RIGHT ON PITCH
Assistant coach combines intricate technical knowledge of the position with a caring demeanor
Assistant Bill Murphy mixes vast knowledge with caring demeanor.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Bill Murphy’s voice is monotone but carries persistent positivity. He speaks in almost hushed tones and without any arrogance.
Murphy paced in the bullpen before Hunter Brown’s first live batting practice session of major league camp Friday. Groundskeepers readied the field, and hitters took practice swings. Murphy noticed the field was ready.
“How many more you need, buddy?” Murphy asked Brown, a 22-year-old kid preparing to throw the most pressure-filled pitches of his professional life. Manager Dusty Baker wandered over to watch. Pitching coach Brent Strom, too.
Brown threw two more warmup pitches and exited the bullpen. Murphy followed. The Astros’ 31year-old coaching savant stood behind the mound. Brown sailed a few pitches to the backstop but buckled hitters with others. Murphy remained invested in each one. He devotes all of himself to each pitcher. Service time does not matter, nor does organizational preference.
“With Murph, there’s a genuine belief that every single player in the organization has a chance,” Astros assistant general manager Pete Putila said. “I think players can see that — and it’s hard to fake that. I think it goes a long way with the players in terms of trusting him.”
Murphy’s rapid ascension up the Astros’ coaching hierarchy, from rookie ball pitching coach to major league assistant, took five seasons. Eight years ago, the man was a volunteer assistant at Georgetown. Houston hired him from Brown University. This winter, the club added Murphy to its major league staff.
“It was a very surreal moment,” Murphy said this week. “A moment I didn’t necessarily know would ever come.”
Murphy’s title is assistant pitching coach. Strom, Murphy and Josh Miller — also given a pitching coach title — now comprise the Astros’ major league pitching brain trust. Duties haven’t specifically been divided, but all three men personify the continuity Houston craves in its player development. All have been in the organization since 2015.
Murphy has no professional playing experience. He pitched for Rutgers and received a bachelor’s degree in psychology. While working toward his MBA at Wagner College, Murphy posted a .735 OPS in 49 starts as a first baseman. During that same 2012 season, Murphy threw a third of an inning and yielded seven runs. He never took the mound again.
“I don’t think players care what the back of your baseball card looks like,” Strom said. “They really care about whether you care.”
Miller preceded Murphy as the team’s minor league pitching coordinator. He spent nine seasons playing either professional or independent baseball. Strom had a five-year major league career. Murphy’s style complements both. People in and around the organization laud his unending work ethic, which endears him to players. Strom said he’s major league pitching coach material.
“I think in coaching, players can really tell quick whether or not you
care about them,” Putila said. “It might sound cliché or mushy or whatever, but that’s one area where he excels. He’s so positive with the players and his coaching. He has great attention to detail.”
Master communicator
Murphy is the model pitching guru for this era of baseball. He devours analytical data and is able to communicate the findings with ease. Strom, by his own admission, does not always comprehend the finer points of the Astros’ many pitching technologies. Murphy, a man Strom called a “combination analyst-pitching coach down on the field,” is there to help. His ability to explain the processes in an understandable method is unrivaled.
“A lot of the hirings now, everybody’s coming in and just trying to bombard front offices with their use of Edgertronic and TrackMan and all this stuff,” Strom said. “You see a lot of résumés and interviews that revolve around that. I really think the good front offices like we have will also look for the human aspect of how that person communicates.”
Murphy applied to the Astros on a whim after stumbling upon an online job posting for an organizational pitching coach. Inside Brown’s baseball offices, he read the description aloud to his fellow assistant coach.
“The way that I heard him describing the job, I basically said, ‘Murph, if you don’t apply for that thing, you’re an idiot,’ ” Mike McCormack said. “I could hear the excitement in his voice. There are very few things, to that point in our relationship, that I had heard him speak so passionately about.”
Murphy submitted his application. He had no hope it would amount to anything meaningful. He’d never applied to a major league team, fearful that his lack of professional playing experience would scare teams away.
Murphy established a goal of reaching Power Five coaching and
competing for a College World Series. Brown afforded him the first step toward it. Incoming head coach Grant Achilles received Murphy’s name on recommendation from a former boss. One phone call sold Achilles, who named Murphy the pitching coach on his inaugural staff.
“There was an acknowledgement early on from Bill that he didn’t have it figured out,” Achilles said. “I think in coaching that’s continued to be one of the trademarks of a good teacher that I’ve found. They are consistently trying to learn, adapt and grow, and that’s not as common as you would think anymore.”
The staff inherited some talent that had, in Achilles’ words, “gone through some different phases.” Murphy sold Achilles on a “unique perspective” to pitching, one that didn’t require exorbitant resources. Both Achilles and McCormack are offensive-minded coaches. They let Murphy work his magic.
“If it wasn’t something that we could purchase, it was something that he would try to craft on his own or find a similar way to get the point across with our players,” Achilles said. “A lot of times, that just ended up being how he was able to explain things to a player without having the technology to show them.”
Murphy scoured the internet. He read journal articles. He pored over YouTube videos and implemented video study into his coaching methods. Sometimes, Murphy would catch bullpen sessions for his pitchers to gain a better understanding. Fellow coaches sometimes struggled to grasp the method to his madness.
“It kind of drove you nuts at times,” said McCormack, who still serves as Brown’s hitting coach and recruiting coordinator. “Because you’re like, ‘Man, what is he doing? I’ve never seen that before, never even heard of that before. Why is he doing that?’
“There were things that came out about three or four years ago
that were popular then. Well, Murph was doing them when he was with us. Nobody could have really understood what he was doing, probably, besides him.”
Advice well-taken
McCormack still calls Murphy a “best friend for life.” Calls between the two pals are often one-sided. McCormack must pry information out of Murphy, a man with no ego and little interest in boasting about his burgeoning career. Without McCormack’s nudging, perhaps Murphy doesn’t apply to the Astros in the first place.
“I was just sitting in the office with him and brought it up,” Murphy said. “He suggested, ‘Hey, if you want that, if you think that was something you’d really enjoy, you have to do it.’ I ended up doing it. First time, only time.”
A few hours after Murphy entered his application online, he received a phone call from Doug White, then the Astros’ minor league pitching coordinator. White interviewed Murphy and passed his name up the organizational chain. Putila, then the farm director, received it. The two scheduled a phone interview for mid-December during the Winter Meetings.
Reclining in a chair outside a Nashville Chuy’s, Putila phoned Murphy. Murphy divulged his doit-yourself technological and analytical creations from his time at Brown.
“To be honest, sometimes coaches who are at smaller schools or at least schools that don’t have as many resources — whether it’s facilities, technologies or money to spend on those things — sometimes that’s where the best coaches come from, because they have to really get creative in finding solutions,” Putila said.
The Astros had built a player development system armed with all of the latest cutting-edge technologies — machines Murphy dreamed of owning but Brown could never afford.
Wealthier power conference schools are beefing up their analytics teams by installing TrackMan, Rapsodo or Edgertronic cameras at their stadiums. Brown now has Rapsodo. Before the pandemic, the team was planning to invest in Edgertronic cameras. Murphy’s tenure had no such luxuries.
In Murphy’s two seasons on staff, Brown won 12 of its 40 Ivy League games. His final pitching staff finished 2015 with a 7.17 ERA and 1.94 WHIP. It walked almost six hitters per nine innings. Statistics might suggest a firing. Putila looked beyond it. He listened to how Murphy implemented video in his coaching — now a given but, back then, just in its infancy.
“That was impressive that he formulated those solutions on his own,” Putila said. “It told me that this was a person that, when you get him in an environment with even more resources in terms of technology, information, analysts, he could build something even better. That’s what he’s done.”
‘Like a father to me’
After each year in the Astros organization, Murphy ascended a level as a pitching coach: rookie ball Greenville in 2016 to short-season Tri-City in 2017 to Class AA Corpus Christi in 2018.
In his two seasons as the minor league pitching coordinator, Murphy’s task doubled to include coaching staff development at all minor league affiliates — while keeping his constant communication with pitchers intact.
“Murph is like a father for me,” Astros reliever Enoli Paredes said. “I spent a lot of time with Murph last year and in the offseason. We would talk, and he would send me what the team wanted, and he was always in communication with me. He helped me a lot when I was back at home.”
Paredes was among 10 Astros pitchers to make their major league debuts in 2020. Murphy watched all with immense pride. Luis Garcia’s start during the American League Championship Series elated him. Corbin Martin’s Mother’s Day debut in 2019 is another instance Murphy can’t get out of his mind.
Murphy’s reach extends far beyond the field. He communicates constantly with all pitchers. Strom never needs to go far for a scouting report — one with far more detail than even he can anticipate. For instance, on Friday, Strom met two minor league pitchers for the first time: Peter Solomon and Blair Henley. Murphy was nearby to list their daily workload preferences and pitch arsenals
“He knows spin axis, the amount of sweep, the amount of depth on a breaking ball. He knows the hop on a heater,” Strom said.
The information allowed for an easier day in the drudgery of spring training. Murphy’s one goal in his new position is simple: Make Strom’s job as easy as possible.
“I just want to try to help our players reach their dreams to help them keep developing and keep getting better and help impact our major league team and help this organization,” Murphy said. “I haven’t looked in the future. I just try to take it a day at a time.”
Added Strom: “We really have a gem here with this guy. We really do.”