Bucs’ Shelton gets taste of intensity at Steelers practice

Pirates GM Ben Cherington and skipper Derek Shelton were guests of Mike Tomlin Tuesday.

Derek Shelton got his first taste of a Pittsburgh Steelers training camp at Saint Vincent College on Tuesday, and the Pirates manager was more fascinated by their coach than the old-fashioned campus setting.

After an off day Monday, Shelton and general manager Ben Cherington accepted an invitation from Steelers coach Mike Tomlin to watch practice from the sidelines at Chuck Noll Field.

“I had a great time. I had never been out there before and I really appreciated the invite,” Shelton said before Tuesday’s series opener against the San Diego Padres at PNC Park. “It’s so unique. You’re taking a professional sports team and you’re putting them in dorms – made me think about spring training, everyone dorming up – but just to see the intensity, to see the practice, to be able to spend some time with Coach (Mike) Tomlin and talk to him, it was really fun.”

Shelton said “there’s a definite friendship” between himself and Tomlin, who reached out as soon as Shelton was hired as Pirates manager in November 2019. Tomlin also had a similar friendship with Shelton’s predecessor, Clint Hurdle.

“That means a lot to me because he’s been here a long time and has had a lot of success,” Shelton said. “The fact of being able to develop that – and he’s a baseball fan. He had a relationship with Clint even before I was here. He likes baseball. When we sat down today and started to talk, he’s very well aware of what we’re doing. He’s excited about our guys. He wanted to talk about specific players. That’s cool. That means a lot to me. … If you spend any time around him, you walk away better because he’s got a ton of energy, he’s very thoughtful about what he’s doing and he’s been able to be very successful at it, so I appreciate any time I’m able to get around him.”

Shelton said he has talked with Tomlin about how they run their practices, and was impressed with how the Tomlin immediately injects intensity into Steelers practices with the Seven Shots drill, where the offense runs seven goal-line plays against the defense.

“I think one of the reasons they do it is they do the highest- leverage thing at the beginning of practice, to make sure everybody’s ready,” Shelton said. “What I enjoyed today while watching it was the trash-talking that went on amongst the offense, the defense, the coordinators, the coaches. … I think that, in and of itself, because we play every day, you really don’t get that much emotion every single day in a practice and it was kind of cool. No, it wasn’t kind of cool to see. It was really cool to see. And just the energy that he brings on the day to day, watching him run a practice was enjoyable.”

Shelton has attempted to infuse Pirates spring training practices with game-speed situations. They now use pitching machines that shoot out ground balls harder and with topspin – things fungo bats can’t do – to create as much simulation as much as possible. The Pirates also invested in a Trajekt pitching robot, which can simulate the release point and pitch movement of any pitcher in the major leagues for batting practice.

After talking with Tomlin about the Seven Shots, Shelton tried using a five-man infield to practice plays at the plate in a drill where the first ball hit determines whether a team wins or loses.

“We kind of took that from a conversation he and I had this winter where he was explaining the drill to me, the highest leverage situation, how you can do it,” Shelton said. “The one big difference – and we didn’t talk about it today but we’ve talked about it in the past – is they practice at game speed. And that’s the hardest thing in baseball.”

Shelton also learned a lesson with his choice of clothing.

“I made a really bad decision going in all black,” Shelton said, “because it was about 1,000 degrees on the turf out there.”