Part 2-Player development,Minor league staffs and teaching the system

  Our player development program has been, frankly, below par.
Although a lot of the problems go back to poor drafting, the facts remain that the Pirates have done a poor job teaching talent.
The coaches in the minors seem to be teaching poor fundamentals and in some cases different than the MLB team.
No case stands out more than former number 1 pick Chad Hermansen.
Hermansen was thought of as a top prospect around baseball until the Pirates coaches in the higher levels of the organization began to change him from a patient hitter to a more aggressive swing at everything type.
That took him down the road from hot prospect to a AAA player with huge strikeout numbers.
Why was this done at higher levels?
And if it was needed, why not from the beginning of his career?
The minors are instructional, no doubt, but changing an effective player in mid-stream?
Sounds a lot like the recent "improvements' to Zach Duke, doesn't it?
The Pirates need to select a philosophy and implement it all through the system and not just at Pittsburgh and Indianapolis.
Yes, that may mean that some of the current managers in our system may not fit what we will do doing, but the Pirates will be teaching one style of play from the GCL Pirates all the way to Pittsburgh.
From patience to the plate, to the type of breaking pitches our pitchers prefer to whether we believe in the stolen base, all of these types of decisions will be the same from top to bottom.

Over time this will make the following easier to implement.
We will slowly turn this organization over to former Pirates, who have been brought through the system playing the Pirate way and they then will be most qualified to teach it.
Only 1 current Pirate minor manager is a former Pirate player (Turner Ward) and he was not a product of the Pirates system.
I realize this cannot be done right away, but it is a long term goal.
For now, we will be hiring managers, coaches, and instructors that fit the program, not guys that are friends or last minute hires to fill a position.

In closing this portion, the Pirates are now committed to a plate disciplined and athletic team
that will attempt to add both power and speed to the franchise.
I realize there is a place for the gutsy player with heart and I am sure that we will have some players that play over their abilities, but those types of players will not be our high draft picks and they will be the exception not the norm here.
Again, this will take time, at least a few years, for this to fill the system from top to bottom with the types of players that we are looking for.
However, this is the game plan to pull this system from the quagmire that has been created over the last 15 years.

Late Addition:
How many times have the Pirates used top draft picks on players that turned out to be injury-riddled?
Or look at the number of times that the medical staff cleared players to return and watched as they injured themselves again and often more seriously.
So I am firing EVERY DAMN ONE of these clowns that make up the Pirates medical corps and bringing in new people.
I am not the most knowledgeable person in hiring physicians, so I will get advice from the best possible people in the field and listen to them.

Part 3-Changes for the short term in the Minors and Majors.