Former big league reliever Frank Herrmann recently joined the Blue Jays’ front office, as first reported by David Laurila of FanGraphs (on Twitter). He’ll split his time between the scouting, player development and baseball operations departments.
Herrmann, 37, appeared in parts of four big league seasons. He spent the 2010-12 campaigns with the Indians, where his time as a player overlapped with Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro’s and general manager Ross Atkins’ stints in the Cleveland front office. The right-hander spent the next couple seasons in Triple-A but returned to the bigs in 2016, making 14 appearances with the Phillies.
Over 135 1/3 MLB innings, Herrmann pitched to a 4.72 ERA. He only punched out 14.8% of batters faced but threw plenty of strikes (5.8% walk rate). After the 2016 campaign, Herrmann made the move to Japan. He signed with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Nippon Professional Baseball. He’d spend three years with the Eagles before catching on with the Chiba Lotte Marines, where he closed out his playing career with a final two seasons.
Herrmann was a productive reliever in NPB. Over his five seasons, he worked to a 3.02 ERA. That mark is inflated a bit by a 5.19 figure he posted last year, but Herrmann put up an ERA of 3.04 or lower in each of his first four seasons in Japan. A Harvard graduate, he’ll now transition to his post-playing days. Herrmann brings 16 years of professional playing experience to his role in Toronto’s baseball ops.
Herrmann is the type of pitcher that basically might never exist again. He was undrafted, never threw upper 90s, and was more a control artist. If he was coming through today, he would probably not even make the cut to an official minor league affiliate and would have had to try to cut a path through the Atlantic League or something.
This comment makes me think of Randy Jones. He said he was most effective after the opposing batters faced hard throwers the two previous starters.
I don’t remember the Padres having hard throwers in those days. The hard throwers must have been faced during the previous series against other teams because the only two full time starters Brent Storm and Dave Frieselben weren’t flame throwers.
Not to be confused with Herman Franks.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/managers/frankhe01.shtml
I feel a little like teams are looking for all of the Ivy League grads who made it to the majors until they exhaust the supply. It makes me wonder if the Ivy League schools will pick up on that and start recruiting players who want to spend their careers in baseball. Also, if they will start offering classes in sports analytics. Pretty sure MIT Sloan has been the leader in that.
Rutherford, NJ’s own Frank Herrmann!
Cool, I didn’t know that. He went to Kimberly Academy in Montclair. I have friends who played for Rutherford or East Rutherford, I’m not sure.
Harvard’s not what it used to be.
The old “Bullpen Mafia” days in the Cleveland bullpen bring back memories. Herrmann, Rafael Perez, Chris Perez, Vinnie Pestano…
Probably has some nice connections in Japan that might help in potential signings.
Bring some Hermits over lol on a Ferry Across the Pacific