Carl Willis Will Remain M’s Pitching Coach
Ken Davidoff tweeted the news, and there are stories throughout the M’s blogosphere. Willis was Eric Wedge’s pitching coach in Cleveland from 2003-2009, and served as the M’s minor league pitching coordinator until the firing of Rick Adair pushed him to Seattle as the interim PC.
With the hiring of Wedge, this move became all but inevitable. What it means is a bit more elusive. It’s always difficult to disentangle a pitching coach’s contribution from the pitchers themselves. Does Rick Adair get ‘credit’ for Felix’s growth the past few years? How about Jason Vargas? Does he lose ‘points’ for Brandon League’s pitch mix or Ryan Rowland-Smith’s…everything?
After taking over from Adair, the M’s seemed to throw fewer fastballs. Perhaps that’s to be expected after Adair’s fastball-first philosophy, but while the M’s led the league in FB% in 2010 at 63.6%, they dropped a bit in August, then dropped out of the top 10 in FB% in September. The sample’s tiny, it’s affected by the pitchers on the staff (David Aardsma’s not going to turn into a junkballer because he gets a new pitching coach), but it shows he may not be quite as FB-centric as Adair.
Willis drew complaints from some Indians fans after several young pitchers failed to develop under his tutelage. Fausto Carmona is the most-cited piece of evidence for this charge, though pitchers from one-time Mariner Rule 5 pick Jason Davis to Jeremies Sowers and Guthrie failed to impress. Of course, if having pitching prospects fail to develop (or get hurt) was enough to disqualify a pitching coach, there’d be no one would be left to hire. Again, it’s impossible to know how to assign credit. Did Willis help CC Sabathia develop, or was he simply nearby when a 6’8″ freak of nature with great stuff from the left side showed up? Can he be blamed for Jeremy Sowers’ failings, or should we focus more on his abysmal stuff?
In the end, there’s very little evidence that pitching coaches can help improve a staff’s performance. They may exert tremendous influence over one or two pitchers, but it’s basically impossible to say if Willis will have any impact on the M’s in 2011. That won’t keep people from trying, but beware of pundits claiming that this move is ‘proof’ of anything.
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14 Responses to “Carl Willis Will Remain M’s Pitching Coach”
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I’ve sometimes thought the most important job of the pitching coach is to watch every move the pitcher makes on the mound. That allows the manager to pay attention to everything else going on. The also should enable the pitching coach to to immediately note when anything goes awry with the pitcher.
That was DA downfall they could cheat up on his fastball it is his best pitch though.
Doesn’t Dave Duncan pretty much disprove that?
I think what mark is trying to say is that there are very few pitching coaches that have demonstrated a sustainable ability to improve their staffs. Carl Willis is among the vast majority that are indistinguishable.
What other pitch does he have?
I never heard the reason Adair was let go. I thought the pitching overall was fine compared to hitting and defense. Where some changes are needed are in the broadcast booth. Keep Rizz and Blowers send the others down the road kicken rocks.
If the M’s are throwing more offspeed/breaking balls without Adair, I’m happy about the change. Pitchers like Aardsma Fister, Vargas, Pauley, RRS, etc.. should benefit from mixing-it-up.
Westside guy the DA has a four, and two seam fastball (obviously), a slider, and splitter. His splitter is a good pitch when its not being hung around the belt.
Agreed. Yawns all around.
Is Carl Willis a left-handed line-drive hitter who can provide 25+ doubles, 20+ HRs, and bat third? Or is he a healthy shortstop worth 2 WAR or more?
If not, then I’m not really interested one way or the other.
I guess all I look for is “not actively deleterious,” like when Nardi Contreras would run out of the dugout to talk to pitchers. Willis is fine.
The alleged reasoning for Adair’s firing was he was too close to Wakamatsu. I have no idea if that was true or just a pretext. A whole lot of things that came out of the front office in 2010 felt like pretexts.
I’m still wondering what a bench coach, first base and hitting coach are for….
Not that it matters, but Adair played some nasty payback on jack z by contradicting the front office story on Luecke. As far as Willis, at least he knows the staff going in, which might help Wedge some.
Breadbaker wrote:
Hear, hear!
I would also note that, aside from a few exceptions that prove the rule, the “greatness” of any given pitching coach is probably a perception that is susceptible to a certain amount of confirmation bias. Bryan Price was a genius when he had Freddy, Jamie, and a few other guys who had a few good years in Seattle (many of whom had skill sets well suited to Safeco). A few years later, he had magically walked under a stupid tree when he had a raft of young “talents” (paging Clint Nageotte) that no one else managed to make much out of either.
The truth is somewhere in the middle for guys like Price and most others, including Willis. Dave Duncan might be the most notable exception, a guy who continually manages to reclaim has-beens and never-wases from the scrap heap (if I were Jeff Weaver or Jeff Suppan I would have probably played for whatever the Cardinals offered to pay me just to stay close to Duncan for as long as possible. But, then, I suppose that’s why I would need an agent to help me cash in on my “turnaround” with some front office devoid of any sense of recent history).
I would imagine being a major league pitching coach is a lot like cat-wrangling; you have, at any given moment, twelve guys who were all talented enough to make it to the bigs. However painful they may be to watch once they get there, it’s important to remember they had had a lot of success pitching however they pitched at every level before they made the Show. “Fixing” them, if fixing they need, can probably be quite frustrating, espeically since major leaguers don’t come across as the most introspective bunch (as a group; there are, of course, important outliers). And, it may be the case that some coaches’ teaching and management style and philosophy works well with the way some pitchers are wired and not so much with others.
It seems to me that pitching coaches could take some version of the Hippocratic Oath, especially the “first, to do no harm” bit. If Willis can manage that much, then he’ll at least avoid being the next Nardi Contreras (…shudder…)
Bryan Price is a genius again after this Reds seasons, right?
Indeed 🙂