New Red Sox pitching coach Andrew Bailey on his pitching philosophy: 'Strikes are everything'
The Red Sox finally made the hiring of Andrew Bailey as their new pitching coach official on Tuesday. Bailey meet with Boston reporters on zoom to talk and shared his pitching philosophy.
“Strikes are everything,” said Bailey. “Stuff in (the) zone plays. Limiting walks. Being aggressive and ahead in counts. Obviously, there’s been a been a big change in stuff and swing-and-miss and (velocity) and all that. There’s a handful of things, but identifying the the KPIs (key performance indicators) that we can hold our ourselves accountable (to) is really a priority. And making sure that each player knows himself best.
“‘What makes you an outlier? What makes you a big leaguer?’ There’s generally one or two specific things that you can point to and making sure there’s an education piece around this as well. And doubling down on strengths and making sure guys know what makes them major leaguers (who) hopefully (have) the ability to play for a long time.”
Last season, the Red Sox ranked 21st in team ERA (4.52), 24th in opponent batting average (.256) and gave up 208 homers as a staff (24th in the league).
Those numbers are part of the reason the club moved on from pitching coach Dave Bush at the conclusion of the regular season.
While Bailey was the Giants pitching coach, his staff ranked sixth in baseball with a 3.80 ERA and allowed the fewest homers (525) from 2020 to 2023. San Francisco also allowed the fewest walks in the majors with 403. Those numbers reflect Bailey’s philosophy of “strikes are everything.”
Bailey has a strong track record as a pitching coach and has worked with some of the games best hurlers. He’s worked with ace Logan Webb, Carlos Rodón and saw Kevin Gausman become an leader of a rotation.
The 39-year-old is hopeful he will have similar success with pitchers in Boston.
“Players are never finished products, whether you’re a top-end starter or you’re up and down and on the option train,” Bailey said. “If we ever are a little bit complacent in that, negativity can creep in, and poor performance. For me, it’s always pushing an envelope, obviously identifying what makes guys quality big-leaguers and big-leaguers for a long time and helping them understand themselves.
“If you take a look at some of the pitchers that I was fortunate enough to work with in San Francisco and how they were able to adapt later in their careers, they were totally open-minded and some of them did it on their own. We had a really good group. I am not the best pitching coach in the world. I’ll tell you that right now. I think it’s a product of a lot of smart people around us working inter-departmentally.”
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