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Tim McKeithan, part of the Pirates analytics team, walks across the field Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020, at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla.
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'It's pretty special': A brotherly bond inside the NL Central

Matt Freed/Post-Gazette

'It's pretty special': A brotherly bond inside the NL Central

Should Pirates hitting staff assistant Tim McKeithan want to spend more time thinking about his family’s affinity for baseball, he could start by Googling his great uncle, also named Tim, who pitched against Babe Ruth and actually gave up a solo home run to the legendary slugger.

McKeithan, 28, could also listen to stories about his grandfather, Jerry Sr., who spent seven years in the Cardinals organization, or simply chat with his father, Jerry Jr., who played at N.C. State and UNC Charlotte.

Then again, if McKeithan wanted to absorb the recent impact of his family’s incredible baseball legacy, he doesn’t have to leave the NL Central. McKeithan, who joined the Pirates as a player development intern in 2016, is one of three brothers employed by division foes.

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Joel McKeithan, 30, was hired as an assistant hitting coach with the Reds in late November, while the Cardinals drafted Aaron, a 22-year-old catcher, in the 16th round this past July.

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Suffice to say, baseball is very much in the McKeithan family’s blood.

“Faith is Number 1 for us,” Tim McKeithan said. “But baseball was always Number 2 right behind it. It’s pretty special for us. We all have different roles, but we’re grateful to have found awesome opportunities in pro ball.”

The diverging paths of the McKeithan brothers have led to college playing careers at Vanderbilt and N.C. State (Joel), Brown (Tim) and UNC Charlotte (Aaron). However, their formative years were spent in the basement of the family’s Arden, N.C., home, hitting off their father, Jerry Jr. (who goes by Mack), in the batting cage they built downstairs.

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Yes, you read that right.

Windows were covered with wood or plexiglass. Mack affixed an L-screen to the wall, complete with loose, wire fencing to negate violent ricochets. There was also a tire the McKeithan boys would smack and a pole about 30 feet from home plate that began to cause problems as they grew older.

“There were probably some holes in the wall,” Joel said with a laugh. “Thankfully, I don’t think anything was completely destroyed. It did the job.”

Not that it was terribly hard to get the McKeithan boys to play baseball or obsess over it. Joel, Tim and Aaron McKeithan received a ton of support from their parents (Mack and Vimi), as well as their sister, Lydia.

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Aaron regularly attended his older brothers’ games and basically became a team mascot, often leading chants or cheers in the dugout. As they advanced through their careers, Aaron leaned on Joel and Tim to pick up tips and tricks and improve his own game.

Enough, obviously, to thrive this past season when he was a second team Conference USA pick after hitting .278 and committing just four errors in 532 chances as a catcher.

“I was their test dummy,” Aaron said. “I remember being excited for them to come back and show me all the things they had learned.”

Tim knew from an early age he wanted to make baseball a career. Although he experienced success as a shortstop in college, Tim quickly realized his path to the majors was on the coaching side.

After spending 2017 as a minor league operations assistant with Class AAA Indianapolis, Tim McKeithan became a baseball operations fellow in 2018 and took on an even greater role when Derek Shelton was hired as manager prior to the 2020 season.

Tim McKeithan has a hybrid analytics and on-field role where he’ll sift through data, work on the Pirates’ advanced scouting process and also assist head hitting coach Andy Haines and assistant Christian Marrero when it comes to individual work for players.

The entire thing has been hugely satisfying for Tim, who said he started thinking about baseball as a business “probably sooner and to a higher degree than I needed to” as early as his teenage years.

“We all love to compete,” Tim continued. “But baseball had a different feel for us. It always had this long-term goal attached to it, and we treated it that way, always prioritizing it.

“I’m sure it would’ve been better for my development to try to hold onto the joy within that for as long as possible, but I think it just speaks to the commitment level and how we knew this was going to be a long-term thing.”

Joel McKeithan arguably traveled the most circuitous path. In addition to a collegiate career at two big-time baseball schools, Joel played independent ball for three teams over two years (2017-18) in the Frontier League, spent time with Driveline — a data-driven coaching service — and coached in the Phillies and Tigers organizations before taking his current job with Cincinnati.

Joel and Tim were actually double-play partners at TC Roberson High in Asheville, N.C. They’ve since gone down the hitting rabbit hole together, devouring information on the mechanics of a swing and learning as much as possible about the entire process.

“It’s awesome to be able to bounce ideas off of each other and get different perspectives,” Joel said. “With Aaron still playing, I’ll go to him a lot if I’m trying to learn something about how a player would respond to a certain thing. Tim has more of a front-office view, where you can get a good understanding how things can maybe fit within an organization.”

The conversations might be lively and in some ways informative, but they’re also not complete. Tim, Joel and Aaron acknowledged there’s some stuff that simply can’t shared with respect to the Pirates, Reds and Cardinals.

“If it’s baseball and how we’e thinking about things, perspective or something we’ve learned, we’re always trying to sharpen each other from that perspective,” Tim said. “But I’d like to think we’re pretty good about drawing a line with proprietary stuff.”

While Tim was voted the neatest and most organized, Joel admitted he was the most antagonistic of the three, never missing a chance to “pick at” his younger brothers. He also anointed himself the messiest. Aaron is considered the most outgoing.

Another area where the McKeithans love to compete is basketball, where Tim takes top honors as a dangerous shooting guard. Whenever the McKeithan boys return home for holidays, pickup games at the local elementary school are routine.

“They’re not as aggressive as they used to be, but we’re still competitive,” Joel said.

The most amazing part of the McKeithan family and its connection with Major League Baseball is the possibility of expansion.

Lydia, who’s older than Aaron but younger than Tim, went to Vanderbilt, was on the cheerleading squad and is currently completing her residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, with the ultimate goal of becoming an orthopedic surgeon and perhaps one day working for a professional sports team.

“Maybe at some point we could all be with the same one,” Joel joked.

When it comes to the McKeithans and baseball, it’s probably best to rule nothing out.

“We’ve always had a great support system at home, with parents who sacrificed a lot for us and helped shape our baseball lenses,” Tim said. “I think we all care about the game, but more importantly, just supporting the players who play it. It’s just something that feels pretty natural for us.”

Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.

First Published: December 25, 2021, 11:00 a.m.
Updated: December 25, 2021, 7:31 p.m.

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Tim McKeithan, part of the Pirates analytics team, walks across the field Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020, at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla.  (Matt Freed/Post-Gazette)
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