PITTSBURGH (93-7 THE FAN) — The Fan Morning Show broadcasted live from PNC Park Thursday as your Pittsburgh Pirates open the 2012 season against the Philadelphia Phillies.

Pirates’ President Frank Coonelly stopped by to tell us about all the changes made to PNC Park and the Bucs’ Opening Day roster.

Coonelly says last season brought some important lessons for the team and the organization as a whole.

“I think they learned that Pittsburgh is a baseball town. That really was the most important thing, for those guys to see this town embrace them, embrace the team, embrace the organization, and come out here to PNC Park in record numbers was meaningful to them,” he said. “It gave them even more determination to bring a winner back to Pittsburgh.

“In terms of the last two months of the season, I think as an organization we learned some lessons,” Coonelly added. “Obviously, we had pushed some young starting pitchers to inning levels they had never hit before. There was some result… we had to shut some guys down, some guys didn’t perform as well as they had for the first four months. The good news is they’ve now pushed through those limits and they should be able to go beyond those limits this year and it also told us that we needed to get better up the middle.”

Click the link below to listen to the full interview: