Elias Diaz crouched behind home plate Thursday afternoon before the Pirates took the field for batting practice. Bench coach Tom Prince and first-base coach Kimera Bartee stood on the mound, Prince firing pitches in the dirt for Diaz to block.
Prince and Bartee huddled, then both whirled and mimed a throwing motion. Only Prince had a ball. Diaz got a fist bump after blocking it.
The 27-year-old catcher made his first opening-day roster as the backup after Chris Stewart blocked him for three seasons. The major league education, begun last season when injuries to Stewart and Francisco Cervelli made Diaz the temporary starter, continued this spring and into the regular season. The degree of preparation extends well beyond blocking pitches — Diaz has been in pro ball for nine seasons.
“I played three years in Triple-A, and I did a really good job,” he said. “I think I deserve this.”
Nobody told Diaz he’d made the roster because there wasn’t any intrigue to the decision. He’d exhausted his three minor league options, and the Pirates declined Stewart’s contract option. The time had come for him to back up Cervelli. The time had also come for an accelerated learning curve.
After each game Diaz catches, Prince will select a few pitch sequences to review. He also has Diaz choose one or two of his own.
“Whether it’s good or bad is irrelevant,” Prince said. “Just get the through process of continuing learning at this level.
“He is not the guy that always looks for the positive. He wants to learn all the time. He goes, ‘This is why I did this. It was a negative result, but this is why I did it. This is the pitches that I did the first two at-bats, and I changed here because a reliever was coming in against a strength or a weakness.’ ”
Diaz appreciates the feedback.
“It’s good because I keep learning,” he said. “I learn every day. I try to learn different things. This helped me a lot, what I did wrong, what I did good.”
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After Diaz’s first start of the season, he selected plate appearances against Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera and catcher James McCann. He said he didn’t like the pitch sequence he’d called. The coaching staff also shows him the disparity between what he calls and where he sets up, and the pitch he receives. The message: Not everything is his fault.
“A lot of times when you get behind that plate and you’re in that vacuum, you take everything personally,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “Every ball that’s hit hard, especially if it’s late.”
Hurdle and Prince encourage Diaz to process the situations where Cervelli heads to the mound in addition to counseling him on his own visits.
“This may have been a time, were you thinking about a trip? This may have been a good time where you could have taken a good trip on your own,” Hurdle said. “‘Hey, did you see when Francisco took this trip?’ And then ask him what he said.”
Diaz participates in the game planning with Cervelli, pitching coach Ray Searage and that night’s starter. The sharing of information works both ways.
“He also was in some of the guys in Triple-A, so he knows them,” Cervelli said. “I think we make a really good team. He’s my friend. We help each other.”
Cervelli knows something about being a backup. He caught behind Jorge Posada for years with the New York Yankees. In 2008 he had Posada, Ivan Rodriguez and Jose Molina as sounding boards and took advantage.
“Everybody’s different,” Cervelli said. “I’m not going to be Jorge, but Jorge taught me how to be myself and how to be a professional.”
Cervelli said Diaz will share his thoughts on Cervelli’s work, and the two of them review games both beforehand and afterward.
“We don’t judge anything, because when you call a game, you always have a reason why you call a pitch,” Cervelli said. “Even if it’s wrong, that’s your reason. We talk about it, we say, OK, that’s what you feel. If I think it’s not good, I tell him. Maybe you do this or do that.”
In addition to Stewart’s presence, elbow surgery and a leg infection in 2016 slowed Diaz’s ascent. Cervelli is a free agent after next season. It’s too early to tell if Diaz could succeed him. More playing time this year might give him the opportunity to prove himself.
“It’s a big goal for me because it’s the thing that I’ve been working [for], to make the 25-man roster, since the first day,” Diaz said. “I made it. I just have to work every day hard, to prepare, and to be ready for the opportunity.”
Bill Brink: bbrink@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrinkPG.
First Published: April 6, 2018, 1:00 p.m.
