that happens, I kind of come back and realize that what’s going on the world is a lot bigger than me managing my first major-league game. At some point, that’s going to happen. Just making sure that my group and my family are healthy moving forward. I go to that a lot quicker than focusing on not managing a game yet.”