Pittsburgh Pirates: Team Moves on From Joey Cora

The Pittsburgh Pirates have continued to shake up their coaching staff. Third base coach Joey Cora has been let go.

With the Pittsburgh Pirates rebuilding and some coaches being carry over, there was some expected changes to the staff that would occur. It first started with hitting coach Rick Eckstein being let go. Now, per Buster Olney of ESPN, the Pittsburgh Pirates are letting go of third base coach Joey Cora.

Cora was hired by the Pittsburgh Pirates as the Altoona Curve manager in 2016.  In 2017, Cora transitioned to being the third base coach for the Pirates on Clint Hurdle‘s staff, replacing Rick Sofield. Sofield was known for being aggressive in sends and Cora continued that trend. Despite the Pirates ranked 27th in extra bases taken, the Pirates were third most in outs at home with 19.

At the end of 2019, Cora was supposedly a target for the New York Mets bench coach position and he interviewed for the managerial position with the Pirates in both 2007 and 2019. As an apparent favorite of the previous regime, it makes sense that Ben Cherington and the current Front Office are deciding to move on from Cora.

As the Pittsburgh Pirates look to evaluate their future into next season, it’s important for them to hire two coaches that will help further develop players at the Major League level.  This offseason they will look to add a hitting coach to replace Eckstein and a third base coach to replace Cora.  With a different focus on hitting and a different approach on base running.

The club also let go of their Triple-A manager Brian Esposito per reports earlier this week. Cherington has continued to talk about building and seeking to be better everyday. Eckstein, Cora, and Esposito were all holdovers from the Neal Huntington era. As Cherington has had time to evaluate, we could continue to see potential turnover.