Strom building trust with D-Backs pitching staff

On the drive from Phoenix to his home in Tucson one day during the offseason, Diamondbacks pitching coach Brent Strom called catcher Carson Kelly to pick his brain. It didn’t dawn on him until midway through the conversation that it shouldn’t be taking place.

“I said, ‘I don’t think I’m supposed to be talking to you, Carson, don’t tell anybody,’” Strom said, noting that baseball’s lockout prohibited conversations between coaches and players.

“I kind of went braindead there for a short while.”

The lockout and the abbreviated spring training limited Strom’s ability to get to know his new pitching staff. But while he said that process is continuing into the first month of the season, he still was able to offer glimpses of how he has been able to influence Diamondbacks pitchers.

During a session with reporters on Tuesday, Strom was asked about lefthander Madison Bumgarner’s increased use of his cutter, a pitch he is throwing more than 50% of the time. Strom noted that the organization had identified it as a plus pitch — and noted that Bumgarner threw his curveball more on Sunday than he had in his previous three starts.

“I’ve tried to slow-walk a lot of this stuff with him,” Strom said. “He’s obviously been very successful in the past. He wants to be good. He wants to be Bum again. So he’s taken to some of the stuff I’ve shown him in terms of utilizing his pitches in a different way.

“For example, the cutter, instead of just throwing a cutter down and in to righties, (he’s throwing) what we call top-shelf cutters, belt and above, things like that. He’s taken to that.”

Strom noted Bumgarner’s modest increase in velocity, intimating that he believes there could be a bit more in the tank with other possible adjustments. He said he watched video from early in Bumgarner’s career when his fastball was touching the mid-90s and noticed some differences in his delivery.

“There were some different things he did mechanically when he was younger, things we do differently as we age,” Strom said. “I’m just trying to get him back to utilizing momentum a little bit and utilizing a kind of a slightly more up-tempo (delivery). I’m never going to get him to be a fast, up-tempo guy; he’s kind of a guy that moves at his own pace. But even a slight uptick in leg lift and energy and things like that can sometimes translate into added life to the ball.”

Strom also mentioned trying to encourage right-hander Merrill Kelly to bury his curveball more often, and he said right-hander Zach Davies has started to tinker with a “sweeper” breaking ball, a pitch he wanted to see him implement more on Tuesday night against the Dodgers.

Strom said he needed time with his new pitchers before being able to implement those types of adjustments, though he tried to downplay the potential impact he can make despite being widely regarded as one of the better pitching coaches — if not the best — in the majors in recent years.

“I made it very clear to anyone who would listen: I’m not a savior by any means on this thing,” he said. “I’m just coming in with some ideas. But it’s a two-way street. They have to talk to me. We get to learn each other. We’re still doing that today. It’s a constant tweaking of little things.”

Short hops

Second baseman Ketel Marte was hitting sixth in the lineup on Tuesday night, the first time this season he had been anywhere but second.

The move likely was made as a way to take pressure off the club’s struggling star, but the particulars of the decision were unclear because manager Torey Lovullo was not made available to reporters before Tuesday’s game.

Infielder Josh Rojas played five innings of a game at extended spring training, his first game action since straining his right oblique during spring training.

Rojas was scheduled to take Wednesday off before returning to action Thursday.