SAN DIEGO -- The Pirates went to the MLB Winter Meetings last week to, among other things, find a pitching coach. While they made progress, they ultimately left without making a hire.
Longtime pitching coach Ray Searage was fired at the beginning of October, but the Pirates had to wait nearly two months to start the process of hiring a replacement because GM Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton were not in place yet.
Pitching coach is one of several jobs - including first base and assistant hitting coach - the Pirates need to fill. Cherington said Wednesday he would prefer to get the coaching staff finalized sooner rather than later.
With some assistance from bench coach Don Kelly, who is helping to vet applicants, the search is staring to narrow. However, very few of the candidates are known at this time.
One person being considered is Justin Meccage, the assistant pitching coach under Searage the past two seasons. Meccage had worked in the Pirates farm system from 2011-2017, including as the minor league pitching coordinator in 2017.
While Meccage and Searage worked together, the two have different coaching styles. Searage earned his "uncle Ray" moniker by being patient and reassuring to his pitchers, especially in game situations, perhaps to a fault. Meccage had a reputation of getting in his pitchers' faces when he was a minor league pitching coach.
Regardless of if he is named pitching coach or not, Meccage will be returning to the organization in 2020 in some role. He will provide the pitchers some continuity on the staff in the same way Rick Eckstein will with the hitters.
Another person in the mix is Oscar Marin, the Rangers bullpen coach. Marin, like Meccage and Kelly, has a player development background, spending a two-year stint as the Mariners' minor-league pitching coordinator from 2017-2018.
Neither has been a major league coach for long — Meccage has two years, Marin one — but that does not seem to be a deterrent for Cherington. Instead, he is looking for a coach who has a growth mindset, the right skills, and the ability to build relationships. Their experience does not necessarily need to be at the major league level.
"I would say, no, we’re not looking for a type in terms of level of experience or not," Cherington said at the Winter Meetings. "He could be very experienced or not as experienced. All those other things would be important for us.”
Shelton saw that work with the Twins last year. Wes Johnson became the first coach to ever go directly from collegiate baseball to the major leagues, but the Twins valued his 25 years of coaching experience and his knowledge for the game.
Under his tutelage, the Twins noticeably improved as a staff, even as there was a league-wide offensive explosion.
"I think the one thing we have to be very cognizant of is that where guys played or where they coached anymore is not as important because players in the today's game, they want information," Shelton said at the Winter Meetings. "They want to get better. They want to know how they're going to get better. So we have to have somebody that's very well versed in all these things."
While Shelton said Johnson knew bio-mechanics better than anyone, what he was most impressed with was how he built relationships with the Twins staff.
That is one of the main traits he is looking for in the Pirates' next pitching coach.
"I think first and foremost, he's going to have to be player-centric," Shelton said. "He's going to have to be a relationship builder. He's going to have to be someone that's gonna come in with a group and be able to establish not only a plan of what we're going to do starting in the offseason, but going through spring training and into the season.
"Someone that has advanced knowledge of how the game is played. And that's not just with data, but it's with tech and being able to use those things, because the way that we can measure how things are done or how pitches are thrown or how our body's going to recover is a big part of it, and I think we have to stay ahead of that."