Ken Rosenthal is reporting this morning that the Texas Rangers will hire Jeff Banister, the Pirates’ bench coach, to be their new manager. To be perfectly honest, ever since Ben Lindbergh published this story at Grantland about the unique and effective way that the Pirates’ front office and coaching staff communicate, I’ve been expecting Pirate coaches to start being poached by other clubs. Banister is always mentioned as being involved with the infield positioning alongside Hurdle and he’s the guy mentioned as being on the phone with Mike Fitzgerald (the stats guy the Pirates have travel with the team) in Lindbergh’s article, and so it makes sense that any front office that’s had trouble communicating with their coaching staff would be immediately attracted to someone from the Pirates’ coaching staff. It wasn’t a surprise when he almost got Houston’s job a few weeks ago, and it’s not a surprise at all that Texas wants him, especially given that Texas was Clint Hurdle’s last stop before Pittsburgh.
From a less analytical perspective, it’s just really nice to see Banister get a managing job somewhere. He’s been in the Pirate orbit and around the Pirates for forever; he got his cup of coffee with the 1991 club (he is the quintessential cup-of-coffee guy; he pinch hit once and got a hit and then was sent back down and never came back up), he started coaching in the minor league system after that, and he’s never left. If you remember way back to the ugly days at the end of the 2010 season, he and Ray Searage were promoted to the big league coaching staff with John Russell still managing after Gary Varsho and Dave Kerwin Joe Kerrigan were fired. The Pirates actually interviewed Banister for the managerial job and I think he was probably the club’s second choice, had Clint Hurdle elected to manage the Mets instead of the Pirates. I thought it was strange after that when the team insisted on keeping Searage and Banister on Hurdle’s staff, effectively not letting him fill two of the most important coaching spots, but to Hurdle’s credit he never even mentioned it. Four years later, it’s obvious why it all played out the way that it did.
Banister helped transition a bunch of minor leaguers he’d worked with as the minor league field coordinator to the big leagues, he and Hurdle worked together to create a more analytically driven coaching staff, and now it only seems fair that he gets a chance to go off and manage his own team. The Pirates will miss him, but he deserves it. Since he was very clearly in demand this October, it’s a little hard not to view this hiring as a bit of validation of the Pirates’ approach. That’s a small consolation after the way this season ended, but I suppose it’s a bit of consolation nonetheless.
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