Pittsburgh Pirates News: Derek Shelton Hired as Manager

The Pittsburgh Pirates have finally found their new manager for the upcoming season.  After a long process, Derek Shelton was announced as the new manager.

Going into the offseason, the biggest question mark for the Pittsburgh Pirates was who would be managing the team going forward.  Clint Hurdle was fired at the end of the season and the interview process started not long after.

However, the Pittsburgh Pirates ended up having a complete front office makeover and had to find a new Team President and General Manager.  So the team took a couple of weeks to bring in new President Travis Williams along with new General Manager Ben Cherington.  Obviously, this put the managers’ search on hold.

Before all of this occurred, Twins bench coach Derek Shelton seemed to be the lead candidate.  However, they talked to multiple other coaching candidates as well.  When the front office change over happened it was reported that Ben Cherington was actually quite pleased with the manager search by the previous regime.

Under Cherington, it was reported that the finalists were Derek Shelton, Rays assistant Matt Quatraro, and Athletics assistant Mark Kotsay.  Then yesterday, it was reported that it was down to Shelton and Quatraro.  Well today, we got our official answer on who the next manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates would be. The Pittsburgh Pirates announced on Twitter that Shelton would be the new manager:

"“The Pirates have hired Derek Shelton as our 41st Manager of the organization. Shelton has 15 years of coaching experience and spent the last two seasons as the bench coach of the Minnesota Twins.”"

Shelton was the best candidate in my opinion.  He hs worked in baseball for a long time and has worked with a few different small market teams including the Indians, the Rays, and the Twins.  Also, he spent 2018 with the Blue Jays working alongside Cherington.

Shelton is most notable for developing young, emerging hitters.  He has worked in a lot of small markets and in doing so has worked with a lot of young players.  Last year he led a younger Minnesota Twins team to hit the most home runs ever in a season. Also, he was able to get players like Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria to reach their full offensive potentials.

Derek Shelton has a lot of experience and makes a lot of sense for this club.  The Bucs are a small market team with a lof young players, something Shelton has a lot of experience in dealing with.  Hopefully, he and Cherington can use their past experience together to get the Pittsburgh Pirates back on track.