Why Jim Tracy and his staff may make a difference

Jim Tracy hasn't managed a game in black and gold yet, but I'll admit that I've been hard on him to this point. My review of his performance at Piratefest was less than glowing and lots of the stuff that comes out of his mouth terrifies me. I don't buy the crap about "Tracyball" and how it will help us win games. Still, the more I think about it, the more I think he might have a different type of effect on the team.

The problem that I think exists with the current perception of Tracy, both by myself and by his other critics, is the expectation of a baseball manager to be a football coach. When we watched the Steelers pull off that shocking win over the Colts 5 weeks ago, there were a number of things that even a casual fan could point to that Cowher, LeBeau, and Whisenhunt had done differently than in the mid-November shellacking the Colts gave us, things that had an immediate effect on the outcome of a game. The difference a baseball manager makes is more behind the scenes. You hear a lot of people say that a good manager may only win you 5-10 extra games throughout the season and that's probably true if you're only considering in-game moves. Then again, Ozzie Guillen was probably the worst manager in the American League last year if you only considered in-game moves. The things a manager does behind the scenes are things that go unnoticed, because they're the things that fans and writers expect to see happen.

Under Lloyd McClendon, the Pirates were a terrible fundamental baseball team. You would get the impression watching them that no one had ever gone over situations with them, and when a stupid mistake was made the atitude was that the player should've known better. Maybe that's true, but when the mistake is made again it means that someone didn't address the problem. When Ryan Doumit repeatedly runs the bases like a 12 year old, it means that no one's helping him. When Daryle Ward never, ever knows what to do with the ball when it's hit sharply to him with runners on first and third, it means that no one's gone out of their way to teach him. When you end up with two runners on third base and both of them get tagged out (and it happens twice in a season) it means no one has ever gone over what to do in that situation. Sure, they're major league baseball players, they've played baseball all their lives, and they really do know what to do. They also aren't perfect. The job of the coaches is to help make sure they are, for the third base coach to call to Doumit, "Two outs, Ryan" when he's on second, because even though 99 times out of a hundred he knows that, there's one time something else will be on his mind and he'll forget. If you run enough infield drills in the spring, Jose Castillo will never forget to cover second base when Jack Wilson snares a flare and looks to catch a runner napping. These aren't huge things, they're just things that need to be done.

So why do I think Tracy and his staff will be different? By Monday after the pitchers and catchers had reported I'd heard about changes he'd made with a handful of pitchers, something you never heard about Spin Williams doing. I'm sure they were nothing major, just tweaking the bad habits guys get into while while throwing in the offseason without a pitching coach. Reading Jim Sullivan's reports on OnlyBucs he talks about how Colbourn will never have four guys throw at once because he can't watch four. I can only assume that a statement like that means that the previous regime had no problem letting four guys throw at once. A day later Sullivan mentions that watching Tracy do more than simply observe things other than batting practice is quite a departure from the previous regime. My uncle had told me earlier this week that he had heard Dejan said something similar on the radio, that the level of instruction going on at Spring Training was something he'd never previously seen. A friend of the same uncle that went down to Spring Training this past week relayed back that under McClendon, everyone would work on a drill until the horn was blown, at which point they moved on. Under Tracy everyone works on a drill until they get it right, then the horn is blown. He said that McClendon would be no where to be found and you would barely know he was even at camp, where as everyone knows where Tracy is at all times.

It might seem reasonable that the players would be bugged by that, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Dejan's article yesterday and in general the entire team's positive response thus far in the Spring indicate otherwise, as far as I can tell. I'm not arguing that Tracy is a great or even a good manager or that his coaches are great or good, it would just seem that the more I'm hearing, the more I think that previous regime was really that bad. Imagine the difference between the Pirates of this year and last year if they do the little things right. I don't mean the things everyone talks about like hitting and running or bunting the runner over, I mean always knowing what to do with the ball when it's hit to them, running the bases right, catching those tweener pop-ups, things you'd expect a major league team to be able to do, but things that get messed up if they aren't worked on. It may not seem like a lot, but think about all the times last year you kicked the wall or threw the remote when the Pirates seemed incapable of playing fundamental baseball you'd expect from a Little League team. If Tracy and his staff really are teaching, it might be a worry of the past.