Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Ben Cherington gave a vote of confidence to Derek Shelton last month, saying he would return in 2025 for his sixth season as manager.
Shelton’s coaching staff, however, is undergoing changes.
Sources confirmed to TribLive that the Pirates dismissed hitting coach Andy Haines and bullpen coach Justin Meccage, who oversaw a pair of position groups that underperformed this season. The Pirates also parted ways with major-league strength and conditioning coach Adam Vish.
The Pirates confirmed the firing of Haines and Meccage on Wednesday.
“Today we announced changes that will be made to our coaching staff. We appreciate the hard work that both Andy and Justin did on behalf of the Pirates and wish them nothing but success,” Cherington said in a statement. “After a thorough assessment, we believe these changes are necessary. More broadly, over the past few months we have assessed every area of baseball operations with a focus on making the needed improvements to build a winning team in Pittsburgh. This work has touched every area of our operations: amateur, international and pro scouting; player development; player performance; R&D and our coaching staff. We are focused on only one thing….to build a winning team.”
Haines completed his third season with the Pirates, who ranked in the bottom third of the majors in most offensive categories this past season. They were 14th out of 15 teams in the National League in hits, strikeouts, batting average (.234) and on-base percentage (.301) and last in slugging percentage (.371) and OPS (.672).
Although Oneil Cruz had his first 20-home run season and made dramatic improvement against left-handed pitchers, and catcher Joey Bart thrived with career bests of 13 homers and 45 RBIs in 80 games after being acquired from the San Francisco Giants, the offensive regression of third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, catcher Henry Davis and outfielder Jack Suwinski were sore spots for the Pirates.
Bothered by back problems, Hayes had the worst offensive season of his career in batting .233/.283/.290. Davis, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2021 MLB Draft, batted .144 with four doubles, one home run and five RBIs in 37 games. Suwinski, who led the team with 26 homers and a .793 OPS and was second with 74 RBIs in 2023, batted .182 with eight doubles, nine homers and 26 RBIs in 88 games before being demoted to the minor leagues at midseason.
Meccage joined the Pirates in 2011, became assistant bullpen coach in 2018 and was promoted to the top spot in 2020. The relief corps added seven-time All-Star Aroldis Chapman on a one-year, $10.5 million contract in the offseason but posted a 4.49 ERA, which ranked fourth-worst in the majors, as it dealt with injuries to fireman Dauri Moreta and lefty Ryan Borucki.
Two-time All-Star closer David Bednar had 23 saves but struggled in high-leverage situations, losing his job in August. Bednar was 3-8 with a 5.77 ERA in 62 appearances and had seven blown saves. The bullpen blowing late leads became a regular occurrence, especially with five one-run losses amid a 10-game losing streak in early August that dropped the Pirates out of wild-card contention.
On his weekly radio show Sunday, Cherington said the bullpen didn’t meet expectations.
“It was an area that we felt could be a real strength coming into the season, and it probably hasn’t been as consistent as we needed it to,” Cherington said. “When you think about what are the things that would have had to have gone well to get into the (postseason), probably a good bullpen was one of them and we probably didn’t quite get there.”
