1C4A5C48475D4D464B5C6E49434F4742004D2E0 wrote: Kevin Kramer really blasted the Huntington regime for their player development practices. I know a lot of us were critical of the Pirates ability to develop their players. Kramer had first hand experience and nothing good to say about the previous regime.
https://theathletic.com/3343113/2022/06 ... velopment/
Can you summarize and/or add quotes? When I clicked on the link, I was blocked because I don't subscribe to The Athletic. I don't want to subscribe because I get all the accurate Pirates information I need right here on this site. ::)
I don't subscribe either, so I was surprised I could access the article. Here's the highlights.
“There was a lot of (stuff) going wrong,” said Kramer, a second-round pick in 2015. “They were trying to fit everyone in a mold. If you didn’t fit in the mold, you were either buried in the minor leagues and never got the chance or you were traded, or both.”
There were club regulations about everything from the length of players’ hair to how high they wore their socks. Violators were fined or suspended. Kramer said he once was benched for three days after breaking a bat. When he played in the Arizona Fall League, Kramer was struck by how players from other clubs were baffled and amused by the long, detailed list of rules he had to follow.
“I came from a really structured college program, so I was used to it, but it still was a shock to see it in the pros,” Kramer said. “There were a (lot of) players who were better than me who didn’t thrive. One of the Pirates’ sayings one year in instructional league was, ‘Thrive, don’t survive.’ It was interesting to look at it that way, because it wasn’t a very personalized program for each player.”
During instructional league, which is held in Bradenton, Fla., after the minor-league seasons end, some players had to attend intense, pre-dawn training sessions off the Pirate City campus.
“My first year, we went to the beach at 4:40 in the morning and rolled around in the sand,” Kramer said. “The next year, which was (2016 first-rounder) Will Craig’s (draft) class, they canoed to a private island in the middle of a state park and had to stay there overnight. It was like, ‘What are we doing?’ It felt like we were focused on the wrong things.”
“There were some bad apples in the organization who didn’t seem like they were really rooting for the players,” Kramer said. “There were coaches that told me that if I ever got to the big leagues with the Pirates, they’d be embarrassed for the organization. That was two days before my (big-league) debut.”