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BRADENTON, Fla. -- The bright Florida sun had barely shined on the first day of Jim Tracy's debut mini-camp as Pirates manager when Zach Duke, he of the great personal expectations for 2006 after a stellar rookie half-season with Pittsburgh in 2005, made a bold prediction.

"This is going to be different," Duke said of the upcoming voluntary camp. "You can just tell that things are going to be different around here ... and I think it's for the better."

Duke didn't know it then, but the words he offered Tuesday proved prophetic. The Pirates' 2006 mini-camp, which will wrap up this morning with the briefest of workouts, was different.

And make no mistake -- it was different for the better. Especially if you take into account Duke's harsh criticism of former manger Lloyd McClendon and ex-pitching coach Spin Williams during an interview Saturday with ESPN Radio's Tim Benz.

"(This staff is) making sure that the personal relationships are established," Duke said on a special edition of "The Tim Benz Show." "When I came to the Pirates last year, it kind of felt like I didn't want to step on any toes or ruffle any feathers. Here, it's an open door policy and it really feels that way.

"When it came to (the previous) coaching staff, I didn't feel like I could come to them with whatever I had on my mind. It was all business. It seems that I can come to (this staff) with some more personal stuff this time."

In the interview, Duke described the motivation methods of McClendon and Williams as "a tear-down process."

"They were going to bark at you this way and if you didn't do it right they were going to yell at you," Duke explained.

Neither Tracy nor any of his coaches yelled at their players during this mini-camp. Such professionalism, amongst other things, did not go unnoticed by Duke and his teammates.

"It was great," pitcher Ryan Vogelsong said of mini-camp. "It was more structured than in the past. There was more detail. The workouts were definitely a little more intense than normal.

"Before, we would get the instructions, but it was more like we were just going through the movements. At this camp, we were getting the instructions and going through the drills, but things were crisp.

"I almost felt like it was two weeks into spring training, not mini-camp."

Vogelsong's words speak volumes about the change in attitude that Tracy seems to have brought with him from Los Angeles. Vogelsong also echoed thoughts from the majority of his teammates when he praised the player-friendly-but-strict Tracy and his focused staff for their commitment to details during fielding drills and bunting practice.

The scene of Tracy taking Duke aside Tuesday during the bunting session, putting his hand on Duke's back to better show the young pitcher how to go about achieving proper batting balance certainly left an impression on almost every player.

"He was like that with everything he did, in every drill -- all the coaches were," pitcher John Grabow said. "It was refreshing, really. Their attention to detail, the little things; it lets you know that they know what they're talking about.

"Not to rag too much on the last manager, but in the past, if something was wrong, you didn't necessarily find out about it right away. With these guys, you hear about it immediately. It's like they instantly detect something that's wrong and let you know how to go about fixing it.

"Plus, they listen to you, too. That seems like one of the strengths of this manager and these coaches -- listening to the players and getting to know what guys can do. It's not, 'This is the way it's going to be,' like it was in the past. As a player, it seems like you're going to get a chance to work through your problems with the coaches. That kind of communication and working environment starts with our manager."

Unlike McClendon, now the bullpen coach under Jim Leyland in Detroit, Tracy's reputation is that of a charismatic-but-classy leader who gets the most out of his players. He tends to trust his coaches with more responsibility than most major-league managers. He's also a meticulous planner, as evident by his scripting out the mini-camp stations down to the exact minute.

"Jim doesn't yell and scream to get a point across," said bench coach Jim Lett, who served in the same capacity under Tracy in Los Angeles. "He doesn't belittle players. He has his ways of getting his point across, but it's in a professional manner. And this coaching staff follows his lead."

Such an approach is the way things went under Tracy in Los Angeles, where the Dodgers enjoyed four winning seasons during his five-year run as skipper. Tracy is clearly proud of his success in Los Angeles and unafraid to use it as a reminder as to why his structured way of doing things has followed him to Pittsburgh.

Tracy said prior to the start of this mini-camp that he would use it as a chance to familiarize himself with the faces of the names he had been studying since taking over as manager.

He met pitcher Tom Gorzelanny for the first time Tuesday. By Thursday, upon seeing Gorzelanny in the hallway outside the Pirate City clubhouse, Tracy knew enough to call the young pitcher by his nickname, "Gorzo."

Upon hearing his manager make the reference, Gorzelanny turned to a Pirates clubhouse attendant, laughed and asked, "How did he know that?"

The attendant's reply: "There's nothing that man doesn't know. He knows every little thing. You'll see."

Different, indeed.

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