Jacob Stallings joins the Pirates Baseball Operations department

Long time Major League catcher Jacob Stallings has taken on a new role in the Pirates’ baseball department, Stallings tells Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The details surrounding his job are still being worked out, but for now the plan is for Stallings to be in Pittsburgh about once a month to consult with the front office and spend time throughout the year visiting minor league affiliates to work on developing the organization’s young catchers.

Stallings tells Mackey he suffered notable back pain last season and knew as the year went by that he would likely retire after the 2025 season. The experienced backstop adds that he plays for Skip Schumaker with the 2023 Marlins helped him realize the impact a coach/manager whose playing career just ended could have on players throughout the organization. Time will tell if Stallings stays in baseball operations or takes on more of a player development or even coaching role in the future, but he’s jumping right back into the game after what appears to be the final season of his playing career.

Stallings, 36, opened the 2025 season on the Rockies’ roster. He had re-signed to a one-year deal after hitting .263/.357/.453 as Colorado’s primary backstop the season before. Things didn’t go nearly as well in ’25. Stallings hit just .143/.217/.179 in 93 plate appearances before being let go in Denver. He briefly dealt with the Orioles when they were hit by a litany of catcher injuries, but played in only 14 games before being passed over waivers and opting for free agency.

All told, Stallings appeared in parts of ten Major League seasons. The former seventh-round pick appeared in 577 games between the Pirates, Marlins, Rockies and Orioles, racking up 1,922 plate appearances and posting a .232/.311/.340 batting average (77 wRC+). While Stallings was rarely a major threat with the bat, he was considered one of the game’s premier defenders behind the plate for years. He won a Gold Glove with the Pirates in 2021 and caught 21% of the runners who attempted to steal against him in his career. That mark was undermined by some low percentages later in his career, but between 2019 and 2020, Stallings thwarted 36.2% of the runners who left on his watch.

Stallings amassed more than seven years of Major League service and took home approximately $12 million during his playing career. He will now have a say in mentoring the next generation of Pirates catchers and could use that opportunity as a launching pad for a number of other career paths within the sport.

Readers – especially Pirates fans – will want to read Stallings’ full interview with Mackey for quotes about his experiences mentoring younger catchers as a player, his relationship with Schumaker, and some of the strengths he sees in Pittsburgh’s new captain. Don Kellyand more.