Bucs’ Bay detecting optimism in camp

Although previously critical of the team make-up, he has found hope at camp.

BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — The Pittsburgh Pirates and their best player sound ready to set aside their differences.

All-Star left fielder Jason Bay reported to spring training a day early Tuesday with nothing to add to comments he made last month, when he criticized the team’s new management for doing little to bolster a roster that went 68-94 last season.

“That’s it,” Bay said Tuesday. “Time to move on and focus on what we do have.”

Bay arrived after the team’s workout, but he spent time talking to teammates and came away impressed by their accounts of manager John Russell’s first camp.

“They’ve said that they already can feel that the air is a little different around here, just the way things are run and certain little idiosyncrasies that have changed,” Bay said. “I think it’s great. For the young team we have, it’s great to just lay down the law and have that concrete guidance.”

On the final day of last season, Bay said, “To think we’re going to win 100 games or go to the World Series next year with the exact same team ... it would be a little foolish.”

On Jan. 25, at the Pirates’ annual fan festival in Pittsburgh, he said, “I think that, for a championship-quality team, you need to make more moves. And I’m not talking about the .500 team we can be. I don’t think anyone in this room is going to tell you we’re a championship-quality team.”

Team president Frank Coonelly and general manager Neal Huntington talked to Bay after he made those comments, each saying he would have preferred Bay come to management directly.

“What Jason said, do I agree with it? No,” Huntington said. “I wish he’d come to me. Maybe what I said, he wouldn’t have liked, and he still would have made his comments. But, at least he would have made those comments with an understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Coonelly and Huntington, however, said Bay’s remarks would not affect his future with the Pirates.

“Obviously, he was frustrated at the end of last year, and that’s understandable,” Coonelly said. “But there’s nothing more important to the Pittsburgh Pirates’ success in the short term than Jason Bay returning to the player that we all know he can be. His status with the club is certainly not in jeopardy.”

Pittsburgh shopped Bay for a trade this off-season, but were dissatisfied that teams were offering little in return. That surely was because Bay’s batting average dropped from .286 to .247 last season, his home runs from 35 to 21.

The Pirates will not rule out trading Bay or any other player in their quest to upgrade a barren minor-league system. In the interim, they hope to break a losing streak that stands at 15 seasons, one shy of the modern professional sports record set by the 1933-48 Philadelphia Phillies.

“We want Jason to be enthusiastic about what we’re doing, about the teachers we brought in to work with him and the rest of the club,” Coonelly said. “I think he’s going to come to Bradenton and see a whole different mentality with this team.”