The Diamondbacks announced that they have hired Brian Kaplan to be their new pitching coach. He will replace Brent Strom, who had been in that role for the previous three seasons. It was reported last month that the club would not be bringing the 76-year-old Strom back.
Kaplan has been with the Phillies since 2019. He spent his first three years with that club as integrative baseball performance consultant. For the three most recent seasons, he’s been the assistant pitching coach and director of pitching.
It’s impossible to separate player performance from the contributions of an individual coach, but for what it’s worth, the Phils have pitched well lately. Over the past three years, Philadelphia pitchers had a collective 3.95 earned run average, putting them 12th of the 30 major league clubs. Their 3.82 FIP is far kinder, putting them third, trailing only Atlanta and San Francisco. For that same stretch of time, Arizona had a 4.46 ERA and 4.26 FIP, both of those numbers putting them in the bottom third.
The Arizona pitching staff could get a shakeup between now and next season, as their starting rotation is drawing trade interest from other clubs around the league. However that plays out, Kaplan will see if he can help the Snakes find another gear when it comes to their pitching staff.
At least it wasn’t Gabe.
Hopefully he takes T walker with him
Agreed, but ‘integrative baseball performance consultant’ is nevertheless a difficult role to fill.
Depending upon how nebulously one wishes to define “integrative” and “consultant,” it might be the easiest job in the world. Sounds to me a bit like a no-show title designed for, well, let’s call them “private associates.” 🙂
Gomez
Are you really ignorant enough to believe that someone could spend 6 years “no showing” or twiddling his thumbs and collecting a paycheck, who then somehow gained a respected reputation and was hired for one of the 30 unique positions in all the world, at the Top of their profession?
Seriously?
I was wondering if Dan Haren, from Dbacks FO Pitching Strategy, would be considered?
How about MadBum? Kidding, of course.
Why don’t they hire people who had success playing at the major league level?
DodgerOK
It’s like the Peter Principle just because you are a good player, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a good coach. You can get promoted beyond your capability.
In Kaplan’s case, he has been part of a proven, successful system.. How much of that was his input remains to be determined.
Hope this guy can take the pitching staff to the next level.
Suffer
His sports academy worked with big name pitchers like Scherzer, Verlander and Kluber. Don’t know how much he worked directly with them, nor what impact his “coaching” had on them, if any. But from his resume it doesn’t seem like he would back down from working with ant pitcher, no matter how successful that pitcher has been.