During the shutdown between spring training and summer camp, Derek Shelton would put on Pirates games from the previous season and “manage” the game.
He’s going to manage along with games from 2020 during this offseason, but with a new lens.
"I'm gonna be a lot harder on the guy that managed them this year than last year,” Shelton said.
Shelton’s first season as a big-league manager is in the books, with his club finishing with the worst record in baseball, 19-41. Though they did show noticeable improvement over the last few series against playoff teams, overall, the season could be defined by the Pirates’ inability to finish games.
The Pirates went an MLB-worst 8-15 in one-run games, and no National League club lost more extra-inning games than them, going 1-5.
Some of those close losses could be tied to decisions Shelton made in-game, whether it was going to a certain reliever or the lineup he constructed. That’s why he wants to manage along again, and doesn’t mind the criticism.
“People being critical of me and not liking the decisions that I make or whatever, I'm all in for that, because no one's going to be more critical on me than I am,” Shelton said. “So I will reflect, sit down. I will honestly take all my game notes, I'll take game cards and watch games differently. I have games that I've already targeted of decisions I've made and to go back and reflect on them. And not only reflect on them, ask people that I know and trust, not only on the baseball side but also the analytical side, 'Did we make the right decisions here?' ”
Those gamecards and notes are filled with the “teaching points” he and his staff had identified with players all season, usually after a mistake. Stuff on which the team needs to improve. There are also plenty of notes about things that he saw other teams doing well that he would like his club to replicate.
That information will also be passed along to the team’s minor-league coaches and those in the instructional league. He’ll be heading down to Bradenton, Fla. in a couple of weeks to watch some players he didn’t get a chance to see, after having conversations with Ben Cherington and baseball operations staffers to complete their own evaluations.
That’s what this season was, after all: An evaluation year. Shelton and Cherington had a common theme for this year, to learn and get better. Shelton took that to heart, and he has stated that he wants to be a better manager next year. He saw some of those improvements toward the end of this season, which is why he hoped they could have played a normal 162-game schedule.
But was this first season what he expected being a manager would be? Besides all the pandemic stuff, of course.
“It’s been a lot of fun, actually,” Shelton said. “I know that may surprise some people, but I’ve waited a long time to do this. I learned a ton. Things that I thought I would do really well, I have to do better at. Some things that I didn’t think I would do as well, I probably did better at than I thought. It’s a really big reflection at the end of this, probably a couple weeks from now. But I’ve enjoyed the hell out of it. We’re on a path to getting better.”