Three of Farrell’s former Red Sox assistants find new homes
Carl Willis had other job offers, none like the one with the Indians.
Following two seasons with the Boston Red Sox, Willis has been hired by Cleveland to replace Mickey Callaway, who helped mold one of baseball’s best pitching staffs before leaving to manage the New York Mets.
This will be the second stint in Cleveland for Willis, who was contacted by several other teams. However, he chose to return to the Indians and oversee a staff that had two 18-game winners (Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco), a 17-game winner (Trevor Bauer), the likely Cy Young winner (Kluber) and one of the game’s best bullpens.
“There were other opportunities,” Willis said Thursday. “But those opportunities didn’t include Kluber, Bauer, Carrasco, (Danny) Salazar, names of that quality. That’s very exciting and appealing.”
With Boston, the 56-year-old guided a staff that finished second in the AL this season to Cleveland in ERA.
, was fourth in the majors in ERA and posted 11 shutouts. The Red Sox also recorded the second-fewest walks and set a single-season franchise record in strikeouts (1,580).
Willis is familiar with many of Cleveland’s younger pitchers after serving as a special assistant in 2014 and pitching coach at Triple-A Columbus in 2015 before he went to Boston.
Manager Terry Francona said that once Callaway left, the Indians were drawn to Willis because of his background with the club and success elsewhere.
“We started looking not just at names, but at attributes,” Francona said. “And then Carl’s name kept coming up. So, we moved quickly, because there was a lot of competition out there for pitching coaches. And the fact that he knows so many of our pitchers, he knows our organization, is a huge bonus. He’ll hit the ground running. He’s planning on talking to most of the pitchers today, and they’ll be easy conversations because he knows pretty much everybody.”
Also Thursday, the Chicago Cubs hired a pair of ex Red Sox assistants, Chili Davis as their hitting coach and Brian Butterfield as the new third base coach.