As they begin to build out a coaching staff, the Orioles appear to be nearing an agreement with Doug Brocail that would make him the team’s next pitching coach. Dan Connolly of The Athletic tweets that Brocail is “in line” to land in Baltimore.
If the sides do indeed put pen to paper, Brocail would take over for Roger McDowell, who departed along with veteran skipper Buck Showalter. The organizational change in Baltimore has been widespread, of course, with GM Mike Elias taking over baseball operations and going on to hire Brandon Hyde as the new manager.
Brocail, 51, was a first-round draft pick who pitched for 15 seasons in the majors, working to a cumulative 4.00 ERA in 880 innings. He just wrapped up a three-year run with the Rangers as their pitching coach. Previously, Brocail had a run of that same length in the same role with the Astros.
But he sucks
I laughed way harder than I should have. You typed what I was thinking. lol.
I concur! Laughed hard and thought the same thing. Couldn’t get much worse.
But is he an upgrade for Baltimore?
Well he’s 51 years old but he’s probably better than 90 to 95% of their pitching staff.
Haha, nice.
Yes.
Saturday night, I played the board game MLB Showdown 2000 with my godson. My starter, Greg Maddux, gave up nine runs in 5.1 IP. I was losing 12-9 heading into the bottom of the 9th. Brocail was the last pitcher my godson had — so in he went. Brocail faced five batters: the first four scored, with the game ending on a walkoff double from Manny Ramirez.
So, even on paper, Brocail still sucks.
That’s awesome. I wish I could play Strat-O-Matic with my dad one last time.
Many coaches are unsuccessful players. For example here are the other current AL East Pitching Coaches playing careers summarized:
Red Sox:
Minor league catcher Dana LeVangie with career minor league .196 average. So had plenty of practice getting himself out.
link to baseball-reference.com
Yankees:
Larry Rothschild career ERA 5.40 though he only lasted 8.1 innings over 2 seasons.
link to baseball-reference.com
Rays:
James Hickey career 3.54 in the minors but 7.71 at AAA. Never made it to the majors.
link to baseball-reference.com
Blue Jays:
Pete Walker as the most accomplished of the group had a career 4.48 ERA over 29 games over parts of 7 seasons.
link to baseball-reference.com
@False: how do you determine whether a pitching coach sucks?
Nice A-hole comment there pal..
He isn’t completely wrong though. Texas pitching has struggled or regressed for the most part under his watch. He had a few nice projects in Houston but his overall track record doesn’t leave much optimism
Yeah but whether Texas pitching regressed doesn’t tell me much about him as a coach. Several factors, other than simply the coach, could have contributed to the regression.
Uh yeah. Several factors for sure. But that could certainly involve be the coach. You can’t put it all on him but when your staff regresses 3 straight years how does that reflect? The rangers team ERA jumped every year and he’s going to be getting a similar crop of guys in Baltimore. He lost Darvish and eventually Hamels and had to run out some crappy starters this past season so perhaps you don’t look at that too hard. But he certainly didn’t find any diamonds in the rough in the rotation. Guys like Moore and Hamels regressed pretty significantly under his tutelage. Age and the ballpark certainly played a role too but we’ve already seen Hamels be successful in CHC. I’ll keep an open mind as McDowell was a useless pitching coach himself.
“Baltimore can’t get any wor…..nvm.”
Marlins: No way anyone finishes with fewer wins than us this year!
Orioles: Hold my beer….
Comment of the year so far hahahah
Well three teams did this past year dipshit.
Not having a pitching coach puts teams in a better situation than having Brocail as a pitching coach.
— A lifelong Rangers fan.
Maybe he was an Astros plant and was actively working against your pitchers!
The O’s do these things in such a weird manner….Hyde gets hired, but nobody admits it….Brocalli is “in line” for pitching coach……just weird……
Not so sure if it’s weird, or just a product of a site called mldtradeRUMORS…
No link to lifetime stats?
What’s a “drat” pick? Is it because the Padres said “DRAT!!” after realizing they wasted the 12th overall pick on him?
Hopefully he gets something out of our bucket of mid-back end starters. I hope he fixes Bundy and Hunter Harvey can finally be healthy. Kremer intrigues me as well. All in all I can’t imagine this coaching staff making it to the other side of this rebuild so who knows how many guys even wanted the job. In our park and state of the team I couldn’t blame them.
Oh there’s some nice pitching talent in the organization in the minors. I also think Cobb and Bundy have a lot of upside left and I look forward to seeing what the new staff, plus analytics, can do for them.
We’re starting from scratch and if everything goes to plan Cobb and Bundy will be out of here via trade soon. There’s options in the upper minors but they aren’t frontline guys. We have to wait til DL hall or Grayson Rodriguez before we see that.
There’s guys lower too. As for Bundy and Cobb, they get traded if they boost their results, which I think they will.
May as well hire Ubaldo. Who hired this guy?
Doug Brocail was the worst hire of the Jon Daniels era. He’s philosophy is to pitch up and in on hitters, and JD loves sinker/changeup groundball pitchers, so it was a great fit
Brocail broke Miguel Tejada’s wrist when Tejada was on the Os. From the Sun: “June 22, 2007– Two days after getting hit by a pitch by San Diego Padres reliever Doug Brocail, Tejada heads to the disabled list with a fractured bone on his left wrist.”
Nice little anecdote. Thanks.
Sure. I might add that, at the time, the O’s were trying to deal Tejada ahead of the trade deadline. And that plan was sunk by the injury
Well we wound up with fatt Albers and my boy Luke Scott. At least Scott gave birds fans some memorable blasts.
Scott also had some memorable quotes via politics as I recall.
peteb, yes, now I remember that.
Anyone hear about John Wettland
Crazy stuff going on
Chad Curtis and him have a thing for young ens.
Sick
Where’s Ray Miller when you need him?