In Fitzgerald, though, the Pirates have built a unique bridge between backgrounds. Most quants spend much of the season sequestered in the equivalent of what the Astros call their “nerd cave” — an office from which analysts periodically emerge to interact with coaches but rarely to travel with the team. Fitzgerald, meanwhile, makes most road trips: If the Pirates are playing, he’s almost always at the park.
You absolutely, positively should go read Ben Lindbergh’s piece at Grantland about Mike Fitzgerald and the unique way that the Pirates’ front office and coaching staff collaborate on the implementation of sabermetric ideas.
I actually sort of talked about this a little bit on Twitter yesterday afternoon, but I strongly suspect that one of the advantages that the Pirates have over other baseball teams is that Clint Hurdle and the coaching staff are so willing to talk to and listen to the front office about non-traditional ideas, while the front office is absolutely willing to take suggestions from the coaching staff as to where to look for places to gain advantages. I suspect that not many managers would welcome an MIT grad onto their road crew and Clint Hurdle deserves more credit than I can possibly give him for doing stuff like this.
Whenever I see situations like what happened in Houston with Bo Porter, I become even more thankful to have someone like Hurdle managing the Pirates. I don’t agree with or understand every decision he makes, but I don’t have to understand or agree with them. I feel pretty confident in saying that I think that very little of what Hurdle does is thoughtless or reflexive or slavishly devoted to baseball traditions without consideration of their long-term ramifications, and that makes me feel more confident as a fan in him as the manager.
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