Mold-breaking Twins pitching coach makes positive impression
MINNEAPOLIS >> The Minnesota Twins had a lead on the New York Yankees that had dwindled to one run on this late July night, and rookie Lewis Thorpe was in a daunting situation with one out in the sixth inning.
After giving up hits to three of the first four batters he faced, the Twins lefthander had runners at first and second behind him. Yankees slugger Aaron Judge towered in front of him at the plate. Pitching coach Wes Johnson jogged to the mound to deliver a simple message.
“He said, ‘Have some fun,’” Thorpe said, “and I smiled and threw a first-pitch slider.”
Judge swung and grounded into a double play. The Twins went on to beat the Yankees, who they’ll face on Friday in Game 1 of their AL Division Series.
Advising professional athletes is never quite so fingersnap easy, of course. To directly correlate every point of progress by a Twins pitcher this season to the work that Johnson has done in his first year would be disingenuous, ignorant of the dozens of others in the organization who play a part in player development.
This unorthodox decision to hire Johnson from the University of Arkansas, believed to be the first pitching coach to ever jump from college straight to the major leagues, sure has paid off.
“He did his homework on all of us, especially this offseason. He came at us with a plan and a reason and stats to prove it and basically made it really easy to get behind,” said right-hander Tyler Duffey, whose improvement this year has been as drastic as any pitcher on the staff. “He comes at you with a lot of positivity, which I think a lot of times is a good thing, especially if you’re struggling a little bit. I like being told like it is, but every once in a while you need a little pump up.”
The 48-year-old Johnson has brought just that to the AL Central champions, a walking cup of coffee who’s clearly on a mission wherever he’s spotted in the clubhouse during pregame preparations.
“He’s got a tremendous amount of energy, and it’s awesome to see someone else who can match me or challenges me to match them energy-wise,” said right-hander Sergio Romo, the trade-deadline acquisition who will likely be one of only two pitchers on the postseason roster in their 30s. “It’s just been consistent, and that’s one of the things that I respect the most.”
The schedule of games, the environment around the team, and the makeup of players in college is drastically different than in the pros, and a new authority figure with no prior experience in the majors would stand to meet some resistance from established players if the expectations, process or strategy are altered without reason or warning. That’s the polar opposite, though, of how Johnson approaches his teaching.
“I believe it’s our job as a coach, and this is my philosophy, to find what a guy does really well and try to find a way to get him to do that more,” Johnson said, “as opposed to finding what he does bad and exploiting that and telling him he’s got to get better. Whoever you want to look at, they’ve all done things really well to get here at some point in their career. So we tend to focus more on that.”
Starting pitchers Jake Odorizzi and Kyle Gibson had a head start on the relationship, having done winter workouts with pitching specialist Randy Sullivan, who runs elite training camps in Florida he used to conduct in Texas with Johnson.