John Baker’s set up in his kitchen looked like an improvised baseball heaven. Three different devices, three different games, with several of his coordinators on Zoom as well.
After a 610-day layoff, minor-league baseball had returned on that May 4 night, and Baker wanted to watch as much at once as he could.
“That was unsustainable,” Baker told me about his setup, laughing. The new plan would be to watch one game live and then video of the others the next day.
About six months prior, in November 2020, Baker had been hired as the Pirates’ director of coaching and player development, a reworked take on the traditional “farm director” title.