With less than a month before pitchers and catchers are expected to report to spring training, the Pirates announced two changes to their Major League coaching staff Friday afternoon. Christian Marrero has joined the staff as assistant hitting coach, and Mike Rabelo, who was the assistant hitting coach, will remain on the MLB staff and transition to Major League field coordinator.
Marrero has spent the last three seasons as a class A hitting coach with the Phillies’ organization. Before then, he spent 12 years as a minor-league outfielder, including making a brief stop in Indianapolis in 2012.
As the job description would suggest, Marrero will assist hitting coach Rick Eckstein on all matters regarding the Pirates’ offense. He will be Eckstein’s third assistant hitting coach in his three seasons with the Pirates. Before Rabelo, Jacob Cruz held the title in 2019, but left for the Brewers that offseason for job security when the Pirates were still in their managerial search.
As field coordinator, Rabelo will wear several hats. That includes taking a leadership position on the use of technology and innovation at the Major League level, assistant Derek Shelton and bench coach Don Kelly on rules, in-game situations and practice design, and act as the primary liaison between the player development group and staff.
Before coming to the Pirates last year, Rabelo spent six years coaching and managing in the Tigers’ farm system.
The timing of this announcement is a bit peculiar, as most MLB staffs have been set for quite some time. The Pirates had planned since October to return their entire coaching staff, and while this still qualifies, it was insinuated then that they would not add to the staff either.
The Pirates finished last year with the worst team OPS (.641) and fewest runs scored (219), though if that was the reason for the change, they could have made the move in October and been in the first wave of new coach hirings.
To theorize two possible reasons for the move, one is the coaching staff is down a set of hands after special assistant to the general manager David Eckstein stepped down on his own accord to spend more time with his family. He was a utility player within the organization, filling in where needed.
The other is Rabelo’s role is very similar to the one Shelton had in Toronto in 2017, where he was the quality control coach. Shelton cited his time in that job as a turning point in his career where he wanted to go from being a hitting coach to a manager, and expressed interest in hiring a quality control coach for his staff last year. While Glenn Sherlock held some of the duties of a quality control coach, like assisting in infield shifts, the Pirates didn’t really have anyone in that role. While it is not officially called a quality control coach, Rabelo's role practically checks all the boxes.