SARASOTA, Fla. – Daniel Vogelbach laughed when asked if he had ever done it before this spring.
“I don’t know, man,” he said, still grinning. “I just hit where he puts me in the lineup.”
A 6-foot, 250 pound first baseman with exit velocities that are Oneil Cruz-ian, Vogelbach profiles more as a middle of the order hittter. There’s a good chance that’s how Derek Shelton will end up utilizing him this season too.
And while you shouldn’t always take too much away from spring training lineups, Shelton has written Vogelbach’s name at the top of the order the last two times he’s played.
“He gets on base. He sees pitches,” Shelton explained after Vogelbach’s first appearance batting at the top of the order on Thursday. “I just like to tinker and make sure you guys have something to talk about.”
Vogelbach’s performance out of the leadoff spot was one of the few highlights in the Pirates’ 14-5 loss to the Orioles at Ed Smith Stadium Saturday night, picking up two hits and a walk in his four trips to the plate. If this is an audition, and not just a way to get him at-bats, the unconvential move could make sense.
If the goal of the leadoff hitter is to get on base, Vogelbach did that at a .363 clip in his two years with the Brewers. In those at-bats where he didn’t get on, he was usually at least pesky. Vogelbach only had 258 plate appearances, but saw 1,178 pitches. Out of all hitters with at least 100 plate appearances last year, his 4.55 pitches per PA was the best in baseball.
“I thought last year, he was producing very well offensively,” hitting coach Andy Haines, who worked with Vogebach with the Brewers last year, said. “Some of the surface level numbers don't really show how valuable he was.”
The Pirates had liked Vogelbach for a while, and Haines’ endorsement of him played a role in them ultimately signing him. Vogelbach signed for $1 million with a club option attached. If the option is picked up, the team will actually retain him for another year on top of that through arbitration.
For Haines, reuniniting with his hitting coach was definitely a selling point.
“Hainesy is a special person,” Vogelbach told me. “There are a lot of good hitting coaches around, but Hainesy truly cares about you as a human being. He’ll never say no. He works super, super hard. He cares a ton. That’s hard to find. That goes a long way.”
Haines is a believer in trying to figure out what a hitter’s best version of himself is. For Vogelbach, it’s easy: The first half of 2019, where he was an All-Star for the Mariners. He went deep 21 times with a .375 on-base percentage and .505 slugging leading up to the All-Star game, but tailed off in the second half, reaching the 30 home run plateu but posting juyst a .626 OPS over the second half.
The Mariners got discouraged and waived him early on in the 2020 season after a slow start.
Vogelbach felt he was pressing. In Milwaukee, he started being more patient at the plate, emphasizing home run balls are pitched, not hit. The OBP went up, but the power dropped, hitting only nine homers in what was essentially half a season’s workload, though there was nagging left hamstring injury that sidelined him for a good chunk of the season.
“You have to hit the mistakes,” Vogelbach said. “If they’re not giving you stuff to hit, you take your walk… I think if you stay in the moment and take it pitch by pitch, you’re gonna end the year where you want to be.”
That upbeat attitude is apparent when you spend anytime around Vogelbach. His locker is sandwiched right between Bryan Reynolds and Ben Gamel – a friend from their Mariner days – but when he’s in the locker room, he’s usually elsewhere, getting to know his new teammates, usually with a joke and a smile, even through language barriers like with Cruz and Yoshi Tsutsugo.
"It must be his personality," Tsutsugo said through interpreter Brian Tobin. "He gets along with everybody."
“It’s something I pride myself in, being a good teammate,” Vogelbach said. “I think being the new guy on the block, it’s my job to get to know people. On the field, off the field, to be yourself. If you do that, I think people will respect it.”
After bouncing around in the shortened 2020 season and the injured list in 2021, this year offers him a chance for some stability.
Even if it’s batting first.
“I’ll be ready for anything.”
MORE FROM THE GAME
• Some really quick notes from the game, since a 14-5 spring loss to the Orioles is probably not worth chronicling fully: Sam Howard and Austin Brice got lit up again, hurting their changes for opening day spots (though Howard did have an inside track coming into camp). Tsutsugo had three hits, and Anthony Alford and Canaan Smith-Njigba went back-to-back, with the latter nearly hitting it over the batter's eye in center.
• Before the game, the Pirates optioned right-hander Roansy Contreras to Class AAA Indianapolis, and right-handers Yerry De Los Santos, Enmanuel Mejia and Hunter Stratton and lefty Blake Weiman were reassigned to minor-league camp.
After the game, they optioned Rodolfo Castro to Class AAA Indianapolis.
The Pirates currently have 47 players left in camp.
• I'll be parcelling out what Haines said over several stories rather than just one big one, but he said something interesting that should be singled out on its own. On why he doesn't like the word "change" for hitters.
"I will never use the word change, because I think that insinuates a terrifying word for everyone. There's no changes. Your best swing is inside of you. It is. It's not coming from somewhere else. So we're just trying to chisel away. Add, subtract. We're just trying to get the best version of [themselves]."