The Pirates are staying in the National League Central for their next hitting coach.
Per sources, the team will hire Andy Haines as their new hitting coach. He had spent the past three years in the same role with the Brewers.
The club has yet to announce the new hire.
Haines, 44, was fired Oct. 20, shortly after the Brewers were eliminated from the playoffs, after a very up-and-down season as a team. Even though they ranked sixth in the National League with 738 runs, their .713 team OPS ranked 20th in baseball. Their team .396 slugging percentage was ranked 23rd, 194 home runs ranked 18th and 1,465 strikeouts was seventh-most.
His first year with the Brewers was an unquestioned positive though, with the group hitting a franchise-record 250 home runs. Even in 2021, several key Brewers managed to improve at the plate, including Luis Urias and Willy Adames.
He will be tasked with turning around a Pirates offense that finished last in baseball in runs scored (609), slugging percentage (.364) and home runs (124).
Before going to the Brewers, Haines came up through the Cubs’ and Marlins’ farm systems, the latter of which is where he established a working relationship with Brewers star Christian Yelich. He was an assistant hitting coach with the Cubs in 2018 and spent time as a minor-league manager before that. His most successful stint was with the Greensboro Grasshoppers -- who are now a Pirates affiliate -- leading them to a league championship in 2011.
Haines will take over for Rick Eckstein, who was relieved of his hitting coach duties at the end of August. At the time of Eckstein's dismissal, Derek Shelton expressed his desire to change the organization's hitting program, and that the new hitting coach would head that.
"We definitely want to get better about practice design, about learning, approach-based is going to be a big part of that," Shelton said then. "It’s going to be a full, encompassing job, as the hitting coach job is."
Shelton also expressed his desire to find someone who could lead the hitting program, connect with players and balance traditional teachings with new age ideologies.
The Pirates still need to announce a new third-base coach. General manager Ben Cherington said that all other members of the coaching staff will return in 2022, though some roles could potentially change.