Dyson emerges as a leader
“He’s fun to be out there with doing our outfield drills,” Bryan Reynolds said. “He’s a good presence. He’s been around awhile, so he has that experience. It’ll be good for us.”
While the Pirates lacked many things last season, including a discernible direction and any clue how to stabilize themselves during a miserable second half, the addition of Dyson should check those boxes.
A couple of weeks into his tenure here, his personality also fits with manager Derek Shelton’s desire to create a more laid-back atmosphere.
“He’s a veteran guy who has played on a lot of good teams,” Shelton said of Dyson. “He’s played on a World Series winner. If you spend five minutes around the guy, you see how affable he is and how much he likes to talk. I encouraged him to do that.”
There’s no number to properly quantify how suffocating it felt to be around the Pirates last season, how pretty much nobody felt like they were having fun and how there wasn’t really a veteran presence to keep things light and also speak up when change became necessary.
It’s easy to imagine the Pirates experiencing struggles in 2020 because ... well, it’s baseball. Nobody avoids them. But it’s downright impossible to see this season unfolding like 2019 and Dyson not doing something to affect change for the better.
After all, if players can’t listen to a former 50th round pick who came from nothing and juiced every ounce of baseball out of his 5-foot-10, 165-pound frame, whom can they listen to?
“He’s someone guys in here can emulate,” Keone Kela said. “He has a personality and a work ethic that everyone can gravitate toward and learn from.”
Dyson has been boisterous since the day he arrived. It’s routine to stand in the Pirates clubhouse and hear Dyson without actually seeing him. But the center fielder also has been spending this time learning about the Pirates, how things went down last year and how they might be different in 2020.
“Just listening to the young guys who played here last year, they said it’s totally different already,” Dyson said. “It’s much looser. It’s fun. When you have a manager who takes the collar off your neck, I don’t think a lot of people understand how far that goes with players.”
Dyson is light-hearted and loves to joke around, but he’s also not afraid to hold a teammate’s feet to the fire, the same way veterans did for him when he was younger.
One of those such occurrences actually involved former Pirates catcher Jason Kendall. Back in 2010, Kendall was in his final bigleague season, and Dyson made his MLB debut with Kansas City that September. In one of those games, Kendall saw Dyson in the dugout during the national anthem and lit him up.
“He told me that I was better than what I was showing,” Dyson said. “That sticks with you, being there for your teammates, especially a younger guy. I couldn’t do nothing but respect him because the guy had played so long.”
Kendall recalled the exchange as well. That year, after manager Ned Yost took over, Kendall was told to look after Dyson, and the two became close.
“He was like a little brother to me,” Kendall said. “They told me it was my job to look after him, and I couldn’t be more proud of him. I love that kid. He has an edge a lot of people don’t have. Players should and will pick his brain. He’s perfect for [the Pirates].”
Dyson has certain beliefs on how to establish himself as a team leader — with a big one not drawing undue attention to himself by saying that’s what he’s out to do. It’s more about subtlety. It’s about talking to everyone, young guys included, and making sure there’s an established line of trust.
“You don’t want to be the veteran who guys think is gonna go tell the coaches what’s going on,” Dyson said. “You don’t want to be that guy. When you step into this clubhouse, it should be about the players first.”
At the same time, Dyson also wants to keep it funny. He likes giving reporters a hard time about being in the clubhouse too long. He also has no problem cracking jokes on teammates. Or himself.
“I like to have fun and mingle with people,” Dyson said. “So when they see me and listen to me, they be like, ‘Damn, all the stories I done heard about salty veterans, this ain’t one. This guy’s cool. He’s just having fun. He gives off that energy.’
“When we’re doing defensive drills, I’m probably gonna to say something to get the guys laughing. I’m gonna do something. There’s gonna be something crazy where I mess up the play. It’s gonna be something. You have to have fun out there.”