Per a report from Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pirates are slated to hire former Yankees farmhand Radley Haddad as their Major League Field Coordinator, a wide-ranging role that includes game-planning, practice design, workload management, and liaising between team staff members. You can read Mackey’s account of the job here.
The move should complete manager Derek Shelton’s 2022 staff. Haddad will replace Mike Rabelo, who will shift to a new role as the Pirates’ third base coach in 2022, where he’ll take over for the departed Joey Cora. The Pirates also hired former Brewers hitting coach Andy Haines to take over the position left vacant when the Bucs parted ways with former hitting coach Rick Eckstein in August.
After going undrafted following his senior year at Butler, Haddad caught on with the Yankees, eventually logging two plate appearances at Double-A Trenton in 2016. A glove-first catcher, the native of Carmel, Indiana posted a combined .203/.300/.262 line in 313 plate appearances across four minor-league seasons. He retired in the spring of 2017, when he accepted an offer to become a bullpen catcher and coaching assistant with the big-league club (reporting by Dana Hunsinger Benbow of the Indianapolis Star).
Now 31, Haddad will take on more responsibility in Pittsburgh. Though the Pirates are not expected to contend in 2022 after finishing 34 games behind the first-place Brewers in 2021, they do have an elite farm system headed by catcher Henry Davis, the first overall pick in the 2021 draft.
Seems to be popular to go with younger team managing personnel in MLB right now.
Cherington has done well restocking the pirates farm system, he deserves credit for that. But that major league pitching staff is atrocious. They just signed Quintana off the street and he very well might get the ball opening day.
Reminds me of the old Branch Rickey line after he traded MLB homer leader Ralph Kiner away. “We can lose 100 games with or without you”. The next year or two are going to be continuations of the left-over Nutting/Huntington train wreck. That’s fine, as long as fans see the Nutting/Cherington era as one of promise. Just hope the kids progress with solid instruction
I wonder what will happen with Joey Cora? Maybe Boston to be with little brother Alex.
Otherwise, good for the Pirates, building some framework for future success, hopefully.
That’s pretty damn cool position
I realize the game is changing, but doesn’t it seem like managers are asked to carry less and less of the load than they used to? So now you have 2 hitting coaches, 2 pitching coaches, your base coaches, a bullpen coach, a bench coach, a field coordinator, usually an infield/outfield coach, baserunning coach ( I know all teams are different and some guys cover multiple roles) , and in some cases, the lineup and bullpen decisions are coming from upstairs.