BRADENTON, Fla. -- The final players have reported. Everybody who needs to be in Bradenton has made it here. After a week of mostly focusing on the pitchers, the Pirates will host their first full squad workout on Monday, meaning things are going to start to pick up.
"To get everybody out on the field for the first time, I'm ready for that," Derek Shelton told reporters.
Shelton doesn't wing much, so he has some basic points that he wants to give his team for his start-of-spring speech Monday.
"It's pretty standard to what we've talked about publicly, and thoughts of how we're gonna do it," Shelton said.
Shelton has talked often about creating a player-centric culture in Pittsburgh. It has been a message that has been well-received by the team thus far. Many players have talked about how the clubhouse feels better than it did a year ago, praising Shelton, pitching coach Oscar Marin and bench coach Don Kelly for helping make it possible.
"The thing it says to me is they've bought in," Shelton said. "I think the thing Ben [Cherington] and I have talked about since he got hired and I got hired is about building relationships and trying to get better everyday.
"I think that they bought in early on, and the energy's so good, is a credit to the players. I think we have a group that's hungry for that."
• It was a light day at Pirate City. Most of the position players got their physicals done, so there was very little batting practice or the sort going on. The pitchers who were scheduled to throw did, and the rest did some light toss and bunting drills.
• One week in and no new injuries to report. Always a good sign.
• So I found out Colin Moran reads Mound Visit. Or, at least he read the Mound Visit I wrote about his defense.
He already knew that he does well going to his left but struggles with the backhand -- both points were mentioned in the article -- but he didn't realize how he played much deeper than other third basemen.
Moran has put in a lot of work to improve defensively over the last year, including in positioning, so he went to the analytics department to see what they think.
"I think they've been open to it," Moran told me about maybe tweaking his positioning.
• Of course not everybody in camp is going to start the season in the majors, especially some of the younger pitchers in their first major-league spring training. Nick Mears falls into this category, but if his jump from A-ball to double-A last year and his dominant performance in the Arizona Fall League are any indication, he might not be too far away.
Mears really buys into pitch tunneling, so he has been working hard to develop a 12-6 breaking ball to pair with his fastball, which he likes to throw up in the zone. It is still a little too slurve-ish right now for his taste, so he is experimenting with a new grip, which he showed me.
• Another one of those young pitchers in the same boat is Blake Cederlind. The 24-year-old was added to the 40-man roster this offseason after dominating double-A and getting a taste of triple-A.
He can touch triple-digits with his fastball, but he thinks the big reason why he clicked in 2019 was he got movement on it, too.
"[I used a new grip to get] a little more movement on the fastball," he was telling me. "Still refining my secondary stuff to make it even easier to get outs."