Shelton sticks to his plan
Things are noticeably different as new vibe permeates camp
BRADENTON, Fla. — Derek Shelton bounced between fields at Pirate City Wednesday morning, sunglasses on, bat in hand, chatting and joking with players, an ear-to-ear smile plastered on his face and purpose behind even the tiniest thing he did.
Also milling around the complex was Shelton’s father, Ron, a former high school baseball coach in Illinois who, his son later joked, might eventually produce a few hot takes on how the Pirates should construct their lineup this season.
“Doesn’t everyone?” the younger Shelton joked, his sarcastic sense of humor continuing to sneak out.
Wednesday was, from a productivity standpoint, a relatively hohum experience for Shelton and his newly built coaching staff. They certainly got some things done — fielding drills, batting practice, bullpen sessions, etc. — but for Shelton, this was a day where the macro trumped the micro.
The type of endeavor where, Shelton joked, the simple task of putting on pants carried a weird significance. Something to do with it being the final piece of the entire ensemble.
“It’s emotional,” Shelton said. “Throughout your career you wait for a day like this, with an organization like this … yeah, it was a really special day.”
Wednesday marked the first day of formal workouts for pitchers and catchers. Monday will be the first fullsquad workout. But already, with just three days in the books, things
are noticeably different around Pirate City. The hallway leading to the cramped clubhouse is no longer adorned with motivational sayings, leaving the focus on the framed retired jerseys and photos of former Pirates greats on either side.
But the new energy, the rejuvenated vibe, isn’t so much visual as it is visceral — the sense you get by talking to players or Shelton, or watching the two of them interact. Chalk it up to a new regime, the beauty of baseball under sunny skies in February or something completely different; there’s a collective exhale around this team right now, when late last season it felt difficult to breathe.
“He’s a really easygoing guy,” infielder Kevin Newman said of Shelton, in his current seat for the first time. “You can have a conversation with him about off-field, on-field, whatever. He’s an open book. It’s a really cool dynamic from what I’ve gathered from players. Obviously, we have a bunch of new staff. The whole vibe is cool. It’s kind of buzzing. We have fresh faces. We’ve got fresh insight. It’s exciting.”
Shelton’s energy and enthusiasm for this stuff is palpable. So, too, is his sense of humor.
When one fan screamed to Cole Tucker that he saw him at some sort of Hall of Fame banquet, Shelton approached the young shortstop who was preparing to hit and wanted to know what that guy was talking about.
After watching one particular reporter toil away at Pirates Fantasy Camp on this same fields a couple weeks ago, Shelton didn’t pass up the chance to offer some good-natured ribbing.
“You look a lot better in shorts and a T-shirt than you do in a baseball uniform,” Shelton told me while shuffling between fields, perhaps unaware that the bar on that one had already been set painfully low.
The entire experience for Shelton was something that he has been dreaming about and running through his head since November, when he first got this job.
In Minnesota, under manager Rocco Baldelli, Shelton was the spring training guy, entrusted to ensure this entire process ran like clockwork and that the Twins got something useful out of every workout. Here, those duties fall on Pittsburgh native Don Kelly, another offseason addition who bounced around Pirate City with an equal amount of enthusiasm.
Although Shelton has spent the bulk of his offseason placing calls to players, introducing himself and explaining his vision for the Pirates’ future, those talks pale in comparison to what happened here, where Shelton has been constantly on the move.
“To be able to sit and talk to them,” Shelton said, “it’s way better than talking on the phone.”
Shelton joked that “I’ve watched a lot more bullpens than I probably have in a long time,” which probably took Shelton back to his playing days, squatting behind the plate as a (failed) catcher in the New York Yankees’ system. The bulk of Shelton’s major league career has been spent as a hitting coach, for Cleveland and Tampa Bay, so he couldn’t help himself there; at one point early on,
Shelton leaned on the batting cage with hitting coach Rick Eckstein, the two of them marveling as the ball jumped off Bryan Reynolds’ bat.
But the same as the rest of his time Wednesday, Shelton’s stay next to Eckstein was short-lived. He next wanted to chat up Guillermo Heredia, one of the Pirates’ offseason additions, before checking in with general manager Ben Cherington and assistant general manager Steve Sanders.
All of it was similar to what Shelton experienced as Minnesota’s bench coach the previous two years, when he would award a gold fungo to a different Twins player each day. Only this time, Shelton wasn’t part of the supporting cast. He was the focal point, the man charged with changing the Pirates’ culture and righting the ship.
“The last couple years, running spring training, I’ve found myself walking around to everybody, so today was nice,” Shelton said. “I was able to watch bullpens. I was able to watch some guys hit ground balls and just kind of bounce. I think it’s more about relationship-building and just making sure that they know that I’m here and what our expectations are.
“Not only being a major league manager, but being around this coaching staff, which we’ve worked so hard to assemble; it’s just such a fun group to be around. We have a good, young core here. To be around them for the first time out on the field, in uniform, it makes it feel real.”
Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.