Perrotto: Why the Pirates Hired Hitting Coach Matt Hague

DALLAS — The Pittsburgh Pirates were very deliberate in their hitting coach search after firing Andy Haines at the end of last season.

The Pirates didn’t decide on Haines’ successor until more than six weeks into the offseason when they hired Matt Hague.

Hague is an interesting hire because he has only one year of major-league experience, serving as the Toronto Blue Jays’ assistant hitting coach last season. However, the Pirates are excited about Hague’s potential and believe he can help turn around an offense that was 23rd in the major leagues in batting average in 2024, 24th in runs, 25th in home runs and 26th in on-base percentage.

What impressed the Pirates the most was the reputation Hague quickly gained with the Blue Jays.

“Probably the thing that pushed it over at the end was feedback from the players,” Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said at the MLB Winter Meetings at the Hilton Anatole.

“We talked to 10 or a dozen players that he had worked with either with the Blue Jays or who have left Toronto, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive about Matt as a coach, a connector, a problem solver — not trying to solve every problem in one certain way – but working with the players and being current on all the tech and training. And the fact that he has some of the dirt in the spikes’ credibility, including in Pittsburgh, was some sort of icing on the cake.”

Hague, 39, was the Pirates’ ninth-round draft pick in 2008 from Oklahoma State and appeared in 33 major-league games with them in the 2012 and 2014 seasons.

Few, if any, jobs in baseball have more volatility than a major-league hitting coach.

Teams cycle through them quickly and Hague will be manager Derek Shelton’s third hitting coach during his five-year tenure, following Rick Eckstein and Haines. Conversely, pitching coach Oscar Marin and bench coach Don Kelly have been members of Shelton’s staff since he replaced Clint Hurdle before the 2020 season.

“It is a hard job, and maybe it’s one of those jobs that just isn’t designed to be a 20-year job anymore,” Cherington said. “But, I think as we went into it, one of the things we kept reminding ourselves is that ultimately, we’re hiring someone for the hitters, not for us. You can get into these hiring processes, no matter what the role is. Certainly, when it comes to major league coaches, we’ve got other people in the front office involved, and certainly Shelty’s involved. We’ve got panels of people involved in everything we can to do their due diligence and assess competencies and all that stuff.

“And if you’re not careful, you can sort of get into a mindset of what’s appealing to me as opposed to this person is for Oneil Cruz and Nick Gonzales, etc. etc. That’s the people you’re trying to serve. I think just trying to remind ourselves of that throughout the process. At the end of the day, yes there are competencies that we’re trying to assess. We have a role in doing that, and there’s a cultural fit, also, that we’re trying to get our hands around. So, we have a job to do to try to do our best to assess that. Ultimately, it’s not me they’re serving. It’s the players.”

The Pirates could use some larger servings of hits and runs in 2025 if they are to break a string of six consecutive losing seasons. They are banking on Hague to get the lineup cooking.