Maile’s value on offense could be plus

The Pirates did not add catcher Luke Maile this offseason for his offense. Sure, they figured he would improve upon his .151 average from 2019. That unsightly .440 OPS likely would trend upward, too.

But they signed the 29year-old to a one-year, $900,000 contract in December because of the way he plays defense and handles pitchers, something manager Derek Shelton observed when Maile was with the Tampa Bay Rays and both Shelton and general manager Ben Cherington were with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Thus far, Maile has been everything the Pirates anticipated getting from a defensive standpoint, but could he potentially contribute more with the bat? He thinks so.

“I haven’t felt this good in a long time,” Maile said Sunday on a Zoom call with local reporters. “It’s obviously early, but I’m pretty encouraged with the way I’m swinging the bat right now.”

Listed at 6 feet 3, 225 pounds and swinging from the right side of the plate, Maile has a pretty good idea how a better swing feels, although he joked that he probably would struggle to articulate it. “I’m not a huge mechanical guy,” Maile said.

But, he added, some of the telltale signs are there. His legs are more involved. He’s shorter to the ball. In the past, Maile said after he signed, his size and a tendency to swing out of his shoes has gotten him into trouble.

“I just feel like I have a swing that I remember doing when I was 5, 6, 7, 8 years old,” Maile said. “I think that’s probably the best way I can describe it.”

The Pirates likely will take it, even if how they’ll divide reps between Jacob Stallings, Maile and potentially John Ryan Murphy remains to be seen.

It wasn’t long ago that Maile was a competent offensive option behind the plate, a former Kentucky Wildcats player producing 2.1 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) per FanGraphs in 2018. That’s the same number for Atlanta’s Tyler Flowers in 2019.

That Maile has looked more like that guy thus far is something Shelton — Tampa Bay’s hitting coach then — actually attributed to the Pirates’ current hitting coach, Rick Eckstein.

“It just means Eck’s doing a good job with him and I was his hitting coach for a bunch of years and didn’t do a good job with him,” Shelton joked.

“I think that’s probably the big thing on it. I think he’s in his legs a little bit more, and he’s had some good swings right from the start.”

Defense always has come fairly easy to Maile, who finished 15th (2019) and 13th (2018) in Fielding Runs Above Average in each of the past two seasons, according to Baseball Prospectus.

While the Pirates seemingly have been impressed with Maile’s swing — he homered Friday in an intrasquad game — he has been equally as impressed with the pitchers he has been catching.

Many have upped their velocity since spring training, Maile said. Those who didn’t have crispness to what they’ve been throwing.

“Pretty much across the board, everybody has impressed me with how ready they’ve looked,” Maile said.

During quarantine time, Maile actually was able to see a few Pirates pitchers throw, as a couple of times a week he made the drive from his Palm Harbor, Fla., home to Pirate City in Bradenton, also working out himself.

Nothing was terribly intense, but the sessions gave Maile enough familiarity that he was able to quickly feel comfortable on the defensive side. Now, the next task will be staying compact in his swing and adding value from an offensive standpoint as well.

“Happy to see the work that he put in between [spring trainings] 1.0 and 2.0 has really worked,“Shelton said. ”He’s had nice swings, and he’s done a nice job behind the plate.”

Quiet time

What does Maile think about having no fans in the ballpark? He doesn’t believe it’ll feel real until the first game of the season, but he has noticed a huge difference thus far.

A truck-sized difference.

“Every time I move inside to a hitter, it feels like a truck’s rolling through the infield,” Maile said. “It’s like you’re not really invisible anymore as a catcher, so I’m trying to get set later [with] targets a lot more often than I otherwise would, because whether it’s right or it’s wrong, you feel kind of naked out there without having that white noise in the background.

“So it will be interesting, but we’ll make adjustments.”