At 35, John Baker was putting down the catcher’s mitt and picking up online college courses at Arizona State.
A backup catcher for most of his seven-year career, Baker never had a million dollar payday while in the majors. He had enough savings to last for about six months to a year. He knew he needed to work again.
“But I only had a skillset that involved figuring out how guys were going to throw sliders, which unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily carry over if you want to get into investment banking right away,” Baker joked during a Zoom call with local reporters Thursday.
So Baker went back to school in 2015. Unlike the first time, he wasn’t just searching for easy grades so he could keep playing ball. He wanted to learn and find a passion.
That’s where he dove into the rabbit hole of performance psychology.
“Being able to choose those things, see how they relate to performance, then actually be able to have boots on the ground and not just read about the theory and take exams but read about the theory, take exams and see it in practice first-hand and participate in it,” Baker said. “I really feel like I got kind of rich learning experience. One of my values is to be a continuous learner. It all lined up, and it was just an area of interest that developed over the years.”
Baker found work with the Cubs in December 2015 as a baseball operations assistant. The next year, he started to apply his newfound passion in psychology by becoming the Cubs’ mental skills coordinator, a position he held for three years before it evolved into becoming the head of applied mental skills, which put him in the dugout for games this season. As for his schooling, he is now going for a masters.
On Tuesday, he got his biggest promotion yet, with the Pirates naming him the director of coaching and player development.
“John’s experience as a player, his training and experience as a mental skills coach for a highly successful franchise, and his continued learning in the areas of skill acquisition and human performance, give him valuable perspective on the entire player improvement and performance process,” Ben Cherington said when announcing the hiring.
Baker and Cherington first crossed paths when Baker was still job searching in 2015. The Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) was hosting a seminar in Boston. Baker was going, and Cherington, then the general manager of the Red Sox, was scheduled to speak.
But before the seminar, Cherington and the Red Sox parted ways. Baker was certain he would back out of the event.
Cherington didn’t.
“Honoring that commitment and being kind of like vulnerable open and sharing his experience with a roomful of people really kind of blew me away,” Baker said. “Just as like a behavioral example of what it means to be accountable.”
Cherington and Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein worked together with Boston, and Cherington was Epstein’s successor as general manager after the latter left for Chicago.
Baker said he sees similarities between the two, and hearing what Epstein had to say about Cherington only cemented his desire for the job.
Going from a team with one of the highest payrolls in the Cubs to one of the lowest with the Pirates is an organizational-wide challenge Baker is adopting, but that didn’t scare him away. If anything, it drew him in more. He wants to help players get better and learn, and sees more opportunity to do that with a group of young players with the Pirates than a team like the Cubs, which has more veterans.
“Understanding the constraints in Pittsburgh and that we're going to have to develop from the inside to build a contender, it's all the right guide rails to be forced to do some innovation and creativity,” Baker said. “I like to chase challenges, and this seemed like the appropriate challenge with the appropriate people, and I really feel like we can do some cool things.”
Speaking of creativity, it’s probably best to look at each half of Baker’s new job title, because it certainly is more detailed than “farm director.”
Let’s start with the players side, because they will ultimately determine the Pirates’ success going forward.
Baker was part of the Athletics’ infamous Moneyball draft in 2002, being selected in the fourth-round that year, and he acknowledges he owes a great deal to Billy Beane, Paul DePodesta and the analytics movement. Those ideas have continued to evolve in the nearly two decades since he first entered professional baseball, with the most current trend being an increase in the number of plate appearances that end in one of the three true outcomes: A walk, strikeout or home run.
The Pirates have fallen behind the rest of the league in some of these areas, finishing last season with the highest walk rate as a pitching staff (11.2%) and hitting the third-fewest home runs (59). But catching up in those areas will not be enough to make the Pirates a contender.
“As someone who grew up watching baseball in the ‘80s, I don’t love the things that I see,” Baker said about the increase in walks, strikeouts and homers. “I don’t love going to the game, and I was just with a team that that was the perspective that we took: We’ll strike you out and we’ll hit it over the fence. Although that can be exciting, that’s not the game of baseball that I necessarily love the most. So I’m looking forward to bringing back some of the style of play that we may have seen in the past, counter to the three-true-outcome game, but doing it in a modern way that’s supported by data and not just a get-off-my-lawn reversion back to what feels good because we did it when we were a kid.
“It has to work. That’s the only rule.”
So what would that approach look like?
“If I wanted to be as simple as possible, I would say stuff like, ‘I’m going to prioritize putting the ball in play a little bit more often than we have in the past and we’re going to focus on being the best defensive organization in professional baseball,” Baker said. “If those two things happen and my guy pitches well, we have a chance to win the game.”
On the coaching side, Baker said he feels baseball has “preyed” on minor-league coaches’ love for the game, keeping them in that position without a chance for promotion.
“I want to help our coaches develop a career trajectory so that they can see themselves going on to bigger and better things, but I want to arm them with the skills necessary to be supportive of our players,” Baker said. “They have the most touch points.”
Baker said he does not yet know if there will be more turnover in minor-league coaching this year. The most notable changes thus far are the departures of Curve manager Dave Turgeon and pitching coaches Tom Filer and Stan Kyles.
During the 27-minute call, Baker was asked what he took away from his time with the Cubs that can help the Pirates.
He put one hand below his chin, and another at his forehead. The lower hand is where the Pirates are right now. The higher one is where they need to be. It's going to take earning players' trust and a willingness on their part to make that jump.
“The space between is not comfortable,” Baker said. “It’s all about being willing to encounter that discomfort to improve.”
