The Pittsburgh Pirates opened the offseason by firing three of their coaches. The team dismissed hitting coach Andy Haines, bullpen coach Justin Meccage, and strength and conditioning coach Adam Vish.
The most significant impact is Haines. The Pirates were one of the worst offenses in the league during his time with the club. They finished the 2024 season with a team .234/.301/.371 line. The average was 23rd in the game. The OBP was 26th. The slugging was 27th. From a more advanced look, their .295 wOBA ranked 28th. Their 86 wRC+ also ranked 28th. The MLB averages on the latter stats were .310 and 100 in 2024.
Haines was hired by the Pirates as their hitting coach replacement to Rick Eckstein ahead of the 2022 season. He had just been let go by the Milwaukee Brewers as their hitting coach, after three seasons of similar below-average results. The Brewers ranked 28th in average, 13th in OBP, 20th in slugging, 18th in wOBA, and 21st in wRC+ in three years under Haines. Those numbers were all helped by the 2019 results, and went downhill since.
In three years under Haines, the Pirates have put up the 29th best average, 27th best OBP, 27th best slugging, 27th best wOBA, and 28th best wRC+. The Pirates had the 82nd and 87th ranked wOBAs over the last three seasons in 2022 and 2024. Their 2023 result ranked 50th out of 90 team season events from 2022-24.
The 2024 season saw a lot of players struggle. Rowdy Tellez, Michael A. Taylor, and Yasmani Grandal were brought in as free agents and all got off to the worst starts of their careers. Tellez broke out of his hitting funk by turning to outside help and advice. Taylor never broke out of his slump, outside of a few weeks in July. Grandal improved in the second half, after previously only really showing up offensively when Paul Skenes was on the mound.
Haines doesn’t really get credit for the turnarounds, and might get some blame for the poor seasons. The 2024 season had struggles from internal prospects trying to make the jump to the Majors. There were also setbacks for young players in the Majors. Jack Suwinski, Alika Williams, Henry Davis, and Ji Hwan Bae all put up well-below-average numbers in the Majors. Suwinski was sent down to Triple-A by the end of the year, where he continued to struggle. Williams, Davis, and Bae could never stick in the Majors. You could add Jared Triolo to this list of struggling hitters, though his versatility and defensive ability kept him in the Majors all year. He was also the best hitter of this group.
Triolo had almost identical wOBA and wRC+ numbers to Edward Olivares, who finished the 2024 season struggling in Triple-A. The Pirates acquired Olivares in a small move over the offseason, after he finished the 2023 season with a power surge in the Majors. Olivares wasn’t the only hitter who declined after being acquired by the Pirates. Bryan De La Cruz and Isiah Kiner-Falefa both put up below-average results with the Pirates, after previously having results closer to average.
There were success stories for the Haines-led offense, but I’m not sure how many can be attributed to Haines. The Pirates acquired Joey Bart from the San Francisco Giants at the start of the season, and Bart immediately and consistently went on to become the best hitter on the team, and one of the best hitting catchers in the game this year. Nick Gonzales was told by Haines last year that his swing had changed drastically, but Gonzales put in the work himself over the offseason to get to a better swing that produced near-average offensive results in his first full MLB season.
One of the biggest improvements by a Pirates hitter this year was Oneil Cruz improving against left-handed hitters. Cruz was challenged by the Pirates to improve in that department, which is information that Pirates General Manager Ben Cherington offered in a recent radio interview. The sample size of this situational-hitting improvement is so small that it wouldn’t be enough to offset all of the hitting failures under Haines.
Cherington also fired bullpen coach Justin Meccage. The Pirates had a bullpen ranked 18th in FIP, and the closer, David Bednar, didn’t finish the season as the closer. The bullpen most notably collapsed during the ten game losing streak at the start of August, helping to fuel that streak with blown losses. As a group, the Pirates bullpen ranked 27th in situational wins.
The move to fire Meccage was a surprise, but not a shock. Meccage had been with the Pirates for over a decade, spending years as a minor league pitching coach, before a few years as the minor league pitching coordinator, and eventually the MLB bullpen coach. On the minor league side, he was always a great coach and assisted in the development of a lot of top prospects who are current Major Leaguers for other clubs. The move wasn’t a shock, due to the results from the bullpen.
Adam Vish joined the Pirates in December 2020. He was previously with the Giants as a strength and conditioning coordinator in the minors for eight seasons. He served with the Pirates as their strength and conditioning coach.
The Pirates did not fire manager Derek Shelton, with Cherington saying that he recommended to owner Bob Nutting that Shelton remain the manager.
