During all of the noise created by the Rule 5 draft yesterday, the Pittsburgh Pirates announced some baseball operations staff additions, mostly on the player performance/training side
Today, we announced some additions to our Baseball Operations staff. pic.twitter.com/SZx9qR4s9b
— Pirates (@Pirates) December 10, 2020
AJ Patrick wasn’t an actual addition to the system, he just changed jobs within the system. He’s been around since 2015. The rest are all new additions, with the big name here being Josh Hopper as the new Coordinator of Pitching Development, taking over for Scott Mitchell, who was part of the cuts back in June when baseball was shut down. Hopper will play a large role with the development of the minor league pitchers in the system. He has been a pitching coach for three different colleges over the last 17 years, with the last three coming at Dallas Baptist University. He also played college ball and spent two seasons in the minors with the New York Mets after graduating in 1999.
