The Pirates officially announced their coaching staff this morning. Most of the hirings had been previously reported, but the Bucs announced a few new additions. Most notable is the hiring of Thomas Whitsett as an assistant pitching coach under Bill Murphy.
Whitsett has ties to Murphy from the Houston organization. He had coached in the Astros system as a pitching coordinator and was most recently their Triple-A pitching coach in 2024. Whitsett had come through the college ranks after working at the University of Arizona. This is his first job on a big league staff.
Murphy and Whitsett are two of five new hires as Don Kelly enters his first full season as manager. The additions of bench coach Kristopher Negrón and third base coach Tony Beasley were reported last month. Pittsburgh also promoted Triple-A manager Shawn Bowman to the title of MLB field coordinator.
Chris Truby gets the title of infield coach after working with the generic title of major league coach for most of the 2025 season. Matt Hague (hitting coach), Christian Marrera and Jonny Tucker (assistant hitting coaches), Tarrik Brock (first base coach) and Miguel Perez (bullpen coach) are all back in their previous roles.
Framber going to follow Murphy to Pittsburgh
I know a lot of you guys think the Pirates are going to spend and yes they will but they don’t need pitching. They need bats. Still I wished Bill Murphy stayed with houston
after we trade Mitch Keller to the Nationals for Dylan Crews, we’ll need a left handed starting pitcher
BC is looking for oppo taco right handed hitters
It’s getting ugly and at this point I’d be fine with them signing an arm they value and trading from their pitching depth.
Geez didn’t take too long to get this done, no?
We need more “Tom”‘s back
The full-on “Thomas” trend needs to slow down a bit
Great. But it seems like the minors’ coaching and development staffs need the attention. I hope that can happen in this struggling organization. Change of scenery arguments are made all the time about players, but it doesn’t seem like a lot of those players are interested in the “scene” of Pittsburgh baseball. I hope it doesn’t happen, but maybe the change of scenery argument should be applied to the team. But what city that doesn’t already have a team or teams AND that wants an MLB team is a bigger market than Pittsburgh? Moving the team might be akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Pittsburgh needs fans in the seats and an ownership that is willing to spend even small market average and a farm system that can develop players. The lack of attendance hurts the effort as much as the reluctance (or reality) of ownership to spend at or beyond combined revenues. Beginning with the bankruptcy, the Pirates have found themselves in a hole that will be hard to climb out of. The few years in the teens when they were competitive were probably a combination of luck, good drafts, the psychological stimulation of new ownership and renewed hope, but now…..as several reporters have suggested, what good free agent would want to play in Pittsburgh today? Skenes’ cheerleading for free agent signings is very admirable and I hope he can make an impact in that area, but…….my hopes are fading.