PHOENIX -- Going into this past offseason, the Pirates challenged Kevin Newman. They needed him to improve on defense. If he didn’t, they had two other shortstops in Erik González and Cole Tucker ready to go.
Going by the Society of American Baseball Research’s (SABR) defensive index, he was the National League’s second-worst defensive shortstop in 2020 (-2.2 SDI). In 2019, he was the worst at -11.6 SDI. The Pirates weren’t going to tolerate a third year near the bottom at his position.
“I knew I had to work on it everyday,” Newman told me in Phoenix before the Pirates’ series against the Diamondbacks.
Newman ended up holding off González and Tucker in spring training to earn the shortstop job. And while it’s undeniable that Newman’s season at the plate has been far from what either he or the team had hoped, he has transformed himself into one of the game’s best defensive shortstops.
Earlier this week, SABR released its defensive index for both leagues. Newman ranked as the third-best National League shortstop at 3.8 SDI.
Considering that SDI is heavily weighed into who wins Gold Gloves, Newman is on a path to earning his first Gold Glove nomination. Since Rawlings started revealing who the finalists were for Gold Gloves in 2011, no Pirates shortstop has gotten a nod. The last to win a Gold Glove at that position was Jay Bell in 1993.
Looking at it through an old-school lens, Newman went through the All-Star break without making an error. He did boot his first ball in the first game back from the break, but his streak of 78 games to start the season without an error is a record among National League shortstops. He later saved the win in the later innings, making a ranging play to the other side of second base and flipping it to Adam Frazier for a key force out.
“It shows how hard he's worked on his defense,” Derek Shelton said about the play. “He didn't let one play dictate how he was gonna play."
When it comes to Newman’s defense, Shelton has routinely cited the “first step” as the real improvement. He’s breaking better and getting to balls that would have rolled through for hits in years past.
Improving that first step is a lot easier said than done. There is no playbook or one way to get better.
“If there was one, we’d all do it,” Newman joked.
So Newman came up with his own plan.
Back at home, he set up a fielding machine on his practice field and then stood 10 feet away. The machine would fire out hot shot grounders to his left. Then his right. Then left again.
Cue the '80’s training montage music.
“At the beginning it was turned up so high it would get by me,” Newman said. “It was a matter of finding a way to get there. Get a glove on the ball. For me, after doing it and doing it and doing it, the body is able to efficiently explode farther and extend and make the plays.”
Newman’s career trajectory has done a 180, in the sense the question he’s facing is can he hit enough to justify keeping his glove in the lineup. A Gold Glove nod would certainly help the resume, if nothing else.
MORE PIRATES
• I had multiple members of the Pirates' front office repeat to me a number of times this week that they can sign outfielder Lonnie White Jr. If they do pull it off, it’s going to be a tight fit. The team more or less had their $6.5 million deal with Henry Davis and $3 million bonus with Bubba Chandler more in place as they drafted them, so there’s no real surprise on either front. But I got an estimate from a league source that White would probably take about $2 million to sign, or about $1 million over-slot. Assuming Owen Kellington doesn’t sign for significantly less than his slot value, there is no way to offer that without going over the 5% overage and losing draft picks next year. If Kellington signs for around slot, that gives the Pirates about $1.6 million with which to sign White. If they fail to get the job done, 14th-round selection Braylon Bishop, another player on Baseball America’s top-100 draft prospects, will probably be the beneficiary. Plus, the Pirates would get a Competitive Balance Round B pick as compensation for failing to sign White. So the final outcome is probably going to be either signing White, a first-round talent, or getting a roughly third-round talent in Bishop and a late-second rounder next year. Obviously the former is preferred, but the latter isn’t a horrible consolation. -- Stumpf in Phoenix
• Wait, isn’t the trade deadline in a week? The stove finally started to heat up Thursday night when the Rays acquired Nelson Cruz from the Twins. Before that, there was nothing of note -- unless you count Joc Pederson going to the Braves -- league wide. The Pirates did divide the labor among their front office to focus on the draft and the trade deadline, but it’s undeniable that the urgency to sign these picks before the Aug. 1 deadline did slow down trade talks league wide, to the point where there aren’t even many rumors entering the final week of July. For the Pirates, the players who are most likely to get dealt won’t surprise you: Adam Frazier, Richard Rodríguez and Tyler Anderson. It sure sounds like the Pirates want to get most, if not all, of their draft obligations done in the next couple days so it doesn’t interfere with the deadline. But this is shaping up be a crazy week across all of baseball, and this extended calm before the storm is part of the reason why. -- Stumpf
STEELERS
• When Bill Cowher said last week that Ben Roethlisberger has rabbit ears when it comes to criticism and uses it as fuel to his inner fire, he wasn't lying. I asked Roethlisberger Thursday as the Steelers opened their training camp if he's heard a lot of the national criticism. "Are things being said nationally about me?" he replied with a wry smile. "What’s new?" What's new indeed. Of course, there was a recent "report" that Roethlisberger is suddenly taking his diet and such more seriously, something he's actually done basically since he turned 35. While he didn't take the bait with my question regarding the national reports of his demise, Roethlisberger had something to say about that one. "I think as you get older, you have to find a way to exercise more, eat better. I’ve been doing that for a few years now," he said. "There were reports coming out of ‘my camp.’ My camp is my wife, my agent and my trainer. And I know that none of them talked to that person. I’m not really sure where that information came from. But naturally you do. You work on your diet. You work on your exercise. You’ve got to get yourself ready to play this game at this age and for this many years. But some things get exaggerated." -- Dale Lolley on the South Side
• Mike Tomlin admitted the news that Vince Williams was retiring Wednesday rather than report to training camp caught him and the Steelers by surprise. "I did not," Tomlin replied when asked if he saw the retirement coming. "Vince is just a quality man first and a quality football player second. His passion for the game, the spirit with which he went about what he did, it’s a loss for us to be sure. But that’s the game. We wish him nothing but the best in terms of how he moves forward, but we’re appreciative of everything he gave us for eight-plus years." The Steelers had released Williams in a cost-cutting move early in the offseason, then re-signed him to a veteran minimum deal. But he was going to be a depth piece, at most. Though he was present at the OTAs and minicamp after re-signing, he didn't do a lot of work as the team wanted to get young players such as Buddy Johnson and Ulysees Gilbert more practice time reps. Tomlin isn't concerned at this point about the team's inside linebacker depth. "I feel great today. It’s Day 1. We haven’t suffered any attrition," he said. "We haven’t made any mistakes that make you feel bad. This thing is a process." One thing worth noting is that new signee Melvin Ingram has played on the interior at times. And you can bet the Steelers will use Ingram, Alex Highsmith and T.J. Watt together on the field at times with Devin Bush. They used that three-outside linebacker package with success last season against the Ravens. -- Lolley
• When offensive tackle Jarron Jones got charged earlier this month on a domestic violence incident, he was living on borrowed time as a member of the Steelers. That shoe finally dropped earlier this week when the Steelers released him when they signed former Cowboys and Colts offensive tackle Chaz Green. Why did it take so long? Most of the front office was on vacation. They returned last week. Jones was gone this week. Some fans reacted like the Steelers were signing Green, a marginal NFL talent himself, as if he were being added to be a starter. That's not the case. He got a minimum deal and will have the same chances to make the roster that Jones did -- which is slim to none. And slim just left town. -- Lolley
PENGUINS
• The Penguins will open training camp in two months and, not surprisingly, there are a lot of issues to be resolved before then. The most important, of course, is what the roster will look like, how guys like Brandon Tanev and Jared McCann will be replaced and who will be brought in in an effort to upgrade the depth chart. Another is precisely how the players on hand will be able to interact, which figures to be determined by who has received the COVID-19 vaccination. During a recent video conference, the league informed GMs that, if vaccination rates in the U.S. and Canada maintain a satisfactory trajectory, vaccinated players will be able to work out, on and off the ice, as they did before the pandemic, with no limits on group sizes or mandatory coronavirus testing. Regulations for players who aren't vaccinated still are being discussed with the NHL Players Association, but are sure to be more restrictive. "I think that, in the NFL, there are differences right now," Ron Hextall said. "So I suspect there are going to be differences." It's not entirely clear how those guidelines would affect the Penguins, because Hextall declined to specify how many of his players have yet to be inoculated. "Most of our guys are vaccinated," he said. "That's the most I want to say." -- Dave Molinari
• Barring a major trade, the Penguins will only have five choices -- one each in the second and fifth rounds and three in the seventh -- in this weekend's NHL Draft, so odds are that their pool of quality prospects won't grow much over the next few days. The good news for them is this draft probably won't be less productive than the one in 2008, when their selections were limited to one in each of the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh rounds. The players they claimed -- center Nathan Moon, goalies Alexander Pechursky and Patrick Killeen and defenseman Nick D'Agostino -- made a combined total of one appearance in the NHL. That was by Pechursky, who was summoned from his Western Hockey League club in Tri-City on emergency recall to back up John Curry for a game in Vancouver on Jan. 16, 2010, after Marc-Andre Fleury and Brent Johnson had been injured. Curry got the start but was pulled after allowing five goals, and Pechursky stopped 12 of 13 shots over the final 35:31 of the game. And of his NHL career. -- Molinari
• Edmonton GM Ken Holland made it known Thursday that a couple of forwards, Dominik Kahun and Jujhar Khaira, won't be receiving qualifying offers, allowing them to become unrestricted free agents. The mention of Kahun probably got a bit more attention from Penguins partisans because he played here, but Khaira might be the one to keep an eye on. He is 6-foot-4, 212 pounds and plays the kind of physical game that the Penguins have professed to be interested in adding. He was credited with 151 hits in 40 games during the past season, an average of nearly four per game. (Tanev led the Penguins with 139 in 32 games.) Khaira also had three goals and eight assists in those 40 games while filling a bottom-six role. His salary-cap hit last season was $1.2 million and if the Penguins are interested -- and he would be interested in them -- they probably could settle on a number that would work for both sides. -- Molinari
• The Penguins have selected 26 players in the past five NHL drafts. None of those players have skated a single shift for them, and only two have made it to the NHL. Defenseman Calen Addison, a second-rounder in 2018 who went to Minnesota in the Jason Zucker trade, has gotten into three games with the Wild and goalie Filip Gustavsson, picked in the second round two years earlier, has played nine games with Ottawa, which acquired him in the Derick Brassard deal. -- Molinari