Marin: Pitching coach job a 'dream come true' 

PITTSBURGH -- It’s been a busy week for new Pirates pitching coach Oscar Marin.

While coaching Los Atenienses de Manati, an expansion team in the Puerto Rican Winter League, Marin received a phone call from Rangers general manager Jon Daniels. The Pirates had asked for permission to interview Marin, who was preparing for his second season as Texas’ bullpen coach, and they wanted to give him a promotion.

Last Wednesday, while the Bucs' front office was gathered in San Diego for the Winter Meetings, they ran Marin through four straight one-hour video chat interviews. Pittsburgh’s executives liked what they heard and offered Marin a chance to meet face-to-face. With a scheduled off-day on Friday, Marin left the ballpark on Thursday and boarded a flight to Tampa, Fla.

On Friday, he interviewed with Pirates general manager Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton at the Tampa Airport Marriott. Then he flew out to meet his wife for their anniversary dinner. He’d soon be back in Puerto Rico, preparing for a game. The Bucs hired him on Monday and made it official on Tuesday, the morning of a scheduled doubleheader for Marin’s Manati club.

“Extremely happy. This is something you’re always thinking about, that you’re always preparing yourself for professionally,” Marin said in a phone interview with MLB.com. “You’re running through different scenarios, roles, just to be prepared for this. I felt like I was as prepared as I possibly could be to go into what I’m doing now.

“Super excited. It really is a dream come true.”

It might have seemed unlikely a decade ago, when Marin was the pitching coordinator at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. Or even a year ago, when Marin received his first big league coaching job with the Rangers. But Marin, 37, satisfied all of the Pirates’ criteria as they sought to replace longtime pitching coach Ray Searage.

“He did a really good job not only from a technical standpoint, teaching them mechanics and pitching and using the data, but the way he communicated with our bullpen,” Rangers manager Chris Woodward said. “He did a phenomenal job, and Pittsburgh did a really good job on their homework. For a guy who has only been in the big leagues one year, to take him out and make him their pitching coach says a lot about who Oscar is.”

During their search, the Bucs said they were looking for someone who could build relationships with players, interpret analytical information and modernize Pittsburgh’s pitching practices. He learned a lot of those skills during his two years as the Mariners’ Minor League pitching coordinator.

In that role, Marin was tasked with implementing advanced technology and information into Seattle’s pitching program. In essence, Marin said, he was “coaching the coaches on it, really diving into the information, understanding it, talking to people who are better than yourself to try to get to learn it in different ways.”

“That’s really where it all started,” Marin continued. “The information and using the technology, it was getting your hands dirty and seeing how it works and doesn’t work. Once we got a good feel for that as a group, we were helping each other out. We found ways to relate it to the players and explain it to the players in ways they would understand so it wasn’t so standoff-ish for those guys to ask questions about it. It was learning it and making sure we knew how to relate it to the players in the best way possible so they didn’t have to deep-dive as much as we did.”

Of course, players might not trust their coaches -- or Marin -- without a prior relationship in place. Building those bonds will be Marin’s first order of business with the Pirates. It helps that he’s bilingual, able to communicate equally and honestly with everyone. He’ll also be able to lean on bullpen coach Justin Meccage, who spent last year as Pittsburgh’s assistant pitching coach, as he begins that process.

“Going in, it’s just making sure we’re getting to know the people first, making sure we understand what they do and go from there,” Marin said. “I don’t think the best thing to do coming in is to tell everyone they need to pitch a certain way when we really haven’t built relationships or have an understanding of what they have done in the past.”

In that regard, Marin’s approach falls in line with the player-centered culture that Cherington and Shelton are trying to create.

In the past, the Bucs’ pitching philosophy was built on specific ideas for everyone to implement: pitch down and inside, work off the fastball, get outs on three pitches or fewer, etc. Those strategies led to success from 2013-15, but the game has evolved since then.

Marin seems prepared to let Pittsburgh’s pitchers work to their strengths, whatever they may be.

“My philosophy coming in would be maximizing everybody's ability -- mentally, physically and through information,” Marin said. “What do our guys have, and how can we maximize what they do? How do we maximize things that they haven’t done in the past? I’m not trying to come in with a philosophy before we even know our group of guys. I think that’s better answered toward the end of Spring Training, once the season starts, when I have a good idea of what our group looks like.”