Tucker humble, driven in big season
Shortstop battle takes focus for 24-year-old
BRADENTON, Fla. — As unintentional or harmless as it might have been, Cole Tucker made headlines this offseason, the type of thing that tends to happen when you’re photographed alongside a Hollywood actress who has more than 40 million Instagram followers.
Yes, Tucker and “High School Musical” star Vanessa Hudgens are officially dating, but the outgoing Pirates shortstop soon hopes to make headlines for a different reason — by becoming the starter at his natural position.
“I’m going out there and trying to win the job every day, doing my work, staying prepared and staying strong,” Tucker said of the ongoing battle with Kevin Newman and Erik Gonzalez. “Just trying to rake, so I don’t give them an option.”
As for the Hudgens thing, Tucker did address it, although he made a point to say he doesn’t want any sort of special treatment.
“She’s cool. She’s awesome. I love her,” Tucker said. “But I don’t want it to be like, ‘Cole’s dating Vanessa, whatever.’ I don’t want to be treated any differently than Mitch [Keller] having his wife come down or [Ke’Bryan Hayes] having his girlfriend come down. [Hudgens] is great. She’ll be around this year. It is what it is. I appreciate you guys being so cool about all that.”
This can’t possibly be an easy dynamic for Tucker, although give the 24-year-old credit for keeping his head screwed on straight. It would probably be easy for Tucker to care more about a Hollywood lifestyle or act only semi-interested in baseball, but that’s hardly what has occurred.
This offseason has been big for Tucker, arguably the biggest of his career, and it traces back to an end-of-season meeting in 2020 with general manager Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton.
Tucker saw 30 games in the outfield and made 28 starts, his first substantive
innings away from the infield. He fared pretty well, too.
But as the Pirates assessed their options for 2021 and beyond, they thought it would be best for Tucker to return to shortstop, where his athleticism and excitable personality can absolutely become assets.
“I love his personality,” Shelton said. “I love the fact that he’s energetic, that he never has a bad day. … I think that’s important for all people, but for a young kid to have it, I think it’s awesome.”
The outfield cameo may have even helped Tucker, who said he enjoyed the different perspective he received on cutoff throws. The whole thing “opened up my vision of the field” and had Tucker thinking of himself as almost some type of quarterback.
But when talking about Tucker, the issue isn’t what he’s capable of doing in the field. He’s more than fine at shortstop and probably serviceable in center or right, too. The biggest question is whether he’ll produce enough offense and do it consistently.
In 2019, the year Tucker made his MLB debut, he hit just .211 in 56 games (159 plate
appearances) and endured a 22-game stretch in May where he batted .097. Tucker has struck out 71 times in 275 career plate appearances or 25.8%. Last season, his average exit velocity was just 83.1 mph, 10th-lowest among big leaguers with at least 50 batted-ball events.
At the same time, Tucker has hit in stretches — a .706 OPS in his fist 10 MLB games, 7 hits in 13 at-bats before he was optioned to Class AAA later that season and an .846 OPS over his final 10 games (five starts) in 2019. Last year, Tucker enjoyed a two-week stretch in August where he played regularly and hit over .300.
“I’ve had spurts in my big-league career where I’m really good for a little bit of time, everything is synced up and under control, and I’m hitting the ball hard all over the place. That’s really fun,” Tucker said. “When I’m not, it’s not fun to watch, and it’s not fun to do.”
To fix the inconsistency in his swing, Tucker said he has been focused on his stability and controlling his body in the batter’s box. Hitting fastballs also has been a big thing for Tucker’s timing, with
the Arizona native believing he’ll then be able to adjust to off-speed.
“It’s about me being able to go and have the consistent at-bats that I expect and everyone’s expecting me to have,” Tucker said. “It comes down to controlling myself and being in an athletic position for my swing to show up.”
Showing up was something that Tucker did extraordinarily well this offseason. In this case, it was alongside Hudgens, as the two were spotted holding hands and hugging outside of Canyon Country Store — a rustic and artsy café outside of Los Angeles — while thinking they were being sneaky.
But now, Tucker is eager to shift his attention back to baseball and perform well enough so that beginning a relationship with a movie star was only one of the notable things he did this offseason.
“I really want to win the shortstop job. That’s no secret,” Tucker said. “I’m excited for games to start because that’s when you learn so much. That’s when people can really separate themselves. I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.”
BRADENTON, Fla. — Chad Kuhl certainly has started more important games.
Plenty that will last longer than this shortened affair.
A few coming outside of Xbox or PlayStation, too.
But as the Pirates look to open their Grapefruit League season Sunday against the Baltimore Orioles at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, it will be the 28-year-old right hander who last season came back from Tommy John surgery to get the ball.
The start was not some sort of motivational carrot, manager Derek Shelton insisted. It really wasn’t anything beyond following instructions handed out by pitching coach Oscar Marin and bullpen Justin Meccage, who Shelton said have controlled who pitches and when in the first few weeks of spring training.
“Oscar told me he was going to pitch,” Shelton said. “[Marin] and [Meccage] set everything up, so, yeah, pitching at least through the first probably 20 games of spring training is all dictated based on work and need. [Kuhl] is pitching because Oscar said so.”
While Shelton typically won’t describe much in the way his lineup or workflow ahead of time, the following pitchers threw live batting practice on the same day as Kuhl and theoretically could be used: Mitch Keller, Tyler Anderson, Wil Crowe, Sam Howard, Geoff Hartlieb, Shea Spitzbarth, Carson Fulmer, James Marvel, Nick Mears and Clay Holmes.
Kuhl went 2-3 with a 4.27 ERA in 11 games (nine starts) last year. He struck out 44 in 46⅓ innings while throwing a greater volume of spin pitches. This spring, Kuhl said he’s trying to use his two-seam fastball more, so you can probably expect to see some of that in the inning or two Kuhl will work.
Changes coming
The game is scheduled to last seven innings, but there’s no guarantee it actually will go all seven. Major League Baseball sent out a memo Friday reminding teams of the new on-field protocols for spring training, which state that games could be shortened if both managers agree.
This applies only to games through March 13. After that, games until the end of spring training can be shortened from nine to seven innings. Shelton said he had yet to chat with anyone from the Orioles to see what they wanted to do.
Clubs looking to modify a game’s scheduled length must notify the commissioner’s
office before 5 p.m. the day before the game. Spring training games also can end in a tie.
Lastly, innings this spring can end before three outs are recorded — following a plate appearance — provided the pitcher has thrown at least 20 pitches in the inning.
“It’s a kind of an old-school, minor league, extended spring training thing where you just roll the innings,” Shelton said. “Actually, I think it’s a great rule. I would bet that if you asked all 30 managers, they wish it would have gone in five years ago.”
The reasons for that are obvious. Not only are teams trying to travel with fewer players and limit exposure because of COVID-19, but nobody wants to get hurt. Once everybody has gotten enough work, just call it.
Which is why Shelton said he expects shortened games to possibly become the norm in spring, at least during the second half.
“I would anticipate — and this is a total guess, so don’t hold me to it — that like every fourth day you would play a nine-inning
game, but the rest of them are probably seven-inning games, just because of volume early on,” said Shelton, who did not clarify whether this would be the same for seven and five innings early on. “The other thing is you don’t have the 25-30 minor league kids who are in camp that you can use on the backside of games. I think you’re going to see a lot of teams doing it, not only for pitching, but for position player volume early on.”
Extension announced
The Pirates and Entercom Friday announced a “multi-year radio broadcast and contract” extension that will keep games on KDKA-FM (93.7) while also expanding the team’s broadcast footprint.
As a result, Entercom now will air all Pirates weekday afternoon games on KDKA News Radio 100.1 FM and KDKA-AM (1020, allowing The Fan to stick with normal drive-time programming.
(There are a few exceptions for biggerdeal games such as opening day, the home opener or competitive/meaningful contests
down the stretch.)
Entercom has been the Pirates flagship station since 2012.
Besides normal game programming, Entercom will use Pirates content to promote its newly acquired FM station, 100.1 FM.
Frazier delayed
Adam Frazier missed a second consecutive day of team workouts thanks to a minor groin issue. The second baseman did, however, hit by himself inside.
“He has a slight groin thing that we will be very conservative with,” Shelton said of Frazier. “It’s nothing that’s anything, but it’s the first week of spring training. Definitely err on the side of conservation.”
Shelton said outfielder Dustin Fowler, whom the Pirates acquired for cash Wednesday, was going through intake testing and should be on the field in a couple of days.
“Every one of these guys, there’s a memory. We all learn lessons different ways. And the one I keep learning — it seems like every week now — is take nothing for granted.” — Former Pirates manager Clint Hurdle
The affection engulfs Clint Hurdle’s voice as he appraises the list of those recently gone — childhood idols who became teammates and opponents, teammates and opponents who became acquaintances, acquaintances who became dear friends.
The 1970s memories surface fast for the man who has spent his entire adult life in baseball as player and manager. Bob Watson, whom he first met while serving as a batboy for the Class A Cocoa Astros. Claudell Washington: “We used to just laugh.” Bob Gibson, as nice off the field as he was menacing on it. Lindy McDaniel’s big windup. The distinctive way Joe Morgan pumped his elbow at -at: “I watched him as a kid. I used to try to re-create the chicken wing for hitting.”
All are members of a list disquieting in its length — those from the ranks of 1970s baseball rosters who have died in the past year alone.
The list: Perhaps it’s no longer than any other list of those who were dying at other moments in baseball’s history. But against the past year’s backdrop — of pandemic-inflected grief, of baseball withering and coming back smaller, of a truncated season and crowdless stands — it feels unremitting. Just part of it:
Watson, Washington, Gibson, McDaniel, Morgan, Al Kaline, Lou Brock, Don Sutton, Hank Aaron, Dick Allen, Jay Johnstone, Phil Niekro, Tom Seaver, Biff Pocoroba, Billy Conigliaro, Tommy Lasorda.
And now, three weeks ago, from COVID-19 complications: Grant Jackson, who won the final Major League Baseball game of the decade as the 1979 Pirates took the World Series.
Theirs were the names etched on the Topps cards. The names that crackled from plastic, fruit-colored transistor radios. The names that shouted from the pages of Baseball Digest and hometown newspapers at a moment in the game’s history that can seem like yesterday but, propelled by the past year’s losses, is starting its inexorable fade.
“Every one of these guys, there’s a memory,” says Hurdle, the former Pirates manager who is now 63. “We all learn lessons different ways. And the one I keep learning — it seems like every week now
— is take nothing for granted.”
“I like to say, ‘Hey, I grew up in the greatest era of baseball,’” Gary Matthews, who played in the big leagues from 1972 to 1987, is saying one recent day. He is just back from the funeral of his friend, Henry Aaron, in Atlanta — one of the most towering baseball losses of the past year.
“When I was facing J.R. Richard in the Dome, or even Nolan Ryan, I was like, ‘OK, don’t let this guy hit you in the head.’ I’m defeated already,” Matthews says. “A good day against those guys was two strikeouts and two walks.”
Pete Rose, one of the decade’s most storied players, agrees. “You wanna know the truth? I faced 19 Hall of Fame pitchers in the 1970s and 1980s,” he says. “I don’t know if guys today are facing 19 Hall of Fame pitchers.”
Rose tells of road trips in the early 1970s in which he would face Sutton in Los Angeles, then go north to San Francisco to oppose Gaylord Perry and Juan Marichal, then swing back to St. Louis to confront Gibson and Steve Carlton.
Legends all — and part of a unique epoch. In the 1970s, baseball opened up and let its hair down.
Color television’s spread meant that when a game was aired, suddenly it felt more like being at the ballpark. Incandescent, stretchy uniforms followed, featuring hues fresh from pyschedelic album covers and bubble-gum wrappers. Bright yellows. Solid blacks. Deep blues offset by vibrant reds. Shorts, in one fleeting case. In Houston, an entire spectrum of oranges festooned every player from chest to navel.
It was an era of the downright idiosyncratic — orange baseballs and orangestriped catcher’s mitts and synthetic fields, Reggie! bars and stick-on Willie Stargell stars and mustache upon carefully cultivated mustache (talkin’ to you, Rollie Fingers and Sparky Lyle).
It was an era of substantive change, too. The designated hitter took root. The reserve clause ended, free agency began and the players union found its voice, setting the table for the high salaries of today. The number of players of color grew as they finally stepped into a full-on spotlight, albeit one still pocked with ugly obstacles.
And though games unfolded in some of the most impersonal stadiums ever, baseball was still — perhaps for a final time — being played at human scale. Small ball remained the rule; home runs and strikeouts, though growing, weren’t yet the entire point.
“If you stuck a DVD in of a game from the 1970s, I think a 15-year-old would be very surprised,” says Cait Murphy, who chronicled one early 20th-century season in “Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History.”
The players of the 1970s, too, felt more accessible, less members of another breed. They would come home and manage a supermarket or open a beer distributor or sell insurance. Pocoroba owned a business called Sausage World. For many, this second career wasn’t a choice; baseball’s pay then created a standard of living very different from today’s.
“The younger people who are into this era, they kind of marvel at how MLB players from the ’70s, they look like they could have been your math teacher or the guy working down at the auto-parts shop,” says Dan Epstein, author of “Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s.”
“They weren’t these perfect physical specimens,” he says. “These were guys you might see playing softball in the park somewhere.”
There’s a contradiction there, though. At the same time 1970s players felt more accessible, they felt less so, too. There was no MLB.tv offering every game live, with permanent HD playback. You couldn’t see your favorite DH’s late-night Taco Bell run or watch a rival catcher dance on Instagram. Players didn’t get into real-time back-and-forths with fans — for better and worse — on Twitter.
The 1970s were, arguably, the final decade in which the illusion of baseball so carefully crafted by its forefathers could thrive largely unchallenged.
“Sure, now you can get tweets directly from the players, but it all seems to be in a very slick context. It doesn’t have that same intimacy of a shoddy broadcast or an off-center card. And I think that was the key. That was part of how we got close to the game,” says Josh Wilker, whose book “Cardboard Gods” examines the lives of 1970s players and his own childhood through the lens of the era’s baseball cards.
“If someone had said, you can watch every game and see what Carl Yastrzemski thinks about his breakfast, I would have thought it was cool,” Wilker says. “But it wouldn’t have been the same experience.”
The 2020s will mark the 50th anniversary of so many milestones in 1970s baseball. The inevitable retrospectives will reveal a decade still near enough to seem recent, but different enough to feel utterly alien. And the distance grows each time a voice from that decade — a great arm, a formidable bat, a distinctive personality — goes silent.
There will be no Hank Aaron around to comment on the anniversary of his 715th home run in 2024. In 2027, Lou Brock will not be there to talk about the day he broke Ty Cobb’s stolen-base record. No new words from Joe Morgan will illuminate remembrances of the Big Red Machine’s domination of the National League in the mid-1970s.
All the weirdness, the lurching forward, that seemed so fresh and so unmoored when it burst forth is now carried in the memories of older men. And as the past year has shown, the clock is ticking.
“These guys who have been dying, they felt like friends,” Epstein says. “Even if I didn’t know these people, I was glad they were out there in the world and I wanted to know what they were up to even after they played. Just thinking about them made me smile.”
Inevitably, the list will grow. And as time moves forward, the 1980s will lose their heroes, too. And the 1990s after that. So it goes — all quite natural, really. But far too unsettling for our current moment, already one of modern American life’s bumpiest periods.
“It’s kind of like I lost all of my baseball cards again,” says Hurdle, whose rookie year was 1977.
“I was one of those kids who collected every card. And somehow all my cards got lost,” he says. “Well, I was fortunate enough to live and love and play against and meet those people and have dinner and lunch and have a conversation with or get hit by a pitch from or get struck out by them. It was an accumulation of hopes and dreams put into real time, and now they’re being taken away again.”