Prior to the Pirates securing a three-game sweep and a fourth straight victory with a 3-1 win over the Marlins Wednesday afternoon at PNC Park, Ben Cherington discussed quite a few notable topics, including Derek Shelton's future and open positions within the organization's baseball operations department, during his pregame media availability.
First, he gave Shelton a vote of confidence as manager, saying he fully expects him back for the 2025 season, despite an August collapse that turned a potential playoff push into a current last-place standing in the National League Central. There has been a clear lack of success throughout Shelton's five years as manager, a tenure that in all likelihood will include a fifth straight season without a playoff appearance. Still, Shelton showed appreciation for Cherington's show of support during his postgame press conference.
"I'll be the first one to tell you that there are still things I need to be better at, we need to be better at and we need to continue to improve, but the fact that Ben said that is very important to me," Shelton said. "The most important thing for us is we need to continue to focus on winning games and getting better to get to where we want to be because we're not where we want to be. We just came off a sweep and we're playing better baseball and we played better baseball during the Washington series, but ultimately I realize I have to get better and I realize we have to get better."
The Pirates need to be better from a baseball operations standpoint as well. That's why, without fully going into specifics, Cherington alluded to the existence of three open leadership positions within the baseball operations department. One of those positions is that of the director of international scouting, a role Junior Vizcaino has served in since 2017. It was previously reported that the club elected not to renew Vizcaino's contract, as a limited amount of major-league talent has been produced through the Pirates' international efforts. Luis Ortiz and Ji Hwan-Bae are the only two big-league international success stories during Vizcaino's tenure.
"I think first of all, when we talk and when I talk about improvement and constant improvement, that's an entire baseball operations challenge. That's not just the major-league team. Everything we're doing in baseball operations has to be tied back to helping this team win more games, period. Everybody has a slightly different job that goes toward that, but we're all responsible for that," Cherington said this morning. "We got to a point over time that we just believed that in order to move our international scouting operation forward and get better, and ultimately to get more production and more players that can help the Pirates win games, change was necessary. Junior is a good person. Junior worked his tail off. Junior was loyal. I enjoyed working with Junior, but it's a really important area. There's no structural or obvious reason why the Pirates shouldn't be really strong (internationally). We obviously got the facility in the D.R. that's a really good facility. We're gonna invest the dollars we have. We're gonna invest our cap space in that market. We have investment in people and infrastructure around the globe. There's nothing standing in the way of the Pirates being really successful and we just believe we can be more successful. Ultimately, we felt like a change was needed to get there."
The internal change isn't stopping there, though.
According to a source, Sean Ahmed resigned from his position as director of research and development and Will Lawton, the director of pro scouting, is being re-assigned to a different role within the organization. Ahmed, who previously worked for the Cubs prior to being hired by Cherington in 2020, was the leader of the organization's analytics team. Lawton has worked in the organization in some capacity for over 14 years, but has served in the role of director of pro scouting since 2021. Lawton's primary responsibility was to oversee a team of scouts that evaluate talent for the club to acquire, sign and utilize at the major-league level.
A source said these positions have all opened up now because of the employment contract cycle throughout Major League Baseball. The focus over the next couple of weeks will be working toward finding suitable candidates to fill those positions. And while these are significant changes, Cherington wouldn't use the word "overhaul" to describe them.
"Those are three openings and there are different reasons for each of those openings. They just happened to come roughly at the same time," Cherington said. "I do believe that it's an opportunity for us overall in baseball operations to continue to strengthen and improve. I'm excited about that. We've made a good amount of change across baseball operations in the last several years. Change is going to be constant. This is the change that's happening this year."
Regardless of which direction the Pirates go in regards to finding replacements for Vizcaino, Ahmed and Lawton, there is evidently still confidence in the future outlook of the major-league club as it nears the end of 2024 and begins to turn its attention toward 2025.
"I think we're getting better. We're definitely in a much better spot than we have in the last two years with our starting pitching. We're deeper than we have been," Shelton said. "We need to continue to build some things offensively and continue to build that depth because I think a majority of our depth is in our pitching. Every organization has room to grow, but I think the fact that we have starting pitching, that's where we need to build from and we're in a good spot there."
