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He might have an old-school way about him, but first-year Twins pitching
coach Wes Johnson has long embraced the use of new technology in teaching
baseball.
Though he had plenty of success in player development before, Johnson saw his
reputation enhanced when he began to implement the data mined from TrackMan
technologies to help improve his Division I pitchers. The decision to explore
baseball’s newest frontier in late 2014 was supported by a curiosity about
how analytics could help him find new ways for his pitchers to succeed.
It only seems fitting that a different type of new technology played a role
in Johnson, formerly the pitching coach for the Arkansas Razorbacks, landing
with the Twins on Nov. 21.
With Twins decision-makers spread all over the map and Johnson on the
recruiting trail and talking to other major-league teams, it was decided that
his first interview would be conducted via a Google Hangout.
Given he was in Fayetteville, Ark., Twins manager Rocco Baldelli was in St.
Petersburg, Fla., and chief baseball officer Derek Falvey and general manager
Thad Levine were in Minneapolis, Johnson welcomed the notion of interviewing
through a computer screen.
“I’m a technology guy,” Johnson said. “We got everything done. By far it
was the smoothest interview I had and probably the most well-prepared. We
were able to get a lot of things accomplished. Way more efficient. It was
better for me all the way around.
“It’s kind of crazy.”
People both inside and out of the organization say the Twins made a sound
decision when they named Johnson their pitching coach last week. He will work
in tandem with new assistant pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, who was promoted
last week after two seasons as the team’s advance scout.
“Wes is innovative and intelligent, very upbeat, and he has a very good
track record of taking mid-level recruits and making them much better,” said
one American League executive.
Johnson said he interviewed for four teams’ pitching coach openings,
including the Texas Rangers. He also had contact with one other team, but didn
’t interview after a season in which he helped the Razorbacks reach the
finals of the College World Series. They lost to Oregon State two games to
one.
When he saw a major-league team was calling in late October, Johnson didn’t
have any idea what awaited him. He was focused on how to help the Razorbacks
earn a return trip to Omaha, Neb.
Then “it snowballed really fast,” he said.
A collegiate coaching career that began in 2007 and has produced professional
contracts for more than 40 pitchers had finally caught the attention of
major-league teams.
Still, Johnson, who’d never previously interviewed for a job in pro
baseball, needed to find the right fit.
He thinks he discovered it with the Twins.
Johnson and Falvey have known each other from attending college coaching
seminars several years ago. Their relationship made Johnson comfortable with
the Twins and the idea of interviewing via a computer screen.
“One of the things that was big for me in making this jump was Derek and
Thad, the vision they have and where they’re trying to take players,”
Johnson said. “I always said if I was ever going to get into professional
baseball, all of these things would have to line up for me to do that. …
They read my mind. What they talked about was everything I was wanting to do
to get into professional baseball.”
Johnson fits what the Twins desire, a coach who has immersed himself in
analytics. He turned to TrackMan for the 2014 fall season while he was the
pitching coach at Dallas Baptist University and has been all in since.
With a built-up research and development department, including an outstanding
resource in pitching analyst Josh Kalk, the Twins want to make sure they’re
doing everything they can to get the most from their players. The Twins hope
Johnson is an extension of Baldelli, who was hired in part on Oct. 25 to
provide an open line of communication from the R&D department through the
staff on down to the players.
“(Johnson is) someone who is incessantly curious and is willing to dive in
and learn as much as possible,” Falvey said. “(He was) using some of that
technology well before we were really deep into it at the pro side in terms
of development. He’s got an old-school personality the way he approaches
pitching, which is: “Go at guys, be confident, build that type of approach.”
That’s important for a pitching coach. But what he can layer on top of that
is a wealth of experience in actually demonstrating there are some things
that a guy can do with his stuff that he might be utilizing a little
differently or maybe changes in grips and how to better effect movement.”
Dallas Baptist University head coach Dan Heefner sensed he and Johnson would
work well together because both were always looking for a better way to
operate. Heefner, who played one season of independent baseball, and Johnson
are familiar with the pressures of being a baseball player. They know the
value of communication. And most important, they grasp the importance of
getting outs.
But they also understood their reality.
As a small Christian school playing Division I baseball, Heefner and Johnson
knew they’d need something different to compete with bigger programs. The
conversation then moved to using analytics to help their players grow.
“We’ve got to develop our players,” Heefner said. “Our goal is to be the
best in the country at developing them. I think for us to do that, we knew we
had to be on the cutting edge of stuff. You could just see this was something
different. This was going to allow us to really individualize with our
players and find out what makes them different.”
In the fall of 2014, Dallas Baptist purchased TrackMan for its baseball
program. Suddenly, Johnson was no longer just reading about data and how it
could help his pitchers, he was applying it.
“You’re always constantly looking for an edge to win games and not only win
games but develop pitchers and make them better,” Johnson said. “The stuff
I was researching on TrackMan and Pitch F/X, it was just like a light bulb
went on. It made all the sense in the world to me about how some guys have
deception and are able to pitch in certain areas and certain zones and get
swings and misses when other guys aren’t.”
“When we got it, I kind of had a road map so to speak of where I wanted to
take guys.”
Possessing the map and reading it are entirely different. Johnson had spoken
to enough experts and read what others were doing. He also possesses a
natural gift for relaying the information to players. When it comes to
interpreting data, Heefner said Johnson is a savant.
“Wes is just elite with it,” Heefner said. “It’s one thing to like that
stuff. It’s another to use it. But it’s another whole thing to be able to
use it (correctly) and he had a very unique ability to be able to look at the
numbers and distinguish which ones are important, what makes a guy different.
I think his real gift is he really understands the numbers, but he can
communicate it to a player in a way that simplifies it.
“He used analytics to make players more confident. He is really, really good
at building guys’ confidence up and almost just to say, ‘Hey, here’s what
it says. The way you throw your fastball in this location, they can’t touch
it because nobody else throws it the way you do.’”
Being able to apply what he’d learned took Johnson’s coaching to the next
level.
Behind a strong pitching staff, Dallas Baptist held the No. 1 RPI rating for
eight of the last nine weeks of the 2015 season. The Patriots won a
school-record 46 games and hosted their first-ever NCAA Regional.
Less than a month after the season ended, five Dallas Baptist pitchers were
drafted, a group that included Drew Smith (third round, Detroit), Brandon
Koch (fourth, Tampa Bay), Chance Adams (fifth, Yankees), Cory Taylor (eighth,
San Francisco) and Joseph Shaw (12th, Mets). Smith and Adams reached the
majors last season for the Mets and Yankees, respectively.
“It’s partially how he made his name,” said friend Kyle Boddy, the owner
and a pitching trainer at Driveline Baseball. “It was known that school used
sabermetric and launch angle data and tracking data well before any school
was.
“Wes is a big idea guy. He loves coming up with new stuff or trying to adopt
new technology. He loves player development and he’ll look into anything,
whether it’s new technology, sabermetrics.
“He’s really open-minded and a high-energy guy.”
The path that led Johnson to the Twins isn’t a route often taken to the
majors. He never pitched professionally, and starting in 1997 spent his first
11 seasons coaching high school and American Legion. It wasn’t until he was
33 that Johnson became a head coach at Sylvan Hills High in Sherwood, Ark.
Over his 11 prep seasons, 28 players signed an NCAA Letter of Intent.
From there, Johnson became the pitching coach at Central Arkansas in 2007,
where he coached twice. In between, Johnson had a stint as an assistant coach
at Southern Arkansas. He took over at Dallas Baptist in 2012 and spent five
seasons there.
Johnson moved on to Mississippi State in 2016 and spent the past two seasons
at Arkansas.
“While (his path is) a little different in baseball, I’m not sure why it
should be,” Falvey said. “My sense is it’s going to become less different
over time given that his experience has been to help pitchers get better at
very high levels. These are some of the best guys in the country that he’s
coached and built programs up.”
Johnson is confident in his approach. He’s not fazed by the prospect of
speaking to major-league pitchers.
Part of his early strategy with Twins pitchers has been to learn as much
about them as possible for when he reaches out to each for the first time.
After he was hired, Johnson worked for two straight days with Hefner to
secure as much video of his new pitchers to have an idea of what he’d be
working with this season.
“Talking to major-leaguers or talking to 18-year-olds, they’re still people,
” Johnson said. “They still want to learn. Everybody wants to learn and
everybody wants to get better. These guys are trying to keep their career
going or get their career started or get a big contract. They fall into one
of three categories. For me, it’s still pitching, building relationships and
trust with these guys and letting them know I care about them. I really do.
And getting to know them and trying to help them. Whether they’re 28 or 18,
it doesn’t matter.”
Heefner said Johnson always unearthed a new way to relate to his pitchers,
which made it easier when it was time to make adjustments on the mound.
Johnson spoke to Adams about throwing his fastball at the belt or above
midway through the 2015 season and it resulted in 18 strikeouts per nine
innings the rest of the year, Heefner said.
“He had a really good way of, one, figuring out what was a unique thing
about a guy from a numbers side and, two, communicating it to a player in a
way they understood and would get fired up about,” Heefner said. “That made
a difference on the field.
“He’s the perfect storm. He knows how you translate the number to success
on the field and to communicate it to a player who’s highly competitive and
has a lot of pressure on him. Knowing when to say it, how to say it. That’s
what I think makes him so good.
“He’s so good with numbers. He really understands the body. But I think his
best trait is his people skills and the way he gets guys confident.”
When Baldelli, Falvey and Levine set out to find the team’s new pitching
coach, they sought an open-minded individual who wouldn’t be hung up on
traditional coaching roles. Not only did they seek someone analytically
inclined, but also they wanted a coach who would embrace Hefner, a former
major-league pitcher who has made a strong impression upon the front office
and the pitching staff in his Twins tenure.
Knowing they possessed in Hefner a strong scout who is lauded for his
game-planning skills and the ability to apply analytical information, the
Twins didn’t want to let him get away. But they also knew that Hefner wasn’
t experienced enough to take over as pitching coach. They envisioned him as
their new bullpen coach, but didn’t want to restrict him to working only
with relief pitchers.
Even as they granted other teams permission to speak to Hefner — he
interviewed with Houston and had requests from Cincinnati, Milwaukee and the
Mets — the Twins hoped to find a pitching coach who wouldn’t mind sharing
some of the workload.
Already, Johnson and Hefner have found common ground.
“I’ve already leaned on Hef so much,” Johnson said. “I’m really excited
about him. He’s already there. He’s going to be really good. He is really
good. Quite frankly, I’m really, really fortunate to be working with him. I’
m excited. The knowledge that he’s brought to me about these guys and how
they work and what their routines look like, that stuff is valuable. You can’
t put a price on it.”
Hefner likes what he has heard from Johnson in their first 10 days working
together. He also is excited that the new title will mix some of his previous
duties with an entirely different set of tasks.
“I’ll be in the bullpen, but I’ll also help oversee some of the advance,
kind of take on some of my old role,” Hefner said. “I will help Wes with
game planning for the starter. Instead of ‘I have the bullpen and he has the
starters,’ it’s much more of ‘we have the pitching staff.’ It’s more of
the collective. I’m assisting him in all run prevention type ideas.
“We work together to help all the pitchers on the staff. You’re starting to
blur the lines a little so that if I see something on (Kyle Gibson), I have
free reign to go talk to him. It’s not territorial. It’s very much ‘These
are our guys and we’re here to help them.’”
Falvey likes the prospect of Hefner and Johnson working together. While he
said titles normally aren’t important, he didn’t want Hefner to simply be
labeled the bullpen coach.
“I think they’re really great complements in a lot of ways,” Falvey said.
“Wes has a ton of experience in helping design throwing programs and pitch
development and use of how to apply information, but also understanding
overall how to build a pitcher up, especially a more immature pitcher that
continues to grow and develop and really take advantage of unique skills.
“With Hef, you have somebody who has spent a great deal of time focused on
advanced and game planning and attack and approaches. You have this tandem
pairing where they can learn from one another and also complement each other.
For us, Wes will overarch all the pitchers as a pitching coach. But Jeremy’s
role would be to impact both starters and relievers.”
The Twins had to have a pretty good idea about Johnson’s ability to embrace
new ways the minute he signed up to interview via a Google Hangout. Having
recently endured his own lengthy job search, which required multiple trips
from Florida to Minneapolis, Baldelli, who had previously interacted with
Johnson, was sensitive to how difficult the back and forth can be for some
candidates.
“We’re trying to make things as easy as we can on all the guys we’re
talking with,” Baldelli said earlier this month. “People have obligations
and things going on. It’s not always the easiest thing to fly across the
country. That takes sometimes parts of three days just to be able to sit down
with someone, depending on where they’re at.”
“In this instance it made a lot of sense for everybody involved.”
At that point, all that was left for Johnson was to determine where to
conduct the interview. Johnson ruled out talking to the Twins from his Baum
Stadium office on the University of Arkansas campus because of the potential
for distraction, so he quickly settled on his daughter’s bedroom.
Aside from a technical glitch here or there, it couldn’t have gone smoother.
“It was awesome,” Johnson said. “Rocco and I were talking and he went
through his interview process, which I’m sure was way more intense than
mine. You go through as many of those as we did in a short amount of time,
when we got to the Google Hangout, I was like, ‘Man, why didn’t we do all
of them this way?'”
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