2021 Developmental Staff Announced
2021 Developmental Staff Announced
There's a lot of familiar names involved!
Here’s a fun little factoid. Way back in 2008 when the Giants tabbed Steve Decker for promotion, they gave the managerial position of the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes to former Milwuakee Brewers coach and long-time A’s minor league coach Tom Trebelhorn. Trebelhorn guided the Volcanoes for five years, winning two division titles and a league championship. His managing career finally ended in 2013, but his coaching career did not. He’s still down in Scottsdale, running players through drills, and coaching fundamentals like he has been for nearly a decade now.
Trebelhorn was replaced in Salem-Keizer by Gary Davenport, who had already been a minor league coach in the organization for years — long enough to have seen several years of active coaching duty with his father, Jimmy. Davenport’s still here, too. After he left, the Volcanoes job went to Kyle Haines. He runs things now! (There must be something to that short-season position, as former Farm Director Fred Stanley also started with the Giants as the Volcanoes manager). After Haines, the job went to Jolbert Cabrera — he’s Sacramento’s fundamentals coach now. And, following Jolbert, that mantle was handed to Hector Borg — he’s the Giants Coordinator for Latin American Development, heading a pipeline that’s been filling the system with talent the last few years.
But hang on, you might be thinking, “Aren’t the Giants changing everything these days? Didn’t we all determine that the old way of doing things was irrevocably broken and the old guard needed to be treated like hazmats at a Superfund Site?” Well, rhetorical reader, the answer is: apparently not!
The Giants announced their player development staff for the 2021 year and one of the most notable things about this list is the degree to which it seems to be made up of equal parts innovation and continuity. And that might give us a great lens onto what this organization is trying to do to succeed. So let’s take a look at the full list and make a few observations of what we find there.
Observation #1: They’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!
Well, bigger clubhouse anyway. Looking at this release gives one a strong sense of why MLB talks so much about expanding and modernizing the clubhouses and locker rooms in minor league stadiums. Compare this year’s release to some year’s past:
Back in 2012 the big news was that not much was changing with the minor league coaching staffs. In 2014, it raised eye-brows that a couple of the lower levels actually had four-man staffs (mostly because they were breaking in a couple of new guys as co-hitting instructors). Now here in 2021, it takes pages and pages to list all of the personnel working to build a better Giant. And this is important in a couple of different ways, I think.
First, the Giants of today are just crediting far more people for the work that they do. Of course, the system has always had someone taking care of the fields in Scottsdale, or overseeing field conditions around the system. This is core development stuff. But they haven’t traditionally put their Director of Arizona Field Operations or Director of Minor League Field Operations — looking good, Josh Wartsler, make that turf gleam, Jeff Winsor! — on the marquee announcement along with the team managers. They’ve always had people serving players food (though I certainly like the implications inherent in Jessica Placencia’s role as “High Performance Chef,” and Adam Rodrigues’ Coordinator of Minor League Nutrition) and helping the international players manage the culture shock and communication difficulties that they face when they come to the United States (you’re doing great, Laura Núñez).
The point is that the Giants are showing an understanding that words matter, that announcement have significance — that they literally “signal” things. And what the Giants are signaling here is that development isn’t just a matter of teaching players a changeup grip or working on the biokinetic chain of hitting. It’s everything else involved in getting players the most support they can: physically, mentally, emotionally. It’s in the shape of the facilities and the care with which workouts or meals are devised. All of these people are equally involved in helping Luis Matos or, for that matter, Simon Whiteman become the best version of themselves that they can.
The Giants are also, I think, creating a culture of both accountability and appreciation. Healthy organizations make all of their employees feel that their contributions are being valued. Putting Kyle Belski and Nick Wolcott’s names right there next to Pat Burrell and Dave Righetti’s is one small way to accomplish that healthy organizational culture.
The other thing to note about the increasing size of the developmental staffs, both for individual teams and at the organizational level, is that this kind of “embiggening” is necessitated by the amount of information — and specific information for each individual player — that teams are accessing now. The level of understanding of how each individual player’s body works, and how best to use their native biomechanics in the most impactful manner, is far beyond the ability of any three people (no matter how talented) to absorb, understand, and communicate. The old 3:25 ratio of teachers to students just won’t work for the modern classroom — not with the quantity and quality of information that organizations have to give players these days.
And one final note about the size of this list: if you find yourself getting angry that the Giants aren’t “spending money” to win, think of this list of developmental positions and remember that they’re putting money where they think it matters. When some organizations — even big market ones — were skipping Instrux altogether last Fall, the Giants were asking for permission to field a second team. That costs money and the organization keeps showing that they’re not going to cut corner on those investments.
Observation #2: Looking for Brains In All the Right Places
We know this story — it was a big part of Gabe Kapler’s work last winter putting together the major league coaching staff. It didn’t all need to come from traditional backgrounds (“tradition” in this case being many former major league players). Smart baseball teachers could come from all sorts of places: colleges or private laboratories or wherever creative minds sought to build a better mousetrap.
And the Giants developmental staff certainly isn’t short on old pros. Heck, they’ve got two former top overall draft picks and major league All Stars beating the bushes in Pat Burrell and Shawon Dunston (Burrell is switching from the job he was supposed to have in 2020, San Jose’s hitting coach, to a roving position that will work with all the hitters in the system). Pitching Coordinator Justin Lehr got a few cups of coffee in the big leagues and Clay Rapada had a fairly lengthy big league career. Jake Fox saw time with the A’s and O’s and had a late-career in the KBO playing for the Hanwha Eagles.
But there’s also Hitting Coordinator Michael Brdar, who came to the Giants last year from the University of Michigan. And Matt Daniels, who works with Lehr and Rapada helping the pitching staff. The imaginatively titled Coordinator of Pitching Sciences came from Driveline, the private entity started by Kyle Boddy that has been the industry’s supreme disruptor and a primary source of innovation over the past decade.
The Giants also aren’t afraid to look outside of affiliated ball for smart minds. It’s a delightful irony that both Manager Dennis Pelfrey and Pitching Coach Alain Quijano will get to enjoy the splendors of the Eugene Emerald’s facility — one of the finest in the minor leagues — after having spent their entire playing careers beating around in the the Indy Leagues.
In a former (non-baseball) life of mine, I spent a lot of time talking about things like “problem-based learning” or “solution-based thinking” and trying to convince a lot of subject matter experts that to get to the best outcome you need to get a diverse array of perspectives and mindsets into the discussion. A task group made up entirely of like-minded experts will frequently fail to see, or will even create, issues that might have been avoided or solved with the inclusion of a non-expert into their process. That’s exactly what teams like the Giants are doing when they bring staff from very different professional circumstances and put them in a group together to achieve a common goal. It’s a great way to build a better mousetrap and avoid the pitfalls of “groupthink.”
Michael Couchee and Ydwin Villegas have been in this organization for a decade or more; Lance Burkhart is joining it for the first time. Putting those three on a staff together to bounce ideas off each other is a way to keep ideas from getting stale.
Observation #3: “Forever Giants” are still a thing!
As I said at the top, for all the attention on updating, modernizing, overhauling the organization, it’s astonishing how 2015 this list can look from some perspectives. Old friends abound, whether that’s former big league coaches or players like Rags and Dunston and Burrell and Ishi, or former minor leaguers.
It’s astounding how many former Giants minor league players you can find around this list, starting at the very top with Kyle Haines, a member of both the 2005 and 2007 Cal League Champs!
Long-time coach and manager Jose Alguacil was a Giants minor league infielder back in the 1990s. Lisandro King played just two years, when he was 18 and 19 years old, for the AZL team. Ydwin Villegas filled in wherever an infielder was needed for over a decade. For Juan Ciriaco, it was very nearly two decades of the bush leagues. And all have found common cause in helping others climb higher than they did.
Osiris Matos was a big-time pitching prospect who got his three weeks in the Show. Mario Rodriguez was just another low-level arm who never made it to full season ball. Carlos Valderrama’s shining prospect star was dimmed by injuries. Doug Clark played 14 games in the majors but found his greatest triumph (as well as his family) playing in the Mexican League. Everywhere you look there are reminders of minor league careers here. From Luis Piño to Matt Yourkin. Eliezer Zambrano spent eight seasons with the Richmond Flying Squirrels alone, practically filling the role of Catchers Coach while still playing. Paul Oseguera was a mainstay of the San Jose Giants’ rotation when Lenn Sakata guided the team to the 2007 Cal League Championship. In 2021, they’ll work together to shape the fortunes of some of the most talented, and important, players in the system — guys like Marco Luciano, Luis Matos, Luis Toribio, and Kyle Harrison.
And somehow, Sakata, who was managing teams to championships last century, and who set the all-time record for managerial wins in the California League thirteen years ago (527 — he’s added to it since then), will work to help get information to players based on information technology that only existed in sci-fi movies when he first started. He’ll be part of a system of communication to players that focuses on things like scrap retraction and efficient foot pressure during swings or pitching motions. Maybe, in between, Lenn will find time to drop a story or two, like the time he found himself catching, for the first time ever, in an extra-innings game with the Orioles, and Tippy Martinez rescued him from having to execute a throw to 2b by picking off three consecutive runners.
Yep. The idea isn’t to get rid of Old School, it’s to blend the old with the new. To complement and supplement old insights with new sources of information. The Giants hope to produce consistent winners by increasing their ability to churn out major league talent from their minor league system. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a break from a past that has seen its share of success. This is more evolution than revolution. There’s still an awful lot of institutional wisdom in the offices in Scottsdale that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. The hope is to integrate that old wisdom with new insights, new ways of looking at things, and new ways of communicating information to the players in order to help them find success.
Perhaps “Innovation” and “Continuity” will become the twin pillars upon which the new era of Giants baseball will be founded, working together as seamlessly as the Pitching Coordinator and the Coordinator of Pitching Sciences, as the old hand Manager Dave Brundage and his new kid on the block Associate Analyst Danny Boessenecker.
