Brent Strom has joined Pirates manager Derek Shelton’s staff as the assistant pitching coach, and in his new role will work hand in hand with pitching coach Oscar Marin to get the most out of the team’s talented group of young hurlers.

Strom, who turned 76 in October, got his first gig as a pitching coach back in 1992 with the Tucson Toros, the Houston Astros’ Triple-A affiliate at the time. At the Major League level, he has served as the pitching coach for the Astros (1996, 2014-21), Kansas City Royals (2000-01) and Arizona Diamondbacks (2022-24). Four times in the past eight seasons, Strom has helped lead his team to the World Series -- including 2017 when the Astros won the championship.

In the following Q&A, he shares his thoughts on the new job, his pitching philosophies and the many challenges that pitchers face in today’s game.

How do you feel about joining the Pirates’ organization and the opportunity to work alongside Marin?

Strom: I’m very grateful to the Pirates for giving me a shot. This is an opportunity to come in and do some teaching and work with their talented young pitching staff. That’s exciting. Oscar is really on top of things, and he seems to really care about his guys. He’s educated me quite a bit about those guys already. I’ve seen scouting reports and what they’re working on this winter, and my job is to facilitate and help Oscar as much as I can. I’m going to be the best backup quarterback I can possibly be for him and this team. There’s a good pitching culture here, and I want to add to that momentum.

The Pirates have a lot of good young pitchers, led by National League Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes. In your experience, what has been the key to pitchers with talent and potential blossoming into bona fide Major Leaguers?

Strom: I think there are two things that are most important for any pitcher. One is to have an open mindset to learning and improving their craft. The second is to have a highly competitive nature. Do they have that competitive nature to fight even when things are going bad? That’s what I really look for in pitchers. Those are the two qualities that are most important. Nothing brings me more joy than to see young men achieve what they’re trying to achieve. Hopefully, next year with the Pirates I can play a part in helping this really talented group of pitchers and helping this team get into the playoffs.

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You’re often referred to as an old-school pitching coach who nonetheless embraces analytics and technology. Is that an accurate description?

Strom: Well, I don’t think “old school” is the correct terminology because a lot of pitchers from that era -- the ’60s and the ’70s -- understood intuitively what the analytics people are presenting to us objectively now. Maybe it wasn’t written down and you didn’t have TrackMan and all the different analytics, but pitchers understood speeds and they understood forcing hitters to cover large portions of the strike zone. It’s a misnomer to think there’s a huge divide that you need to be able to cross from one to the other. They complement each other. There’s a time when you need to throw the analytics out and go with your gut -- go with your best and what feels right at the time. And there’s a time when you need to embrace what the numbers show you to get the edge in the fight.

With so much attention being paid to velocity and spin rate in baseball these days, it seems like more and more starting pitchers are just trying to throw as hard as they can for as long as they can. But can guys get too caught up in throwing instead of pitching?

Strom: The nature of the game, with shorter outings by starters, has kind of brought that upon them. But I’m on a little bit of a different track. I know what velocity is. It isn’t what the radar gun shows. It’s what the hitter sees or doesn’t see. Sometimes a fastball in at 95 [mph] is better than a fastball away at 99. The tendency is to think that harder is better, when understanding speed differentials and forcing hitters to cover the majority of the strike zone is the key. I’d love to see our pitchers go six, seven innings a start. If we can do that with this strong starting staff, that keeps the bullpen fresh and healthy and keeps them at their best. If we have a young guy who thinks he should just rear back and throw it, we have ways of showing him -- Oscar and myself with the analysts’ help -- how maybe he can throttle that back and save a few bullets.

So, you place value on analytics and technology, but what you see with your eyes is also vitally important. Is that right?

Strom: Yes, sometimes young guys get caught up in the numbers before the game, and then as the game is being played adjustments are not being made. That’s where you let your eyes tell you that perhaps this is not really what we thought it was going to be. What we talked about at 5 o’clock might not be happening at 8 o’clock. You go into the game with information, but also with a willingness to adjust if necessary. That’s where communication with the pitcher and catcher can have a big effect and help put the odds in your favor.