Pirates add Justin Meccage as major league coach, hire new international scouting director

The Pirates have made a number of front office and coaching changes (sub. req’d), including the hiring of an assistant pitching coach and an international scouting director.

The assistant pitching coach will be Justin Meccage, who’s been something of a minor league pitching guru for the team for several years. Meccage has been the minor league pitching coordinator for the past year and, prior to that, served as pitching coach at various levels in the minors.

The new international scouting director is Junior Vizcaino. He’s been the global crosschecker for Boston for the past year. Prior to that, he spent 17 years with Kansas City, much of it as their national supervisor. Vizcaino, of course, replaces Rene Gayo, whom the Pirates dismissed for taking improper payments.

The Pirates will have a new director of pro scouting. Steve Williams served as their pro supervisor this year.

Other hires include Sean McNally and Greg Smith as special assistants to the GM. McNally was previously a pro scout and Smith, who was scouting director from 2008-12, was an Assistant GM. (It does not sound like a promotion for Smith.) Joe Douglas and Justin Newman have been named baseball informatics, quantitative analysts (see if you can say that quickly three times). Trey Rose will be a baseball operations assistant, and John Birkbeck and Matt Taylor will serve as scouting assistants.

UPDATE: Guess I was at least partly on the right track with Smith.