The Pirates Will Be Introducing All Of Their Minor League Position Players to Secondary Positions

BRADENTON, Fla. – The Pittsburgh Pirates are moving forward with a program to have all of their minor league players introduced to secondary positions.

That news was shared with me by Pirates’ farm director John Baker, with the Pirates looking to give players a different look on the field. This isn’t a novel approach, as the Pirates did this with a lot of players under Neal Huntington’s system. A key difference is that under Huntington, this approach was used more for bench players in the upper levels to give them more paths to the big leagues, rather than used throughout the system.

The most extreme example of this is with Bubba Chandler, who is being developed as a two-way player. The Pirates are developing Chandler first as a right-handed pitcher, but also giving him a chance to play shortstop and hit.

The Pirates Are Giving Bubba Chandler Work as a Two-Way Player

“It would be a whole lot easier if he was just a bad hitter,” said Baker on the decision to play Chandler on both sides of the ball. “But, unfortunately for our decision-making process, he looks like he could do both. He’s a great athlete, obviously. Still maturing into his body. What a great problem to have. I think that the landscape has changed, as we’ve seen with people like [Shohei] Ohtani. These landscapes change, and we don’t need to be beholden to any sort of traditional model, and we’re going to work on doing it our own way.”

Chandler discussed how he is weaker in his lower-half, and while he shows a clean bat path and easy raw power, his swing does look very raw and top-heavy. As Baker described, Chandler has a lot of room to grow.

“I think he just needs to physically mature,” said Baker. “What we’re seeing from Bubba, both on the mound, on the field, and in the batter’s box is obviously a ton of potential to grow, but he’s still so young. He’s still in a lot of ways just a really athletic ball of clay that shows us time and again that he can do some really special things. I think it would be a mistake for us to try to confine or limit him to one narrow place. We need to do our best to give him that experience.”

Chandler has been working with strength and conditioning coaches, along with coaches for defense, hitting, and pitching. The interesting thing is how the crossover of different training methods is giving Chandler a unique, complete view of the game.

“I’ve even heard times now where pitching will use some of the hitting metaphors and analogies to help him with his deliveries, and vice-versa,” said Baker. “He’s developing this almost like a bi-lingual approach to moving around, which I think is really cool.”

The Pirates are trying this multiple-positions approach with a lot of players, regardless of their success at the previous position. Jared Triolo, for example, won a Gold Glove at third base in High-A in 2021, with good offensive numbers. He will also be challenged with a new position in 2022, either getting work at shortstop or the outfield. Triolo has played 22 games at shortstop in his pro career, and played outfield in college.

Hunter Owen is another example I noticed, getting some work at second base. Owen has played the corner infield spots, plus the corner outfield spots, but only has one game at second. The work at second base is obviously going to be a bigger challenge for him than one of the corner positions he’s used to.

It appears the Pirates will be challenging guys with more difficult positions than they’ve already seen in their pro careers, although perhaps nothing too foreign.

Except for Bubba Chandler. It seems there’s no limit to what he can do.