Coordinator Work

This section details the work that was related to my role at the Coordinator level - primarily focused on the on-field product as well as our coaches.

Standardizing a Communication Platform and Methology

The Player Development side of the Cincinnati Reds did not have standardized communication - we had an Enterprise Slack account, but only the Analytics and Scouting departments seemed to use it. Emails were used for player moves, but phone calls at all hours of the day could happen for moves that would normally happen over email. Texts were exchanged with some people, except for those who were in Latin America, where we used WhatsApp - some of the time, anyway. This problem exists in most baseball organizations, and it created chaos, missed messages, and frustration at every level. I had gone through this before when standardizing communication channels at Driveline Baseball, and knew the path forward was marginally painful but would create a lot more clarity.

We settled on the following hierarchy of communication standards, in order of preference:

1. Slack: Used for real-time communication with staff AND players; messaging that required < 24 hours of response time.
2. Email: Used for official reports, player moves, and information that had a broader audience (the front office were not avid Slack users).
3. Phone Calls: For emergencies only - injuries, roster decisions that had deadlines, disciplinary issues that couldn't wait, etc.
4. Text Messages: Never. Use Slack. Staff members were instructed to ignore all text messages related to pitching and direct all communication over Slack.
5. WhatsApp: Never. Use Slack. Staff members were instructed to ignore all WhatsApp messages related to pitching and direct all communication over Slack.

The adjustment period lasted a few weeks, as coaches would text/call outside of the lines above, and would be gently reminded about the communication policy and to please abide by them. The grumbling was present to begin with, but once all communication was centralized inside Slack, people understood the value of having a central channel (we called it #armsrace) for communication, with multi-user DMs for breakout sessions. We also had every player join a separate Slack Workspace, created training group channels named after Cincinnati Reds legends during the pandemic, and team channels when the 2021 season got underway - #tortugaspitching, #dragonspitching, etc.

The players loved this - no more WhatsApp, text, Instagram fragmentation. One place to talk to your team, view your postgame reports, weekly advance reports, and plenty of trash talking amongst the minor league teams in channels like #general and #videoshare (where coaches uploaded weekly "best of" clips, sometimes cleverly edited together). We also had #socialmediafinds for sharing interesting social media clips (often from @PitchingNinja) and #fah (fearlessly attack hitters... or... you know...) where coaches posted their postgame charts with a scoring system that Eric Jagers called the "FAH Chart" (inherited from Derek Johnson's motto on the big league team). This initiative took a LOT of effort to get right, but was extremely rewarding, especially when we tied in our other educational initiatives with them.

Instilling Organizational Guidelines for Pitchers

By the end of my two year contract, I needed our coordinators, coaches, and players to all be able to answer this question clearly and with strong consensus:

When I took over as the Pitching Coordinator, I asked all of the coaches this question as well as many of the players. The answers were all over the place, but the majority of them were simply "I don't know." What our identity would ultimately become needed to be a collaborative process, not dictated by leadership, but it definitely needed to become consistent. We already had an organizational doctrine in place called ACR, standing for Authentic, Connected, and Relentless - so the pitching department's task was to integrate our message inside that framework.

Authentic was straightforward - we set a policy of telling the truth early on, and when Bryan Conger joined the organization in 2021, he pushed this concept further with his Table of Truth ideas and regular small group settings with high trust factors. When we could not tell the truth due to being in an organizational bind, we told the players that we couldn't tell them exactly why something was happening - we could at least do that for them rather than lie to them. We were upfront with our players on why they were promoted or weren't considered for promotion, we told them why they were being sent to Extended Spring Training, and when players were released, they knew what the performance-based reasons were. Players came to truly appreciate this about our organization and structure, and many asked why it wasn't this way before or why it's not this way in other organizations.

Connected was tougher, and we settled on doing so by implementing the clear communication doctrine laid out about using Slack as our central hub for discussion. We set standards for how we communicated, when, and critically, what the players were owed by the coaching staff. This turned the idea that players owe coaches on its head; I explicitly told the players that there were expectations for our coaches, and that the players needed to hold the coaches accountable starting with clear, concise, and authentic communication.

Relentless: To quote Dan John, "it's simple, not easy." We could not start with the players on this topic, we had to start with our staff. There is no way to expect relentless competition from the players if you're arriving to the park at the same time the players do and leaving when they leave. This is something I learned early on with the Houston Astros by accident - while they had no design for this type of organizational culture, the front office's extremely high expectations for their coaches filtered down, and I've never forgotten how the players responded to that. When I took the job with the Reds, our coaches had not yet signed contracts for the following season (2020). I told our coaches that we would outwork every other group in minor league player development, and that if that wasn't for them, they didn't have to sign their contracts - but that if they did, I would be holding them accountable for everything in the job description. The culture of the Reds' player development group prior to CJ Gillman and I taking over our respective departments was not one of relentless execution and excellence in everything we did, and both of us set to change that in our own ways.

Perhaps a simple example illustrates all three concepts quite well. It was feared that I wouldn't care about the little things in the game, such as holding baserunners to control the running game. Despite this belief, up until the last week of the AAA season, the 2021 Cincinnati Reds minor league pitchers were ranked 1st in Weighted Caught Stealing (wCS), meaning that we allowed the least stolen base run value. At the end of the season, we finished 2nd overall in wCS, while in 2019 we had finished 20th. Nothing about our catchers' throwing changed, so the vast majority of the value generated was from the pitchers caring about holding baserunners. Our coaches trained anti-run game doctrine hard, they posted times to the plate weekly in Slack, and periodically reviewed video to ensure no patterns were coming out. We took pride in being 1.35s or better to home plate every time, and we did not accept 1.4s or worse. The gold standard was to be below 1.3s to home plate with a runner on 1st base every time, and most of our players reached it. To be sure, holding runners is just a small part of the game, but it encapsulates being relentless to me - we should aspire to be great at everything we do.

We also set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) early on - we wanted to turn around the ship on our falling organizational strikeout rate (Rank 22nd in 2019) and our very high organizational xwOBAcon rates (Rank 23rd in 2019) first and foremost. I knew that developing stuff, strikeouts, and reducing damage on contact would cause us to walk more hitters as the pitchers learned to adapt to this new strategy, and indeed our walk rate swelled as an organization in 2021. I also understood that was part of our multi-year process, much as it was with organizations that began this transformation towards a data-driven approach - the same early growing pains happened with the Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins, and I knew it would happen here. Our pitchers turned around a culture of "just throwing strikes" and "learning to pitch" (we eliminated this type of non-specific and negative language in our coaching doctrine) and turned it into a positive culture of dominating hitters, never giving in, and attacking with our best stuff at all times.

Only the players can tell you if you've achieved a common set of core values, so I'll let them have the final word - I asked them one simple question.

• Jared Solomon (40-man, 2017 draft): "What it meant to be a Reds pitcher in 2021 is to have an unyielding desire to better yourself. Not just on the mound, but in everything we do, because we as an organization have made it clear that all our individual pieces throughout a day, week, month, and year lead to our final results when we take the mound. We had a clear plan and mission everyday; we communicated that plan and what was expected so there wasn't any room for 'Why are we doing this?' We had the data to back up the 'why' - it gave the players confidence to buy in and to take the risk; to be willing to change to be better."
• Noah Davis (2018 draft, traded to COL in '21): "The ideal Reds pitcher develops nasty stuff and shoves it down the hitters throats. He is consistent, reliable, and durable. He has a plan and executes that plan, both on a short-term and long-term basis."
• Carson Spiers (Clemson, NDFA, 2020): "Being a Cincinnati Red meant being held accountable and focusing on every throw to make sure we are getting 1% better each day."
• Stevie Branche (RIT, NDFA, 2020): "An ideal Reds pitcher is someone who is constantly going to be aggressive every pitch that they throw and to compete each time he is given the ball. They will not stop focusing on perfecting their craft."
• Braxton Roxby (U. Pitt-Johnstown, NDFA, 2020): "Our process involved breaking down the game as much as possible, prioritizing winning each inning, at-bat, and pitch. We understood that in order to prevent runs and limit damage, we had to buy into the small wins."
• Bryce Bonnin (Texas Tech, 3rd round, 2020): "We become motherfuckers on the mound."

Defining Standards for Coaching Excellence

Upon taking the Pitching Coordinator role in Cincinnati, I audited all of the previous standards, practices, and guidelines put into action by asking the outgoing coordinator (Tony Fossas), ML Pitching Coach (Derek Johnson), Director of Pitching (Caleb Cotham), Farm Director (Eric Lee), and President of Baseball Operations (Dick Williams) about how things were run and what principles were important to the organization. The ACR doctrine came out in 2019, which I felt was a great guiding light on how we should act as an organization from the front office to the field, however, details on what we stood for as a pitching department were thin or didn't exist at all. No standards, metrics, or objective key results were written down or set.

I decided to review the last two years' worth of performances from the organization's minor league pitching to see if results would leave clues, and a picture began to form:

Reds Minor League Pitching Organizational Ranks (out of 30)