Just, make it stop. Please.
There’s incompetence, and then there’s cowardice. Cowardice is worse.
Incompetence is bringing on Andy Haines. Cowardice is watching what Haines has done these last two seasons and having not already pulled the plug.
Continuing to do nothing approaching the halfway point of the season is a choice. It is as transparent of a choice as there could possibly be. A choice fueled by fear of incurring any risk at all. The Pittsburgh Pirates continue to hold on to the hope that things will get better on their own. Andy Haines’ tenure has become a sunk-cost fallacy.
This is a more talented roster than we have seen previously. However, the way they have approached managing and coaching it marks rock bottom for an organization that constantly spews how much it wants to get better but continues to regress at the Major League level.
Here’s what Connor Joe told reporters after the game Sunday
“I think if we knew the answer, right, we’d be doing something different,”
It is Haines’ job to give those answers. If he has none, then he has no business being the hitting coach of an MLB team.
The Pirates have sat and watched as player after player has had their plate approach disintegrate, as they take pitches they have no business taking under Haines’ idea of plate discipline.
This is no longer a conversation about Haines failing to make Josh Vanmeter or Yoshi Tsutsugo better. Although it should be noted that not a single one of the various castoffs the team employed last year got better.
Henry Davis is here, and Haines is now his hitting coach.
Sound familiar? This was written and published on this site on June 27, 2023, almost a year ago. Not a single thing has changed, and it still rings true.
My fears expressed in that article have come to pass.
On Friday, Davis, who was slashing an abysmal .162/.280/.206 was optioned back to Triple-A.
After being an exceptional hitter at every single level of play he’s encountered, suddenly Davis couldn’t hit.
Recent comments from both Derek Shelton and Haines show the team is simply divorced from reality and running from accountability.
Two quotes stuck out to me as particularly divorced from reality.
“It’s the definition of a numbers game and staying the course through to a process you know can have success over time,”
“That’s not accurate,” [When asked about whether the Pirates are telling hitters to see a lot of pitches] that’s never messaged that way. We never practiced that way.”
Just, wow.
OK, first thing’s first, how exactly do you know this “process” works? This is Haines’ sixth consecutive season as hitting coach of a Major league team. Here’s where his teams have ranked in runs and wRC+ year by year.
- 2019 – 18th in runs with 769, 14th in wRC+ with 97
- 2020 – 26th in runs with 247, 25th in wRC+ with 90
- 2021 – 12th in runs with 738, 23rd in wRC+ with 92
(Fired by the Milwaukee Brewers in November of 2021, hired by the Pirates)
- 2022 – 27th in runs with 591, 28th in wRC+ with 83
- 2023 – 22nd in runs with 692, 25th in wRC+ with 90
- 2024 – 24th in runs with 120, 25th in wRC+ with 86
If Haines has knowledge that his “process” can “have success” it certainly isn’t from first-hand experience. In six years as hitting coach he hasn’t had any “success” with it.
The entire roster has turned over since Haines got here and the results just haven’t improved. We would rightfully laugh at a player if they said they hit 40 homers when their career high was 15 and this is essentially what Haines has done here with this remark.
Just delusional.
OK, now onto that second one. Hang with me here, just throw what we all know to be true, that the Pirates have placed an emphasis on working the count and that it’s even affected the way they scout and acquire players, out the window.
Ignore the trades for players who do exactly that like Jack Suwinski or the free agent targets of players like Daniel Vogelbach. For just a moment take Haines’ words here at face value. It might make him look even worse.
You mean to tell me that in six years as a hitting coach in this league, you’ve never gotten a group of hitters to execute what you’re actually trying to tell them?
Here’s where Haines’ groups rank there
- 2019 – 7th highest strike looking percentage at 27.2, 5th in strikeouts looking with 356
- 2020 – 7th highest strike looking percentage at 28.5, 4th in strikeouts looking with 134
- 2021 – 10th highest strike looking percentage at 26.2, 9th in strikeouts looking with 346
- 2022 – 1st in strike looking percentage at 28.4, 2nd in strikeouts looking with 373
- 2023 – 7th highest strike looking percentage at 27.2, 3rd in strikeouts looking with 384
- 2024 – 5th highest strike looking percentage at 28.6, 1st in strikeouts looking with 93
“We never practiced that way” simply isn’t any kind of defense because that’s what the results have been.
Now onto Shelton, who had this to say when asked at his post-game press conference about what was being done behind the scenes with the hitting instruction
“There’s a lot of work going on. We’re going through a tough stretch right now. We just have to keep working and build ourselves out of it.”
Yeah, “tough stretch” is one way to put it but how about unacceptable stretch? “keep working” “build ourselves out of it” I can’t with this. I just can’t.
These kinds of results, this kind of talk, just aren’t suitable so deep into a rebuild. The ‘keep working to get better at baseball everyday’ stuff has worn thin.
There’s just no accountability at all. They’ve gotten comfortable with thinking they’re infallible. That it’ll work eventually, and they’ll be proven right about their development processes and philosophy.
To them, being proven right is more important than winning the games in front of them.
Where is general manager Ben Cherington in all of this?
He’s right there with them, asleep at the wheel drifting right into oncoming traffic.