Pirates assistant GM: Don Kelly 'pouring everything he's got' into managerial duties

The Pittsburgh Pirates are taking an unconventional approach to replacing a manager midseason, relying instead on the collective to fill a void when Don Kelly was promoted from bench coach.

Assistant general manager Kevan Graves, filling in for Ben Cherington on his weekly radio show, said Sunday on 93.7 The Fan that he was proud of Kelly for “pouring everything he’s got into this.”

The Pirates wanted to provide support for Kelly as a first-time manager, and Graves said Gene Lamont “was a name he brought up immediately” as an addition to the coaching staff.

The 78-year-old Lamont, who was the Pirates’ manager from 1997-2000 and a former AL manager of the year, will join the Pirates on Monday when they return to PNC Park and serve as a special advisor to Kelly. Lamont was a coach for Detroit when Kelly played for the Tigers.

“There’s a couple things we’ll ask of him: One is certainly to help with in-game strategy and decision-making, how we’re working through that as a coaching staff and how DK is working through that as a manager,” Graves said. “The other thing is as a mentor and trusted voice. Someone who has been in that chair and has no agenda, other than, ‘How can I help you?’ DK’s a firm believer in having people around you that are going to tell you the unfiltered truth. He’s going to give him what he’s got. He’s going to be transparent, and his only objective is to help the Pirates and help DK perform to the best of his ability in that chair.”

The Pirates promoted Chris Truby from Triple-A Indianapolis manager to major league coach, taking advantage of his experience as minor league infield coordinator to replace Kelly in working with fielders.

And Truby will be joined by third base coach Mike Rabelo, whose role will expand to include pregame planning and strategy, as the Pirates also fired game planning coach Radley Haddad along with Derek Shelton.

“As we assessed how we wanted to approach it, we’re going to attack the bench coach role in force,” Graves said. “There will be a distribution of the work that Dk was doing, as well as asking people like Rabs to continue to dominate the role that he was in. … We thought that that transition had a potential to be pretty seamless. Ultimately, think that that gave us the best opportunity to fulfill that bench coach role collectively.”

Graves said that Kelly has talked publicly about the idea of “fighting for every inch on the field, and I think he’s living that out” by taking on some of the game planning and strategy roles.

“That will fall under his umbrella. That will be his responsibility, and we will have a host of folks who are supporting him,” Graves said. “He was comfortable with that. The staff was comfortable with supporting him. We believe in the composition of the group.”