Pirates see Dominican facility as part of 'first-class' outfit
-
An artist's rendering of the Pirates' Latin American training complex in the Dominican Republic. -
The Pirates' current Dominican site.
Share with others:
There is much that Bob Nutting has not yet learned about baseball's finer points, as he will freely concede.
But this, he clearly understood.
It was about a half-hour after the Pirates unveiled plans for their new Latin American baseball academy at a PNC Park news conference yesterday morning, and the room had quieted. The franchise's owner, facing a projector screen with remote control in hand, flicked through some photographs of the team's current facility in the Dominican Republic.
A single batting cage, sporting an uneven mound and sprouting weeds on all sides.
A cramped clubhouse with a cement floor.
A single field with sagging fences and a bathroom door permanently ajar.
"Look at that," Nutting said, "and tell me how we were supposed to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox for talent down there."
Nutting saw those scenes firsthand in May, when he made a trip to the Dominican after hearing about that facility and its damaging effect on the Pirates' ability to land prospects in one of baseball's hotbeds. He returned disappointed, enough so that, as he would reveal months later, it would play a prominent role in his firing of general manager Dave Littlefield.
Flick ahead to today. Nutting will be there again with an all-new management team, and the occasion will be 180 degrees different.
He and team president Frank Coonelly and general manager Neal Huntington -- along with Dominican President Dr. Leonel Fernandez and several current Dominican players on the Pirates' roster, including catcher Ronny Paulino, third baseman Jose Bautista and reliever Damaso Marte -- will participate in the groundbreaking for the 46-acre academy in the town of El Toro. It will cost $4 million-$5 million and should, by the time it is complete in summer 2009, rank as one of the most comprehensive operated by any team in the region.
The blueprint highlights:
• Two full fields, including one to be used by the Pirates' Dominican Summer League entry, plus a half-field for infield instruction and a bunting diamond.
• A two-story observation deck in the complex's center for evaluators, similar to that of Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla.
• A headquarters building that includes offices for all of the Pirates' Latin American staff, two classrooms to teach players English as well as reading and writing in Spanish, a computer/video training room, a dining hall and a dormitory large enough to house 90. The existing facility has dorms across town.
• A clubhouse large enough for two teams, including a room that can handle up to 10 coaches, a weight room and equipment storage. The clubhouse size will be key if the Pirates, one of a dwindling number of major-league teams still operating in politically changing Venezuela, opt at some point to consolidate all Latin American operations in the Dominican.
• Four batting tunnels and six bullpen mounds, all covered to deal with the frequent Dominican rain.
The exterior of the complex, as shown on one of the drawings, has a sign that reads, "Pride. Passion. Pittsburgh Pirates."
"It's a watershed day for the Pittsburgh Pirates," Coonelly said. "This was a team that once thrived in Latin America, having been the franchise of the great Roberto Clemente. This great facility will help make us, once again, a player there. And a leader. If you're not a leader in that part of the world, it's difficult to compete, especially in a market like ours."
"It's the next step in the process I started a year ago of having a first-class operation that everyone in Pittsburgh can be proud of," Nutting said. "It's going to give our quality people in Latin America -- and we have some very good ones -- the tools they need to be successful."
The team also confirmed that its budget for signing bonuses in the region will rise and that Latin American scouting director Rene Gayo's pool of scouts will expand from its current 20, though no specifics were given on either count.
Players in Latin America, with the exception of Puerto Rico, are not included in MLB's amateur draft. They are treated as free agents who can be signed as young as 16. Signing bonuses for elite players increasingly are reaching into six figures, with one or two each year now topping $1 million.
The Pirates have not participated in the six-figure class, which, along with the lagging facility, might explain why they have netted almost nothing out of the international market in the past decade. Their most recent internal Latin American signing to come up through their system was infielder Jose Castillo. He signed out of Venezuela in 1997.
Coonelly and Huntington each downplayed the importance of six-figure bonuses, though.
"I'd say the facility will be more important," Coonelly said. "This process is mostly about recruiting, and a facility like this can have a big impact. It's like showing kids the weight room at the University of Michigan."
"The success rate on those players getting the big bonuses is very low," Huntington said. "What we have to do is place an internal value on a player and be as aggressive as possible from there. Having this facility will help, including the classrooms and the environment we're creating. You have to sell parents, too, and parents will want their kids to be at our place."
First Published January 22, 2008 12:00 am
