Club hopes to retain most of Baker’s staff
Astros manager Dusty Baker returning for another season after leading the team to a World Series appearance, the Astros hope to bring back most of his coaching staff in 2022.
Pitching coach Brent Strom is the only member of Baker’s staff who has announced he will not return. General manager James Click said Friday that discussions were ongoing with the rest of the coaches including third base coach Gary Pettis, who rejoined the team following his cancer treatment on a one-year deal in 2021.
“We’re hoping to bring everybody back,” Click said. “We’re having those conversations right now. They got delayed for good reasons because we were going so deep in the playoffs, but our main thing with Gary is just making sure he’s healthy. That’s obviously first and foremost for all of us.”
Strom’s departure leaves the Astros with a hole to fill and two qualified internal candidates. Baker said he believes bullpen coach Josh Miller is ready to step into Strom’s role and that assistant pitching coach Bill Murphy is ready to take over Miller’s position.
Both men have worked in the Astros’ system since 2016 and thus possess relationships with many of the young pitchers Houston will rely on going forward. Murphy just finished his first season as a major league staffer. Miller served as the bullpen coach in 2019-20 before being promoted to assistant pitching coach this season.
“They’ve been kind of tutoring under Brent for a while here,” Baker said. “I always felt from the time I got here that Miller was ready to take that next step but you don’t want to force anybody out of the situation especially if they still want to be there. And Murphy, I think he’s ready to go to the bullpen. He raised a lot of these guys in the minor leagues. He was a pitching coordinator in the minor leagues. Both of them were at some point in time.”
Strom served as pitching
coach since 2014, when he was hired by former general manager Jeff Luhnow. Strom’s contract expired at the end of the 2021 season, and he informed Click he wouldn’t return during the team’s final regular-season road trip.
“Was I surprised? No,” Baker said. “He had talked about it earlier in the year last year but I had urged him to put all his effort into this year and not worry about the future or even think about the end, and then the end came. He made up his mind. Nobody has to tell you when you're at the end. You know in your heart and mind that it’s the end, the end at least for this era here in Houston.”