Longtime major league catcher Jacob Stallings has taken on a new role in the Pirates’ baseball operations department, Stallings tells Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Specifics surrounding his job are still being ironed out, but for now the plan will be for Stallings to be in Pittsburgh around once a month to consult with the front office and spend time visiting minor league affiliates throughout the year to work on the development of the organization’s young catchers.
Stallings tells Mackey that he played through notable back pain last season and knew as the year wore on that he was likely to retire following the 2025 campaign. The veteran backstop adds that playing for Skip Schumaker with the 2023 Marlins helped him to realize the type of impact a coach/manager whose playing career has just ended could have on players throughout the organization. Time will tell whether Stallings sticks in baseball operations or takes on more of a player development or even coaching role moving forward, but he’s jumping right back into the game following what appears to be the final season of his playing career.
Stallings, 36, opened the 2025 season on the Rockies’ roster. He’d re-signed on a one-year deal after hitting .263/.357/.453 as Colorado’s primary backstop the season prior. Things didn’t go nearly as well in ’25. Stallings hit just .143/.217/.179 in 93 plate appearances before being cut loose in Denver. He briefly latched on with the Orioles when they were hit with a litany of catcher injuries but appeared in only 14 games before being passed through waivers and electing free agency.
All told, Stallings appeared in parts of 10 major league seasons. The former seventh-round pick suited up for 577 games between the Pirates, Marlins, Rockies and Orioles, tallying 1922 plate appearances and batting .232/.311/.340 (77 wRC+). While Stallings was rarely a big threat with the bat, he for several years ranked as one of the game’s premier defenders behind the plate. He won a Gold Glove with the Pirates in 2021 and nabbed 21% of runners who attempted to steal against him in his career. That mark was weighed down by some low percentages later in his career, but from 2019-20 Stallings thwarted 36.2% of the runners who took off during his watch.
Stallings accrued more than seven years of major league service time and took home about $12MM in his playing career. He’ll now have a say in helping to guide the next generation of Pirates catchers and could use that opportunity as a launching point into any number of other career paths within the sport.
Readers — Pirates fans in particular — will want to check out Stallings’ interview with Mackey in full for quotes on his experiences mentoring younger catchers as a player, his relationship with Schumaker, some of the strengths he sees in new Pittsburgh skipper Don Kelly, and more.