New bullpen coach an expert — literally — at putting out fires
Little fires tend to pop up everywhere when you’re a major league bullpen coach. Whether it’s learning the subtleties of a new three-batter minimum rule, overcoming a key injury or losing a flame-throwing setup man to a PED suspension, uncertainty lurks around every corner.
The good news for the Cleveland Indians is that their guy knows a thing or two about how to put those fires out — literally and figuratively.
Brian Sweeney is in his third season as a coach on manager Terry Francona’s staff and his first heading up the club’s relief corps. Sweeney, 45, is a native of upstate New York where he spent the four-month coronavirus quarantine working as a volunteer firefighter with the West Crescent Fire Department in Halfmoon, New York.
Sweeney said like Major League Baseball, the department had to adapt to new protocols when fighting fires in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, including wearing personal protective gear when going into houses to fight fires. So, wearing a mask to coach baseball players, while not ideal, is not the biggest inconvenience he’s faced.
“I have huge respect for first responders that do it full time,” Sweeney said. “It’s a really hard job. You never know what to expect. It’s really cool to see how a volunteer company can come together in a community and help.”
Sweeney spent 18 years working his way through the minor leagues as a pitcher for the Mariners and Padres organizations as well as a three-year stint in Japan. He appeared in 73 major league games with a 4-2 record and two saves.
He started coaching professionally in 2015 and quickly developed a reputation as a pitching guru with an expertise in analyzing data that helped his players improve dramatically on the mound. Sweeney worked for three seasons in Philadelphia’s minor league development system before coming to the Indians in 2018.
Like his climb through the coaching ranks, Sweeney has also had to learn and grow as a firefighter. Now in his fourth year with the West Crescent department, he admits that it wasn’t just a matter of simply jumping in and grabbing a hose on the first day.
“There’s a lot of training involved and when you’re only training every offseason, it takes a little bit of time to get that under your belt,” Sweeney said. “But they’re teachers just like we have on the staff here. At the fire department, too, they’re teaching you how to be safe, how to protect your teammates, how to help the community and how to do the right thing so we could all go home safe.”
The Indians promoted Sweeney in the offseason to join Carl Willis and Ruben Niebla in forming sort of a three-headed monster of pitching coaches. Willis has been Francona’s major league pitching coach since 2018, and Niebla served as the organization’s minor league pitching coordinator for several seasons prior to joining the big league staff.
Sweeney said the group has quickly developed a rapport despite the adjustment to social distancing protocols that would not hamper communication in a normal season.
“It’s a learning experience,” Sweeney said. “Just having this different group together, it’s really cool to see the different strengths we all have and combining them and using it to help the guys get better.”
Sweeney relied on his wide range of strengths when he decided to volunteer at the fire house. His father was a firefighter for 35 years in Yonkers, New York. He took the firefighter test at age 18, but admitted his heart was not into it.
“I was supposed to be the next shortstop for the New York Yankees,” Sweeney said. “That didn’t really work out.”
Sweeney said as a kid he would follow his dad to the firehouse and play ping-pong there, maybe occasionally get to see him slide down the poles.
“I’ve seen the camaraderie,” Sweeney said. “It’s very similar to what a locker room is like.”
That desire to do something in his community during the offseason never left Sweeney and he was reminded of it each day he would drive past the West Crescent department to take his daughter to school.
“It really triggered some things from my past,” Sweeney said. “I walked in on a Monday and said, ‘When do I start?’”
Sweeney’s wife, Connie, owns a dance studio in Clifton Park, New York, where the family resides. His daughter, Ava, recently turned 21 and Mia, 16, is a competitive dancer who learned how to drive with dad as her instructor during the quarantine.
“The opportunity to hang out with my family, to wake up each day and see them, was a blessing to me,” Sweeney said. “Maybe not to them, they’re probably used to another routine. But we had fun.”
New routines are the norm around Indians summer camp, where the process hasn’t really changed, but the presentation certainly has. Sweeney says he’s been impressed with the way Indians pitchers have adapted to the circumstances.
“These guys had a goal,” Sweeney said. “We set that goal and with that goal they were able to strive for something. And with that motivation, they just got after it. They kept kicking a— and getting ready for this opening day coming up.”
Sweeney spent months sending players video and monitoring the volume of their workloads while tracking what they were doing on and off the mound all in preparation to hit the ground running once camp reopened.
“We know where they’re at, so we were able to just keep progressing,” he said. “When we got here, we actually knew what to expect and it’s all because with the guys, all of the hard work they put in over those three months.”
Whether it’s tinkering with Adam Cimber’s sagging arm slot during the regular season or coaching up an outfielder-turned-pitcher in lefty Anthony Gose, Sweeney has found success in the past developing big leaguers to get the most out of their talents.
Sweeney says Emmanuel Clase’s season-long suspension has also posed some challenges in monitoring the hard-throwing righty’s development while he’s in the Dominican Republic.
“We’ve been working hard on communicating with him,” Sweeney said. “There’s also a language barrier, but we’re lucky enough to have Ruben on staff and Augie (Rivero) as well, so we can communicate plans of attack. We’re in weekly communication to make sure he doesn’t lose a season of development because he’s part of the future.”
The future for Sweeney, meanwhile, looks bright. Whether it’s developing relievers in Cleveland’s bullpen or putting out little fires everywhere in New York, he’ll pour his energy into the task regardless of any obstacles.
“It’s been a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to continuing,” he said.