According to the Pirates website, Don Long was named the Pirates hitting coach in November, 2007.  So, has he helped?  Our key team hitting stats, courtesy of MLB.com, look like this the three years before and after Don Long.

                                            Before Don                                   After Don

Stat                              2005    2006    2007                2008    2009    2010 (to date)

Average                       .259     .263     .263                 .258     .252     .238

On-Base %                  .322     .327     .275                 .320     .318     .304

Slugging %                  .400     .397     .411                 .403     .387     .358

Strikeouts                    1092    1200    1135                1039    1142    540

Runs                              680      691      724                  735       636   245   

Home Runs                   139      141      148                  153       125     49

            In short, all the key batting metrics seem to be headed downhill, in the wrong direction, south, to heck in a hand-basket, or whatever you want to call it.  I’ll leave it to everyone here to add all those fancy stats and graphs and such that you use, and to parse whether this declining production is due to a lack of raw talent to work with or due to the fact that our hitting instructor, “[a] former switch-hitting infielder” who played three years in the Giants farm system and “... compiled a .251 batting average, 12 home runs and 76 RBI in 198 games...” just should not be our hitting instructor. 

            I did not take the time to try and sort out Long’s impact on the Phillies farm system, where he worked eight years as the minor league hitting coordinator and roving hitting instructor.  Sorry, just don’t have the patience or ninja-google skills to find a website that compiles that sort of information.