If in 2011, reliever Addison Reed’s first year in the majors, a team had hired a college pitching coach who neither had pitched nor coached in pro ball…
“Nobody would have listened to him,” Reed says.
And if that same team also had hired a first-time assistant pitching coach who had never coached at only level…
“Even five years ago, it would have been, ‘Whoa, what?” says the assistant pitching coach in question, Jeremy Hefner.
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Ah, but this is 2019, and the Twins’ grand experiment – hiring major-league newbies at pitching coach, assistant pitching coach and manager – barely even registers as shocking in the new world of baseball.
The manager, Rocco Baldelli, 37, is younger than his designated hitter, Nelson Cruz, 38, and older than his chief baseball officer, Derek Falvey, 35.
The pitching coach, former University of Arkansas instructor Wes Johnson, 41, is the first coach to jump directly from college to the majors since Dick Howser went from the head coach at Florida State to manager of the Yankees in 1980.
The assistant pitching coach, Hefner, 32, pitched briefly in the majors and developed a rapport with Twins pitchers in two years as the team’s advance scout, but that is the entirety of his off-field résumé.
Players today are younger, more accustomed to analytics, open to new ideas. They want information and coaches who convey it in an easily understood fashion. Major-league experience is not a prerequisite, as long as an instructor can help them improve.
“Big-league players essentially are just looking to make more money, right?” says Hefner, who appeared in 50 games with the Mets in 2012-13. “If you can help them make more money, then you’re going to get buy-in.”
The Twins hardly are the only club taking a fresh, unconventional approach to staffing. Teams increasingly are looking outside the industry for help both in the majors and minors, hiring not just from the college ranks, but also from data-driven development programs such as Driveline Baseball and other independent coaching facilities. As Falvey puts it, “Some of those people out there with real technical knowledge and ability aren’t necessarily in the pro game.”
Johnson is one of seven first-time pitching coaches this season, and not the only one with a non-traditional background:
*The Angels’ Doug White, 41, never played professional baseball, but is the founder of the “Passion for Pitching” academy in Southern California and an advocate of Zhealth, a program that enhances movement patterns in athletes.
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*The Mariners’ Paul Davis, 54, also did not play professionally, but developed an expertise in video and pitch-tracking technology in five seasons with the Cardinals, serving most recently as the team’s manager of pitching analytics.
*The Cubs’ Tommy Hottovy, 37, took an online introduction to analytics course after a shoulder injury ended his playing career in 2014, then spent the past four seasons as the team’s unofficial “run prevention coordinator,” helping develop scouting reports and strategies.
Seven clubs also are turning to first-time hitting coaches, the most notable of whom is the Dodgers’ Robert Van Scoyoc, 32, who did not play professionally but helped start the launch-angle revolution with Craig Wallenbrock, drawing particular credit for his work with J.D. Martinez.
The Twins’ Johnson, who was the pitching coach at Dallas Baptist and Mississippi State before Arkansas, previously had drawn major-league interest, but not for a head pitching coach’s position. This past off-season was different – Johnson said multiple clubs showed interest in giving him the top pitching job. Even then, he was hesitant. He did not want to join a major-league team unless it shared his philosophies.
“I’m big into biomechanics and analytics and game-planning and pitch design,” Johnson says. “I really felt the organization was in line with that, and it was huge for me to talk to Rocco in the process. Obviously, I will be working with him every day, and he’s in. When those things lined up, it was like, ‘OK, I’ll make the jump.’”
Falvey first met Johnson in the early part of the decade, and during his days in the Indians’ front office once accompanied then-Indians pitching coach Mickey Callaway to a presentation Johnson and Brent Strom, now the Astros’ pitching coach, gave at the Texas Baseball Ranch. Johnson and Strom talked about developing pitchers through the use of pitch-tracking data and other advanced tools. The thought struck Falvey: These are things we’re not doing on the pro side.
Strom, who at 70 is the oldest pitching coach in the majors, is like a longtime avant-garde artist whose work suddenly went mainstream. Baseball America named him its major-league coach of the year in 2018, in part because his ideas that once were considered too radical are now accepted practices.
“The same s— that got me major-league coach of the year helped get me fired countless times – the same s—,” Strom says. “It’s just a different time.”
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Strom was out of baseball in 2006 and ‘07 after the Nationals dumped him as their minor-league pitching coordinator, helping his wife run her dog-grooming business. He might never have returned to the game if not for a mutual acquaintance who recommended him to the innovative Jeff Luhnow, who then was the Cardinals’ director of scouting and player development and later became the Astros’ general manager.
Wes Johnson, who refers to himself as Strom’s “biggest fan,” is part of the same coaching tree, the roots of which were formed by a former engineer and athlete named Paul Nyman, a revered figure in certain baseball circles. Nyman, applying his background in engineering and physics to baseball, founded a company in 1995 dedicated to helping pitchers improve their throwing mechanics and hitters their swing mechanics.
Strom, who pitched for the Mets, Indians and Padres in the 1970s before becoming a coach, said he first met Nyman in the early 2000s at a clinic at the University of Washington. Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson (no relation to Wes) and Ron Wolforth of the Texas Baseball Ranch are among the others Nyman influenced.
“He kind of transformed how all of us thought about pitching motion,” Strom says. “A group of us started to see pitching in a different light. We started to understand how the body moves differently with really elite pitchers.”
Strom said before meeting Nyman he would think about pitching mechanics as a series of positions – get to a balance point, lift your leg, do this, do that. Nyman, though, would say, “The best way to ruin a pitcher is to make him a pitcher” – meaning, rob him of his natural athleticism.
Think of Pedro Martínez – “there was a rhythm, a swing, a dance” to his delivery, Strom says. Think of the Cardinals’ Carlos Martínez, and how he throws 100 mph at 6 feet, 190 pounds while much bigger pitchers cannot approach that velocity. Heck, think of Max Scherzer, whose unusual mechanics once had teams thinking he was certain to break down.
“I’m sure the Diamondbacks would really love to have Scherzer now and look at him through the lens of the way you need to look at the delivery,” Strom says of the three-time Cy Young Award winner, whom the D-Backs traded to the Tigers in December 2009.
“Instead, they saw this kind of funk and said, ‘This guy is going to blow out.’ And his timing is impeccable – impeccable. They got rid of him because they thought he was going to get hurt. The rest is history. He’s the best in the game.”
Separate from Nyman’s teachings, Strom kept exploring new ideas and pushing old ones not necessarily in vogue. During his time as the Cardinals’ minor-league pitching coordinator, he would preach the value of throwing fastballs up in the zone, something he learned as a minor-league instructor with the Dodgers in the 1980s. The concept drew the ire of Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan, who favored a sinker-slider style, keeping the ball down. Today, working up in the zone is a staple of the Astros’ success.
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Looking back, Strom jokes about being “out on the gangplank a little too far,” but really, he was just ahead of his time. He has tried to stay that way, too, exchanging thoughts with Johnson and others, staying up on the new technology and terminology, seeking to maintain his edge.
White, who was Strom’s bullpen coach with the Astros last season before leaving for the Angels, is from the same mold as Johnson – fluent in the new language of pitching and facile with Trackman, which provides ball-tracking data, and Edgetronic and Rapsodo, which offer advanced camera and radar technology.
They are the outsiders turned insiders. The sons of Brent Strom.
In a notable scene from the movie, “Moneyball,” former Athletics scouting director Grady Fuson confronts general manager Billy Beane about the team’s shift toward analytics, saying, “baseball isn’t just numbers.”
Beane, played by Brad Pitt, listens for a moment, then throws up his hands.
“Adapt or die,” he says.
To survive as a major-league pitching coach for the past 13 seasons, the Diamondbacks’ Mike Butcher needed – like Strom and others from the previous generation – to adapt to the age of information.
Butcher, 53, has only one regret: That the data did not exist during his major-league playing career, which spanned from 1992 to ‘95.
“I wished I had it when I was playing, I really do,” says Butcher, who had a 4.47 ERA in 115 career relief appearances for the Angels. “If I had known I could go to a certain area to get a guy out, whether I had my best stuff or not, my confidence level would have been off the charts.
“I get goosebumps talking about it. That would have made me better. That’s why I embrace it. That’s why I love it.”
Before joining the D-Backs, Butcher served as pitching coach for the Rays in 2006 and the Angels from 2007 to ‘15. The tools of his trade keep changing, with the sport generating more data, different data each year. And Butcher, like Strom, keeps changing, too.
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“I’ve been asked this question for the past few years: ‘Are you old school or are you new school?’ My answer was, ‘I’m in school,’” Butcher says.
Yet for some, a concern exists that data-driven executives will start viewing coaches as little more than analytics delivery men, that the trend toward hiring less experienced instructors will go too far.
Fuson, in the scene from “Moneyball,” protests to Beane that the game is “not a science.” His words proved quite inaccurate – the game evolved into more of a science than anyone in the early 2000s imagined.
Still, coaching is an art, too.
“The one thing I don’t think you can replace is the wisdom guys have,” Butcher says. “You have all these guys who have been coaching for years. They’ve gone through minor-league seasons, major-league seasons, and they’ve put in a bunch of time. There is a lot of wisdom learned along the way through your experiences and your knowledge. I think that’s hard to give up.”
The Twins’ Johnson has that experience – more than 20 years worth, though none in the pro game. His assistant, Hefner, is a complete coaching novice, but he acted almost as an instructor in his two years as an advance scout, drawing on analytics to suggest pitch selections and sequences. His recent playing experience gave him credibility with the Twins’ staff, right-hander Kyle Gibson says.
Bob McClure, a former major-league pitching coach with the Royals, Red Sox and Phillies who joined the Twins last season as a senior pitching advisor, will provide support for Johnson and Hefner. Bill Evers, who has been in the game more than 30 years as a coach, scout and minor-league manager, will offer similar assistance to Baldelli as a member of his coaching staff.
Everything appears to be set up well, but Johnson, Hefner and Baldelli will be handling their new responsibilities in the crucible of a 162-game major-league season.
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The nightly challenge is unique.
“You always hear, everything is objective now. Everybody wants to deal with the facts,” Butcher says, without referring to any coaches or teams in particular. “But you’re dealing with emotions on the mound. There has to be a tremendous amount of communication to get through to these guys. When they’re talking to you, do they want your objective mindset or your subjective mindset?
“You have all that knowledge. You have all those numbers. You have all that information. Now, there is another guy with a bat in his hand trying to rip your head off. If you’ve done the same thing to him over and over again, at some point he’s going to figure it out and catch up to it. You’ve got make adjustments. Sometimes the guy who doesn’t have any emotion in the game will help you make an adjustment. That’s where I think a really good coach or manager comes in.”
Adjustments come in different forms. A pitcher who excels at throwing high fastballs might become even better if he becomes equally proficient pitching down in the zone and expanding with his breaking ball. The data can point a pitcher in the proper direction. But the adjustment might not be possible without a coach who suggests the necessary mechanical tweak.
Mets pitching coach Dave Eiland, 52, also cites the trickiest and least quantifiable aspect of coaching – the human element.
“Being a coach, whether it’s a pitching coach, hitting coach, whatever the case may be, there is a lot more to it than just delivering analytical information,” Eiland says. “You have to manage personalities. You’re dealing with human beings.”
For the past three years, Johnson has adopted a saying: We don’t have fastball command. We have Trackman command.
In Johnson’s view, the ball-tracking data – including pitch velocity, spin rate and tilt, among other elements – reveals which pitches each pitcher needs to command. The coaches then work with the pitchers to refine those pitches and improve their mix.
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In their first spring under Johnson, Twins pitchers are not merely working on the pitches of their choice during their bullpen sessions. No, they are throwing scripted bullpens, with the entire session mapped out in advance.
First, the pitchers will watch video of themselves executing certain pitches. Then they will follow a plan of attack in the bullpen, working on specific pitches in specific locations.
The communication, however, is not one-way.
“When they see that we’re not just grabbing things out of the air subjectively, that the information we’re giving them is 100 percent objective but we also want their input, it lowers their guard,” Johnson says.
“When we show them, ‘This is why the advance report says this. This is why so-and-so is going to continue to throw to these spots,’ the guys understand where we’re coming from even more. And the walls come down.”
Major leaguers are naturally suspicious of any coach who enters their realm claiming to have all the answers, and in the past would be especially suspicious if that coach came from outside professional baseball.
Johnson, though, flew to meet Jake Odorizzi, Michael Pineda and other Twins pitchers during the offseason, and introduced himself to those he missed by phone. Gibson said Johnson made immediate suggestions, but went about it the right way.
“I watched video of you all offseason,” Johnson told Gibson, who posted a career-best 3.62 ERA in 196 2/3 innings last season. “This is what we see. We just want to make minor tweaks. This is why. What do you think?”
Gibson recalls thinking: Not a problem.
During his interview process, Johnson asked Twins officials if their pitchers had big egos and would be resistant to new ideas. Falvey and general manager Thad Levine assured Johnson the answer was no, that the pitchers wanted to grow and learn.
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Only a few days into spring training, Reed, 30, was sold.
“Guys like myself who didn’t come up in the analytical era, it’s a little more difficult to buy into, because you’ve been doing it one way for so long,” Reed said. “The guys who are coming up now, that’s all they’ve known. In college programs, they’re going to analytics. Minor leagues are all analytics. They’ve grown up in that. So when they get to the big leagues, it’s easy for them to adjust to the analytical side.
“It’s something new for me, but Wes has been great in the way he communicates it. He’s not just throwing numbers at you where you walk away and say, ‘What the heck did he just say? How am I going to use that?’ He tells you the numbers and he gives the why. For a guy like me, it’s easy to understand.”
Not long ago, major leaguers would have laughed a college coach out of their clubhouse. These days, they’re eager to listen.
“Just because you never played in the big leagues,” Reed says, “doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
(Top photo of Wes Johnson with Matt Magill: AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
