Pirates GM Ben Cherington gets creative with unconventional approach to minor league hires

The Pittsburgh Pirates are proving they aren’t afraid to take an unconventional approach to player development through the makeover of their minor league affiliates over the past two years.

From hiring former major league catcher-turned-mental skills coach John Baker to run their farm system to seeking new voices from outside the organization, Ben Cherington has overseen widespread change that the Pirates general manager hopes will impact the major league club.

The most recent changes centered on minor league coaching, where the Pirates have shuffled their coaching staffs, with the new roles of bench/development coach and integrated baseball performance coach. Cherington made it clear that the focus is on finding new ways to learn.

“Broadly speaking, we can’t just solve all of our challenges with people. We know that. There is some limit and constraint on that. And part of doing a better job in player development is philosophy and programming,” Cherington said. “One of the things is, what information are we putting in front of players? But we are seeing — and I think you are seeing this at the major-league level, too — that maybe what we all experienced in school in different ways or we know about learning in any environment, is there’s something about the student-to-teacher ratio that matters. So we’re trying to improve that in ways that we can.”

The Pirates started by reassigning two minor league managers, after Brian Esposito’s contract wasn’t renewed after three seasons as Triple-A Indianapolis manager and one running the alternate training site. That allowed the Pirates to promote Miguel Perez from Double-A Altoona to Indianapolis and Kieran Mattison from High-A Greensboro to Altoona, a chance for continuity with the players they coached last season as the Pirates prioritize their future with top prospects at those levels.

“It created an opening, and we had an opportunity to give some people who were already here a chance to manage at a new level,” Cherington said. “Fortunately for us, we have a couple of people in Miguel and Kieran, who we wanted that for anyway. We weren’t going to force it, but if the opportunity opened up, we knew that they’d be ready for that kind of challenge and would be excited by it. But certainly, secondarily, their relationships with the players they might be following up the chain is helpful. You’ve got some of that trust already established.”

That trust is a two-way street. Where Gary Green followed Perez from Altoona to become Indy’s bench coach, Cherington cited that it was Jonathan Johnston’s preference to remain manager at Low-A Bradenton because “he really likes that level (and) we really feel like his strengths suit that level.”

Meantime, hitting coach Jon Nunnally switched from Indy to Altoona in an effort to take advantage of his skills and strengths by pairing him with top position prospects such as second baseman Nick Gonzales and shortstop Liover Peguero.

The Pirates went outside the organization to hire Callix Crabbe as Greensboro’s manager and an assistant minor league hitting coach. After a 10-year pro career, Crabbe became a coach and instructor at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., then spent the past three seasons with the Texas Rangers. Cherington said Crabbe has been on the Pirates’ radar for years and called him a “really interesting young manager and manager prospect.”

They added a former first-round pick, Dan Meyer, to replace Joel Hanrahan as Indianapolis pitching coach. A left-hander, Meyer pitched for the Braves, Oakland A’s and Miami Marlins. Meyer joined the Pirates after nine years in Atlanta’s farm system, where he was named Southern League Manager of the Year after leading the Double-A Mississippi Braves to the championship as interim manager last year.

Another former first-rounder, Eric Munson, was hired as Indy’s hitting coach. After being selected third overall by Detroit in 1999, Munson played for the Tigers, Tampa Bay Rays, Houston Astros and A’s. Since 2013, he has owned and operated Gold Standard Athletics, an indoor training facility in Dubuque, Iowa.

Munson isn’t the only coach culled from an instructional background at a private facility. The Pirates added Quentin Brown, a former high school coach who ran the multi-million dollar Finch Creek Field House in Noblesville, Ind., as the hitting instructor for the Florida Complex League in Bradenton.

“We don’t want to fish in only one pond, whether it’s players or staff,” Cherington said. “We’re trying to cast the widest net we can. Good coaches come from everywhere, so it’s not one demographic, bucket or anything like that. …

“But the other thing about working at a facility is that it often means, in most cases, anyway, it’s going to mean that you’ve got to really find a way to problem-solve with a player without unlimited resources, with some constraint on both time, because you don’t have clients all the time, and resources in terms of technology and all of that. So sometimes you’ve got to be creative to find solutions, so we see that sometimes coming out of those places.”