Perrotto: Next Pirates Hitting Coach Will Have Lot of Work to Do

There has been little news on the Pittsburgh Pirates’ hitting coach search.

It will be interesting to see what kind of coach the Pirates hire after firing Andy Haines at the end of this past season.

Will they hire a physicist? Or perhaps a data scientist? Hopefully, for the players’ sake, the new hire will be someone who feels that hitting is as much art as science and that a hitter’s mindset is as important as the analytical data provided.

If the players decided, they would want a hitting coach with a simple philosophy.

The consensus among the players I talked to late in the season is they had information overload when they stepped into the batter’s box. They were so mindful of working counts that they lost some of their aggressiveness and took too many hittable pitches.

That might be an oversimplification but too many players seemed uncomfortable at the plate.

Whoever is hired as the hitting coach will have a lot of work. The Pirates’ offense was bad last season when they went 76-86 to duplicate their 2023 record and were knocked out of contention in August by a 10-game losing streak.

The Pirates finished near the bottom of the major leagues in every meaningful offensive category, including batting average (23^rd), runs (24^th), home runs (25^th), on-base percentage (26^th) and on-base-plus-slugging (27^th). Many players must improve under the new hitting coach’s tutelage.

Chief among them is Henry Davis, who has been overmatched in parts of two seasons in the major leagues. His slash line is .191/.283/.307 despite being the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 amateur draft. He has hit just eight home runs in 377 plate appearances while striking out 114 times.

Except for a two-home run game against the great Shohei Ohtani last season, Davis has shown few signs of being a competent big-league player.

Jack Suwinski is another player who needs an overhaul after going from hitting 26 home runs in 2023 to spending the last two months of the 2024 season at Triple-A Indianapolis. In 88 big-league games this year, Suwinski punched out 79 times in 277 trips to the plate with a .182 batting average and nine home runs.

Bryan De La Cruz will be another project if the Pirates decide to go through the arbitration process with him. De La Cruz was acquired from the Miami Marlins at the trade deadline to boost the Pirates’ playoff hopes but instead hurt them by slashing .200/.220/.294 with three home runs, 52 strikeouts and just four walks over 168 plate appearances.

Better health should mean better production for Ke’Bryan Hayes in 2025. However, he will likely need some form of confidence boost following a season in which he batted .233/.283/.290 with four homers in 396 plate appearances.

The list doesn’t end there, but you get the idea. Whoever the Pirates hire has their work cut out for them.