The Pittsburgh Pirates have promoted two of their scouts to Special Assistants to the General Manager, according to a team press release. Ron Hopkins and Matt Ruebel were both given the promotion, after serving as scouts in the organization last year. The Pirates had lost two people in that role this off-season, with Marc DelPiano and Jim Benedict both going to Miami in Vice President roles.
Hopkins was a pro scout last year, and Ruebel was a National Supervisor. I don’t have much info on their scouting results, since info on pro scouts doesn’t get published much, and national supervisors kind of oversee everything on the amateur side. One interesting note that has no impact here is that Ruebel was a reliever for the Pirates in the late 90s, and got the win on Opening Day in 1997 against San Francisco.
Along with those moves, the Pirates promoted Rodney Henderson and Everett Russell to Professional Scouts. Henderson was the Southeast Region Supervisor while Russell was the Midwest Region Supervisor. Once again, with supervisors it’s hard to point to individual moves and say that’s who they signed. However, Russell has been in the system since before Huntington, and signed Brad Lincoln back in 2006 and Paul Maholm in 2003, among others.
Tim started Pirates Prospects in 2009 from his home in Virginia, which was 40 minutes from where Pedro Alvarez made his pro debut in Lynchburg. That year, the Lynchburg Hillcats won the Carolina League championship, and Pirates Prospects was born from Tim's reporting along the way. The site has grown over the years to include many more writers, and Tim has gone on to become a credentialed MLB reporter, producing Pirates Prospects each year, and will publish his 11th Prospect Guide this offseason. He has also served as the Pittsburgh Pirates correspondent for Baseball America since 2019. Behind the scenes, Tim is an avid music lover, and most of the money he gets paid to run this site goes to vinyl records.
I wonder why a guy like Rene Gayo would not get a promotion to like “Special Assistant to the GM for southern hemisphere baseball activities including but not limited to the Caribbean”.
My smile of the day 🙂
This is said without opinion, since it would be pretty silly to judge two guys you’ve never heard of before today, but it’s interesting to me that two key members of the front office were replaced with rank-and-file promotions…especially with how much GM turnover is going on right now.
Lots of good baseball people out there without a home or working under a GM that might be bringing in his own people.
I was mildly surprised someone from the early 2000s was still around. Figured a lot of these people had Expos/Indians backgrounds.
BucsDugout says that Ruebel worked for Huntington in Cleveland, fwiw.
There’s a Dwight Schrute joke begging to be dropped on this lede.
I thought of that too. They’ve been showing reruns lately and I think the show actually got a little funnier when Michael Scott’s character was gone. It allowed the story lines to focus on the other characters a little more. As far as the promotions go congrats to them.
I think the show kind of hit a lull when Jim was promoted to Co-Regional Manager. It really removed the Dwight/Jim aspect of the show. When he returned to his normal job the last half of the final season, it was classic Office.
Also, I didn’t really like Andy’s storyline at the end. It was like they went a totally different direction with his character from every other season, and also tried to make him a bit like Michael Scott. I realize part of this was probably because he was away for a bit filming The Hangover sequels, but it could have been better.
Not to stray from the Pirates but hell it’s your site so anyways – Andy was always the romantic so for him to flake out like that on Erin was very much unlike his character. The back and forth between Jim and Dwight was truly tremendous at times especially early on. Outside of the Blacklist there’s really nothing to watch on Thursdays anymore. For God’s sake I caught literally half of the Browns/Bengals game and I’m a bleeping Niners fan. So in other words I’m looking forward to the Winter Meetings.
That’s the same problem I had with it. Not just the romantic aspect, but the business aspect. The whole series he made a big deal about going to Cornell, and even though he wasn’t a good salesman, you felt he would be a good manager for the office.
Two of the better Andy moments in the late seasons came when he stole the biggest client from Robert California, and when he got the tattoo after the office completed their sales goals in a day. Both were funny moments, but also showed Andy was a different manager than Michael Scott. Then in the final season, he became totally different, almost to the point where he went crazy.
Thursday used to be my favorite night of TV between Office/Parks and Rec and Person of Interest. I watch Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder now, but those are more guilty pleasure type shows than great quality shows. Neither make me look forward to Thursday night TV days in advance.
I always think about that when I see the job title.
Matt pitched for us in ’97? Then he’ll know a bad ballplayer when he sees one? 🙂
Actually the ’97 team was one of the best of the bad teams. I believe they were in it until the final weekend series vs Astros that year.