By Nick Piecoro
There might not be much in Dave Duncan’s message this spring that Diamondbacks pitchers haven’t heard before. Throw strikes. Get ground balls. Know your strengths. Attack weaknesses.
But therein lies Duncan’s effectiveness. There can be genius in simplicity, in attention to detail, in thorough meticulousness. Duncan’s track record might speak for itself, but the Diamondbacks are listening whenever he speaks.
“This is a guy who has fixed careers, a guy who has built careers; he’s been there for the length of careers, and it’s just been success, success, success,” Diamondbacks righthander Brandon McCarthy said. “It would do you well to just listen as much as you can. Everybody has that on their mind. Here’s someone talking that we need to stop and listen and pay attention to.”
Widely regarded to be among the better pitching coaches in baseball history, Duncan is in camp with the Diamondbacks as a special assistant, his first job back in baseball after an absence of nearly two years.
Duncan has worked more seasons as a major-league pitching coach (32) than anyone in history, the vast of majority of them spent under manager Tony La Russa. A former catcher, he had four Cy Young winners on his staff during his playing career. Four others won the award with him as their coach.
After 16 seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, Duncan took a leave of absence in January 2012 to be with his wife, Jeanine, as she battled cancer. She died in June, and Duncan decided in the fall he needed to get back to work. The Diamondbacks hired him in November, not long before they made Mike Harkey their new pitching coach.
Duncan’s new role calls for less day-to-day responsibility than a normal pitching coach. There’s less of the stuff he considers a “headache” — the planning, the minutiae — and more of the stuff he enjoys: observing pitchers, sharing philosophies, exchanging ideas.
The Diamondbacks seem to have almost turned their entire pitching operation over to Duncan. In a team meeting, Harkey encouraged the staff to take advantage of him as a resource. Since nobody, including Duncan, is sure how much he’ll be around once the season starts, pitchers have been trying to maximize their time around him.
“If he’s around every day, he’s not going to be around enough,” reliever J.J. Putz said. “I just hope a lot of these guys realize the resource we have, especially in spring. Sit down, have a cup of coffee with him, just pick his brain. If you can walk away with one thing every day, that would be huge.”
His presence in camp was felt right away. In part based on his recommendations, the club eased spring throwing workloads and had catchers begin calling pitches during bullpen sessions as a way to simulate game situations.
On the first day of camp, manager Kirk Gibson showed his pitchers video of a presentation Duncan made at the Diamondbacks’ organizational meetings earlier this month. In a talk that lasted a half-hour, Duncan spelled out his core beliefs and explained how he had gone about preparing for games as a pitching coach. Several people in attendance called the presentation the highlight of the meetings.
During the first day of workouts, General Manager Kevin Towers saw Duncan standing behind the pitching mounds and was hit with a rush of optimism.
“Just his mere presence,” Towers said later. “Watching him today standing behind your pitchers makes you feel pretty good about the Diamondbacks.”
Duncan is said to be more about preparation and execution than mechanics. He says he almost never asks his pitchers to make major mechanical adjustments. He has made heavy use of video scouting since the early 1980s, long before the rest of baseball caught up, and Diamondbacks pitchers say they expect to do more of that this season.
At the heart of his beliefs, he says, is trying not to overwhelm his pitchers with information.
“I try to keep it as simple as you can,” he said. “It’s not brain surgery.”
Every pitcher got to the majors because he has strengths. Nearly every hitter has weaknesses or tendencies. Duncan just wants his pitchers to align those two things. He’s also a major proponent of throwing sinkers and getting ground balls.
“Everybody wants to be as good as they can be,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just little things that make a big difference.”
Another major tenet for Duncan: the importance of catchers.
“You cannot have good pitching without a good catcher,” he said. “He’s got to be there every day. He can’t be there three out of five days. He’s got to be there every day.”
Duncan says getting back to work has been good for him. After his wife died, he got a call from Diamondbacks special assistant Bob Gebhard. During the conversation, Duncan mentioned he hoped to eventually get back into baseball.
Four months later, Gebhard called again. The Diamondbacks needed a pitching coach. Duncan wasn’t willing to take on those responsibilities again, but he was ready to do something.
“He’s getting his swagger back,” said Duncan’s son, Shelley, a first baseman/outfielder who is in camp with the Diamondbacks on a minor-league contract.
“It’s been a really, really tough two years for the family and especially for him. It affects him. Time heals everything. Being out here is a big part of the healing process, but more than anything he is starting to be himself a lot more.”
Duncan said that other than short trips to Los Angeles or San Diego, he probably won’t be taking many road trips with the big-league team, but he expects to periodically visit some of the minor-league clubs. The Diamondbacks are more than happy to let him make his own schedule.
“To me, he’s one of the great pitching minds in the game,” Towers said. “I think it’s better just to shut up and let him talk and let him do what he wants. I think most of the players and the coaching staff are all ears when he does speak. We feel blessed to have him here in our camp.”