Derek Shelton entered the Pirates' media room in Bradenton, Fla. Tuesday wearing what was expected: A mask.
When he took it off to do the call, he was wearing something else that has come to be expected from him: A smile.
“Really excited about getting started,” Shelton said from Pirate City. “I think this is going to be a really fun camp because there's going to be a ton of opportunity for players and for playing time. I think, well I know, this is going to be a camp that is going to have a ton of competition and focusing on practice and what we're doing every day in practice and the players getting better and preparing us to win every night is definitely going to be the forefront of it.
“I think you're going to see a very competitive and opportunistic spring training. Really looking forward to it."
It’ll be a different camp for Shelton and his staff. They are no longer the new kids in town. It’s year two, and they’ll have to improve and get better alongside the players.
That meant Shelton prepared differently for this spring training. Last year, his preparation for the season involved a lot of conversations directed towards the future. This time around, he did a lot more reflecting.
“Reflection of the things that we did last year, I did or the decisions that I made and the growth that I need to make as a manager and our staff needs to make,” Shelton said. “One of the things that I really reflected on and talked to people about this offseason was that I only managed 60 games. I felt at the end of it, when I looked back, there were some things that I definitely should have done better. Us getting better starts with me. I realize that. That’s really what I spent most of my time reflecting on.”
For in his in-game reflections, a lot of his thoughts were on base running. Should he have called for a hit-and-run there? A stolen base there? Last year, the Pirates stole just 16 bases as a team, the third-fewest in baseball. That might change in 2021.
“That's something I reflected on a lot, maybe being a little bit more aggressive in that regard,” Shelton said. “I think that's the first one and probably the biggest one I spent time looking at and talking to our staff about
For his behind the scenes, he focused on how he could use the staff differently and what changes they could make to team practices and what they should isolate on. That will be a challenge this year, as the Pirates will need to break up their group of 70 players in spring training into groups. It’ll just be another hurdle to overcome during the pandemic.
“We just need to play better,” Shelton said. “We need to get better. We need to work on that daily. I know I talked about that a lot last year in terms of needing to get better every day. We need to take this time in spring training to isolate on areas where we need to be better.”
There are definitely plenty of areas where the Pirates are going to need to get better in 2021 and beyond.
USA Today predicts the Pirates will finish with the worst record in baseball at 57-105. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections have them losing 101 games. FanGraphs’ gives them a 1-in-250 chance of making the postseason.
Shelton doesn’t care what people outside of the clubhouse are saying about his team. His focus is internal, and on winning.
“We’re preparing to win every night, so we’re thinking about winning,” Shelton said. “How that affects us going forward will probably be on a night to night basis. But we’re playing every night and preparing to win and making decisions to win.”
MORE FROM THE PIRATES MANAGER
• The Pirates signed their first player to a Major League contract Tuesday, inking left-hander Tyler Anderson to a one-year, $2.5 million deal.
Shelton hinted at there being more starting pitching help coming during the call. Now we know why.
As for how that rotation could be structured, Shelton confirmed that the Pirates will being using a five-man rotation, at least to start the year. There could be some piggybacking or openers or creativity later in the season, but to start, he wants to have five guys.
"To say that we don’t get creative at some point, I think that would be me lying to you, because we may get creative at some point just because of workload and volume and doing those things," Shelton said. "But to start, I would make the assumption that we’re going to have five and then kind of use our off-days. At some point we could get creative, but that may be out of necessity."
Monitoring workloads is going to be imperative this season after the drastically shortened 2020 season. The Pirates had their pitchers throw bullpens and side sessions during the shutdown, but that can't compare to a full 162-game season. After a rash of arm and soft tissue injuries across the league last year, keeping pitchers healthy is going to be a main priority for every club in 2021.
"That's not in any way saying we're putting a specific pitch number on starts or on innings or anything like that, but we have to be very careful of guys and awareness of what their volume is," Shelton said.
• After getting to spend some time in the Pirates' development camp in Florida last October, Shelton is going to have some of the Pirates' top prospects in Bradenton this spring. That includes Quinn Priester, Liover Peguero and Nick Gonzales.
“It’s kind of putting them into our culture because of the fact that we didn’t have minor league baseball last year and we just had the alternative site," Shelton said. "Some of these guys haven’t had the opportunity to be around us, to be around me, to be around our coaching staff. It’s just to kind of integrate them into that."
In a normal year, young players and starting pitchers who won't make the opening day team are usually the first to get sent to the minor league camp. That normally happens about halfway through spring training. This year, however, minor league spring training won't get started until the Major League players go north.
The Pirates do have two training sites to work with -- Pirates City and LECOM Park -- so they could still make "cuts," but part of the point of bringing them early was to have them be around the team.
“We’re going to have to be creative with that younger group, as far as how do we get reps in and how do we get game-speed reps in,” Shelton said. “That’s part of the practice design stuff we’ve talked about. At some point we will whittle it down to the more competitive guys who are making our club.”
• What about those competitions Shetlon mentioned?
There are more than a couple spots up for grabs -- fifth starter, starting center fielder, backup catcher, spots in the bullpen -- but perhaps the most intriguing is at shortstop between Erik Gonzalez, Kevin Newman and Cole Tucker.
"Going in, it’s going to be a competition, and those three guys are going to have the opportunity," Shelton said.
For Tucker, he is getting a chance to return to the infield after just making one appearance there last season. While the Pirates used him almost exclusively as an outfielder last year, they never closed the door on him returning to the infield.
"I wouldn’t say [moving him to the outfield was] an experiment, but we knew he was athletic and we knew he had the ability to do it, and to his credit, we kind of threw him under the fire and he did a nice job," Shelton said. "And then the other thing was out of necessity with just where we were with our outfielders, and we still truly believe that he can be an infielder. As we come back in after an offseason of him working, we’re giving him an opportunity to play there."
• After trading away Josh Bell, Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon this offseason, who steps up as a leader on this team?
"Leadership happens organically," Shelton said. I don’t think that you can establish that one person is a leader because of X, Y and Z. With the people that we traded away that were leaders, we’re going to see some guys step up and take those roles. I’m excited to see who those people are but I’m not going to tell someone they have to do that or appoint someone."
• After finishing with the worst record in baseball last year and trading those three big players this offseason, it wouldn't exactly be fair to evaluate Shelton's managerial performance on just wins and losses. Both he and his bosses know that.
"I think the big thing between that is the alignment that Ben [Cherington] and I have, and honestly up to Travis [Williams] that we have, in terms of communication and what we’re doing and how we’re doing it," Shelton said. "Everything that we did this offseason I was a part of and foundationally, I know it’s important, and they have been very clear with outlining the plan and how we’re building it... Like I said before, man, this is going to be a fun journey, because we’re going to win, and if it takes time, I’m all in for the time, but I can’t wait for our fans to ride this journey with me and the group."
• There were more than a handful of Pirates who struggled at the dish last season, including, but not limited to, Bryan Reynolds, Gregory Polanco and Newman.
So what should everyone take from that shortened season?
"I don’t think you leave it in the past," Shelton said. "I don’t ever think you leave anything in the past. I think you use it as motivation or a foundation to build forward. What happened with a lot of guys last year, not just Pirates, is you get off to a rough start and then you’re trying to build every night. And you’re trying to get two hits or three hits because you look up and you know you’re not doing what you want to do, or you know what your OPS is and you realize you only have 40 games left or 30 games left and then 20 games left. So that provides the challenge, and that wasn’t isolated to just Pittsburgh. There were a lot of good hitters that we saw fell into that, and that’s one of the reasons I’m really looking forward to 162 games, because the ebbs and flows can even themselves out."