When Derek Shelton joked he talks with Don Kelly “about 80 times a day,” the Pittsburgh Pirates manager added it was “kind of half jokingly.”

As the Pirates bench coach, Kelly is not only Shelton’s right-hand man and a trusted confidant but in charge of running a second spring training to prepare for the season.

“He’s done an unbelievable job with his communication with the staff and talking through it with him,” Shelton said May 4 on a conference call. “We have started talking through the different formats of what we would do and how we would do it.”

In an interview Saturday morning on Bucco Talk with Dan Zangrilli on 93.7 FM, Kelly said he is busy formulating plans despite dealing with the unknowns of when spring training would resume and what the season will look like.

“It’s going to be crazy getting back together,” Kelly said. “If you want to term it a ‘hot mess,’ we’re looking forward to getting back out there. There’s going to be a lot of different things going on, as far as coordinating the daily schedule and make sure we’re abiding by all the regulations of the number of people, how many people can be in a certain space at one time and how, most importantly, we’re going to get guys ready to play.”

Kelly is anticipating a shortened spring training — an MLB proposal to the Players Association suggested three weeks instead of the normal six — so he said the “most important thing” will be to prepare pitchers to increase their pitch counts and get hitters the necessary at-bats to get their timing down.

What makes it more challenging for Kelly is he doesn’t know the numbers of players the Pirates will have, with major league rosters expected to increase and the possibility of a taxi squad, and state regulations limiting group activities. Nor do the Pirates know where they will conduct spring training, whether it’s at PNC Park or in Bradenton, Fla., at Pirate City or LECOM Park.

“Both places have their pros and cons,” Kelly said. “When you start to talk about those or look at them, in terms of logistics or anything from housing and families and people only having to come to Pittsburgh. It wouldn’t be a huge thing to have it here.

“In Florida, there’s a little more space and fields. When you start to look at different pros and cons of both, they both have positives and negatives. Either way, we’re just looking forward to getting back out on the field and getting these guys back out there and getting ready for a season.”

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