Bucs' DR academy updates give facility 'unparalleled' edge

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At the Pirates’ Dominican Academy in El Toro, a few miles east of Santo Domingo, there is a tower between four playing fields where one can sit and take in the action all at once. On its wall facing the main Roberto Clemente Memorial Field is a collection of photos of Pirates Dominican Summer League alums who reached the Majors Leagues.

The earliest photo is from 2008, showing Starling Marte posing with a baseball bat. The setting behind him is completely unfamiliar to me. It looks less like a dedicated baseball complex and more like a neighborhood field with apartment buildings behind it.

It turns out that was exactly how it was in the Pirates’ previous San Pedro de Macorís location. Dominican architect José Mella Febles remembers it well.

“I think that when [Pirates chairman] Bob Nutting went there and he saw that, that’s when he said, ‘Oh no, this cannot be like that,’” Mella said.

Mella had already designed the Cardinals’ and Mets’ Dominican baseball complexes and led the construction of the Padres’ Dominican facilities by the time he got interest from the Pirates. Before construction could begin, they had to find the right site.

They found one that was -- and still is -- massive at 52 acres.

“We saw some different farms close to here, and then this one was fine with the price and the size was huge,” Mella said. “I mean you can only see half of the property.”

Of course, they couldn’t get straight to building the complex. As you drive down the entrance road into the academy, you see on either side what the complex used to be and what still exists: farmland densely populated with trees and plants. Clumps of baby bananas hang over the fencing between the properties, and cows glanced at our van as we drove to the academy.

“Everything here was a farm. It was a jungle. … You can’t even walk inside them. A lot of mosquitos. We came in with a machete and whack, whack,” Mella said, making cutting motions.

They built the first academy in 2009. All of the original structures exist today: two buildings, a batting cage and two fields … or one and a half, rather. It was a big jump from San Pedro de Macorís, but still just a fraction of what it is today.

That’s because the Pirates have continually invested in the property to keep it in a class of its own.

“Every year they do something, since then,” Mella said. “They haven’t stopped doing new things since 2009.”

The biggest leap forward came just a few years ago. Director of international development Hector Morales was among a group of leaders who saw an opportunity to be on the cutting edge of the training side of things.

“We talked to leadership and we proposed a new academy, and that included a world class performance center and fitness facility, which is probably the most impactful right now because it’s unique,” Morales said. “It’s how we can train many athletes at the same time, and I think a lot of the academies that are forming up now are coming here to look at those to create separation.”

Flash forward to today, and the Pirates have a huge weight room compared to the rest of the Dominican academies. And with the addition of two new full fields, the half field from the grand opening also serves as an agility field right behind the weight room.

Attached to it is a training room which, on top of the typical training tables and recovery tools many clubs have, features the first hydrotherapy pools of their size in the Dominican. Morales called it “unparalleled.”

“We have guys from here who come back from the States who rehab while they’re here,” Morales said, “so that’s another element that gives us a little bit of an advanced approach for us to be able to develop those players the way that we do.”

With the addition of this new building, the Pirates were able to separate their classrooms from the player living and eating spaces, and having a school facility like the Pirates have is crucial to the academy’s success.

Some players who decide to pursue professional baseball weigh perfecting their game over advancing their education, which is understandable given the earning power a signing bonus can give a player and his family. But that means that education coordinator Mayu Fielding and her team have to play catch up to first make them literate in Spanish, then English before they can even begin to hammer home life skills and cultural awareness.

The concentrated education area, which features three classrooms, a reading room and a larger auditorium among other things, is crucial for that -- and it hasn’t always been a given for baseball clubs.

“I’m proud of the fact that we actually have a school,” Fielding said. “I mean this is amazing. … Who would think that you have a high school in the Dominican Republic? Most people when I say I’m the education coordinator, they go, ‘Oh OK, you teach English.’ And I go, ‘Well, it’s more than that.’ They say, ‘What? No way!’”

Among the other notable inclusions over the years are a barbecue area by the parking lot for hosting events, a room adjacent to the cafeteria where students learn to make their own food before heading to the States and an analytics and video room where the Pirates take their advanced visual and data capture tools and assess players as they continue to grow in their bodies and their games.

And they haven’t even used all 52 acres. The Pirates said they still have room to build two more fields if they feel the need to.

Teams will drive down Carretera Mella to come to study the Pirates’ facilities for their own plans in the Dominican. That’s right: Carretera Mella. Though it’s named in honor of Ramón Matías Mella, one of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic, it might as well be named after the modern-day Major League architect, as many of his academy designs sit on or near the highway.

Mella said he has helped design and/or helped with the construction of about half of the 30 MLB clubs’ Dominican complexes. His most recent work was the creation and construction of the Orioles’ academy. But even that brand new academy isn’t as cutting-edge as the Pirates’ academy, nor even as big; it’s less than half the acreage (22 1/2) of the Pirates’ complex, and Mella said it holds about 80 players vs. the Pirates’ 100-plus.

What Mella and the Bucs have built speaks for itself.

“Without a doubt, it’s a decision-making factor [for players],” Morales said. “It would be for me if I was a parent trying to get my kid somewhere.”