Joe Kerrigan plans to hit the ground running in his effort to stop the Pirates from walking.

Kerrigan, whose hiring as the team's pitching coach was announced yesterday, will be in Pittsburgh beginning Nov. 9 for at least a weeklong video review of the pitching staff whose walk total of 657 in 2008 ranked 29th in Major League Baseball.

Only Baltimore's pitchers walked more (687).

"We need to do a better job of throwing strikes -- especially first-pitch strikes," he said. "And we have to get the walk total down."

Kerrigan, 54, will watch videotape of the final six weeks of Pirates games.

"Then I'll hunker down and give each guy a profile of things we'll stress in minicamp [in January]," Kerrigan said. "For example, if [Ian] Snell had trouble with left-handers, I'll look at all the at-bats left-handers had against him."

Kerrigan, a former major league pitcher, succeeds Jeff Andrews, whose stint as the pitching coach lasted one season.

Andrews was hired after the 2007 season because the Pirates felt his relationships with the pitchers forged while he worked as a pitching coach in their minor league system would be "his strong suit," according to general manager Neal Huntington.

"This time, we had a different mind-set going into filling the position," Huntington said.

Huntington said Kerrigan's track record and experience were key reasons for his hiring.

"He has an established track record of developing young pitchers and maximizing the performance of pitchers," Huntington said.

Other pluses for Kerrigan, according to Huntington, "are his attention to detail, his ability to game-plan and his ability to see the big picture."

Kerrigan, who had a 43-game stint as Boston's manager in 2001, has been a major league coach for 18 seasons, including 12 as pitching coach for Montreal (1992-96), Boston (1997-2001) and Philadelphia (2003-04).

"He loves being a pitching coach," said Huntington, who first met Kerrigan during their days with the Expos. "He'll be very aggressive in devising a game plan for our pitchers and reaching out to them."

Kerrigan will have much reaching out to do.

"A lot of things are self-evident in terms of what we need to do," Huntington said.

To wit:

• Pirates pitchers in 2008 had the 28th-worst earned run average in the big leagues (5.08).

• Allowed the 29th-most number of hits (1,631).

• Had the 27th-fewest number of strikeouts (963, tied with Texas).

• Allowed the 29th-worst on-base average (.362, tied with Texas).

• And permitted the 29th-worst opponents batting average (.286).

"It will be fun," Kerrigan said of his new task.

Kerrigan also will work with his new charges on pitching inside more.

"I've always been a big believer in that," he said. "I got my butt handed to me a lot my first year because I didn't pitch inside."

That was 1976, Kerrigan's first big league season as a right-handed reliever. He particularly struggled against left-handed batters.

As a rookie, Kerrigan yielded 63 hits and had a 3.81 earned run average in 56 2/3 innings.

After Expos pitching coach Jim Brewer stressed the importance of pitching inside, Kerrigan in 1977 allowed 80 hits and had a 3.22 earned run average in 89 1/3 innings.

"You have to pitch inside especially today with the way hitters crowd the plate and dive into the outer half of the plate," Kerrigan said. "You have to have a weapon to counteract that.

"It's so hard to be a pitcher these days. You have to work harder than you did 20 years ago."Kerrigan was Boston's pitching coach when Pedro Martinez won Cy Young awards in 1999 and 2000.

He also worked with Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina in his two seasons as the New York Yankees bullpen coach (2006-07).

Kerrigan, a special advisor to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman in 2005, last season worked on pregame and postgame shows for the cable station that carried Philadelphia games.

NOTE -- Huntington said efforts to hire a first-base coach are "ongoing." The Post-Gazette has learned that highly regarded Perry Hill will not be the team's first-base coach because of -- for the second consecutive year -- "personal reasons."