Mining the colleges

Sources tell @TheAthleticMIN that the #MNTwins will name the University of Arkansas’ Wes Johnson as their new pitching coach. https://t.co/2OKaImkmFN

— Dan Hayes (@DanHayesMLB) November 15, 2018

Updated: Sources say the #MNTwins will hire Wes Johnson as their new pitching coach and Jeremy Hefner will take over as the team’s bullpen coach. Hefner spent the past 2 seasons as the Twins' advanced scout.@DerekWetmore was 1st on Hefner. https://t.co/2OKaImkmFN

— Dan Hayes (@DanHayesMLB) November 15, 2018

Johnson is believed to be the first major league pitching coach to be hired out of the college ranks without serving a minor league apprentanceship first. Such cross-pollination between the pros and college is routine in football and basketball but rare in baseball.

But cross-pollination -- a variety of backgrounds and experiences -- seems to be something this front office is prioritizing. Hefner has pitched in the majors, been a video guy, been an advanced scout. (And is only 32.) 

As for Johnson, this from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Whole Hog Sports website story on Johnson's departure: 

Johnson is known for developing power pitchers. His two Arkansas staffs finished with a combined 1,238 strikeouts in 133 games, and several Razorbacks saw significant increases to the velocity of their pitches as a result of Johnson's emphasis on lower-body workouts and pitch-mechanic analytics.
At Johnson's urging, prior to the 2017 season Arkansas installed a radar system called TrackMan that records and analyzes 46 data points for pitchers on every pitch.
“If you get into biomechanics, you find out really fast that a pitcher cannot repeat his delivery," Johnson told WholeHogSports in 2017. "You’ve got over 600 muscles in the body. To think that the roughly 240 that we use in pitching are going to fire at the same time - you’ve got a better chance at winning the lottery. TrackMan gives me a chance to show guys a consistent release height and some things we can repeat."

The Twins installed TrackMan at their minor league facilites a few years back, during the Terry Ryan administration. but they are hardly unique in that. 

And that said, none of this has been officially announced yet. As of this morning, the Twins website has changed only the manager on its coaching staff page.

Notes, quotes and comment (Game Three edition)

Brad Peacock had a quietly impressive season this year: 13-2, 3.00 in 132 innings, with 161 strikeouts.

And no saves, until Friday night. A.J. Hinch used him to get the final 11 outs, 53 pitches. It;s the second time in this postseason that Hinch has detoured around the back end of his bullpen with a lengthy save from a nominal part of the starting rotation.

The first, of course, was with Lance McCullers Jr. in relief of Charlie Morton in Game Seven of the ALCS. McCullers started Friday, threw 87 pitches and will presumably get the ball to start Game Seven should this series go that far. Morton starts tonight.

Peacock's outing was what I think of as "the moral equivalent of a start." Hinch can't, or at least shouldn't, use him tonight or probably even Game Five on Sunday. Tuesday, behind Justin Verlander, maybe. But even better is the possibility of a McCullers-Peacock tag team again in Game Seven.

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Houston has an unusual set of pitching stats for a team that won 101 games in the regular season. Nobody threw more than 153 innings for Houston, and that pitcher, Mike Fiers, hasn't pitched since Sept. 13, when he was lit up for eight runs in 3.2 innings, which pushed his ERA well above 5.

The only guy on the team who qualified for the ERA title is Verlander, and he was only with the Astros in September. Nobody made 30 starts for the Astros (Fiers had the most starts, 28).

It wasn't an ineffective pitching staff, but the work was certainly spread around more than is usual on a quality team. Part of that was injuries, to be sure -- Dallas Kuechel was limited to 23 starts, and McCullers missed all of August. And part of it was the steady reduction of pitcher workloads, particularly starting pitcher workloads, in the analytic era.

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I mentioned in the Friday post that there were a lot of "name" pitching coaches available this month. The Twins' hire, Gavin Alston, isn't a name. But a lot of the names have landed elsewhere.

Carl Willis, the "Big Train" of the 1991 Twins bullpen, went from the Red Sox back to the Cleveland Indians, where he was pitching coach more than a decade ago. That job opened because Mickey Callaway was hired by the Mets to be their manager, and Willis was available because the Red Sox told its coaches they were free to look after John Farrell was fired as manager.

As surmised here (and elsewhere), Jim Hickey, long the pitching coach in Tampa Bay for Joe Maddon, rejoined Maddon with the Cubs. As was NOT surmised here (and elsewhere), the Cubs' former PC, Chris Bosio -- who was presumably dismissed to make room for Hickey -- landed with Detroit. I daresay most of us expected Rick Anderson to return as Ron Gardenhire's PC.

And Mike Maddux, older brother of Greg, has joined the St. Louis Cardinals. He was most recently with Washington, and was on the loose after the odd decision to fire Dusty Baker.