Throughout a 10-year big-league career that included six seasons pitching for the Pirates, Jared Hughes was known for sprinting from the bullpen to the mound.
Now that he’s retired, Hughes has kept the same approach: full speed ahead, always wanting to learn, never scared about being a little different.
While many make the transition from playing to coaching, Hughes over the past few years has charted a unique path that has led to his current gig as coordinator of pitching performance and analysis with the Los Angeles Angels.
He’s a data geek, not a coach — someone who works as part of a team parsing through data, trying to weaponize the numbers and do more and learn more on this side of the fence.
“I want to keep pushing forward,” Hughes told me over the phone this week before arriving for work at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. “I don’t really care about titles. I just want to keep pushing forward with the knowledge of baseball.
“I want to figure out baseball, so then I’ll be working forever — because nobody will ever figure it out.”
Hughes fascinated me when he pitched for the Pirates from 2011-16, his sinker an important chess piece for former manager Clint Hurdle late in games, the 6-foot-7 right-hander pitching to a 1.96 ERA over 63 appearances in 2014.
The Pirates’ pitching philosophy aligned with Hughes’ skill set. He’s also one of the most media-friendly players the Pirates have ever employed, one with a great sense of humor that popped up with his goofy headshots (Google it) or his @locatejared account on X.
Hughes has never been afraid to be his own person, and that has carried through to his post-playing career, as more than anything, he has enjoyed the never-ending quest for knowledge and pouring himself into research.
Yes, seriously. I’ll explain.
But it’s an appropriate path for someone who took computer-programming courses over the summer and studied economics at Long Beach State.
“Computers are important for me,” Hughes said. “I understand how to operate in front of a screen very well. If you’re on the field, it’s a lot more difficult to just spend the time researching things. I enjoy having the ability to research and learn.
“Maybe my career trajectory takes me toward being on the field. But as of right now, I have a lot left to do in terms of figuring out the game in front of a computer.”
While Hughes clearly enjoys what he’s doing now, let’s not forget how darn good he was for the Pirates. In six seasons, Hughes had a 2.82 ERA in 313 appearances, an average of about 52 per season. The strikeout totals weren’t gaudy, but Hughes — with a heavy sinker — was the perfect fireman reliever.
Sprint in. Throw that bowling-ball sinker that produced ground balls. Turn a double play and get out of trouble.
In a career that also included stints with the Brewers, Reds, Phillies and Mets, Hughes had a 61.3% ground-ball rate. It was 64.6% in 2014 and 63.7% the following year. He racked up 3.4 wins above replacement (per Baseball Reference) while pitching in Cincinnati in 2018, along with a 1.94 ERA in 72 appearances.
The way Hughes’ brain operates, it has always involved sequential thinking. “If this happens, then this needs to happen,” was how Hughes worded it.
That meant huddling with the Pirates analytics team, learning where infielders would be positioned and doing his best to force a hitter to drill a ground ball to those spots.
“I had [former quantitative analyst] Mike Fitzgerald and [current vice president of strategy and research] Dan Fox printing me out heat maps on exactly where I got ground balls and where the opposing hitters hit ground balls,” Hughes said. “I threw one pitch all the time. My goal was to get a ground ball because I know that’s what Clint Hurdle wanted.
“In hindsight, I wish I could have gotten a little more swing and miss, but it worked. I did have a slider. I didn’t use it a whole lot. Maybe I could have taken [Jason] Grilli’s or [Joel] Hanrahan’s job if I had a better slider.”
Hughes was kidding when he said the final part, of course. But the experience of learning specific trends and putting them into practice did set the stage for what he’s doing now.
So did his summers as a kid growing up in Laguna Beach, Calif. That’s when Hughes’ mom, Barbara, had him take computer-programming courses, studying and learning languages such as PHP and Visual Basic.
These days, Hughes said he’s proficient in Python, R and SQL, another way he’s different than your average 39-year-old former big leaguer.
“My mom would tell me, ‘Jared, someday computers and computer programming — because the internet was just coming around — will be the future,’ ” Hughes said. “Everybody is going to be doing this. If you have an upper hand, it’s gonna help you a lot.
“She was right on. Those classes helped me a ton. It taught me logic and got my feet on the ground. So now, when I see a new language that I need to understand, I can pick it up pretty quickly.”
The convergence between Hughes’ love of baseball and the data behind it really kicked into high gear around the COVID shutdown of 2020. In March and April, Hughes made headlines for creating a pitching lab in his backyard.
He bought clay from a local landscaping store and put his kids to work. It also wasn’t casual. The project included a laser level and advanced cameras to capture Hughes’ delivery frame by frame. Around this time, he also befriended a man named Barton Smith, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Utah State, and they dove deep into the physics behind his sinker.
When the season rolled around, Hughes — who was released by the Astros on March 19 — signed with the Mets and spent three months away from his family. That six-month stretch was what got Hughes’ wheels turning when it came to his post-playing career.
“I had this unique skill set where I know a couple computer-programming languages and I understand a lot of the pitching data that is around now,” Hughes said. “I had a bunch of teams offering me minor league contracts. I knew I was going to retire.
“When they would call my agent, he would mention, ‘Hey, Jared is interested in possibly being an analyst or in the front office in some role. He understands the data. He knows computer programming. And he played.’ The Angels pretty much immediately jumped on it and hired me as an analyst.”
Hughes couldn’t be happier. As data rolls in from around MLB, Hughes works as part of the team that parses through it and tries to identify things that help the Angels. He doesn’t know what he wants to do next, but he’s plenty aware of how he wants to continually operate.
Always curious, always learning.
“Sometimes it’s easy to be seen as somebody who thinks they know it all,” Hughes said. “We certainly don’t, and there’s a lot to learn in all aspects of the game. On the field, in the front office, wherever you are in this game, you have a lot to learn. That’s my goal.
“I don’t know what it’s going to entail in terms of a career trajectory or job titles. But I know I have a lot to learn and I need to keep pushing toward it.”
First Published: April 13, 2025, 8:00 a.m.
Updated: April 13, 2025, 8:02 p.m.
