Brandon Gomes on Joining Dodgers’ New Pitching Dept.

Brandon Gomes is on to phase two of his baseball career. Ten years after being drafted out of Tulane University, the 32-year-old right-hander has moved from the mound to a player-development position. This past fall, he was hired as a pitching coordinator by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

His role is somewhat atypical, which is hardly a surprise given the team employing him. Led by Andrew Friedman, Farhan Zaidi, and Josh Byrnes, the Dodgers front office is as progressive as any in the game. They like bringing on board smart, creative people, and Gomes has a degree in Legal Studies and Finance to augment his five seasons as a Tampa Bay Rays reliever.

Gomes talked about his new job, and some of what’s being done in LA’s newly-created pitching department, late last week.

———

Gomes on getting hired by the Dodgers: “After I got released [by the Cubs] in June, I spent about three or four weeks trying to find another Triple-A job. No teams showed interest, so at that point I decided I wanted to pursue this end of things. I contacted [president of baseball operations] Andrew Friedman, who I had relationship with from our time in Tampa, and that kind of got the ball rolling. He put me in contact with [director of player development] Gabe Kapler.

“I spoke with Gabe quite a bit, trying to figure out what shape my role would be if I came on board. That happened in September, when I went out to instructional league in Arizona. I spent a month there, getting to know some of the staff, and build a relationship with some of the younger players.

“My title is ‘Pitching Coordinator, Performance.’ We actually created a department, so we have a couple of pitching coordinators, of different iterations. That’s wise, because it’s a huge undertaking for one person to really tackle the entire situation. Having multiple people who are able to hit it from different angles, the goal is to not miss anything with any of our guys.

“Rather than just having a traditional pitching coordinator, now we have myself, Donnie Alexander, Chris Fetter, Jimmy Buffi, Jason Gilberg, and Jack Cressend. We don’t have a fancy name. We’re simply ‘The Pitching Department.’ Chris and I are both new, while the other guys were already there in some capacity.”

On his role and player plans: “The biggest thing I tackled this offseason was developing player plans for our men, combining meta analysis, TrackMan info, usage… taking all of the information, and using my experience, as well. We have a tremendous R&D team, and I have my colleagues in the pitching department helping me along the way.

“They did it a little bit last year, as well, so it’s about having the bandwidth to move it forward with all of the pitchers. The biggest thing is to understand the characteristics. It might be, ‘Hey, this guy has elite carry, so we want to look at pitching in this part of the zone.’ Or maybe it’s, ‘This is a power-sinker guy, so we want this,’ or, ‘He has an above-average slider, so he should use it more than he’s currently using it.’ Those kind of avenues. Nothing overly new, but we’re implementing it in a slightly different way.

“We’re using data. From my perspective, it is easier to digest a suggestion if there’s hard data there. It’s more than strictly an opinion. If the eyes and the data match up, that’s even better. It’s further confirmation of, ‘We’re doing the right thing, or this isn’t working, maybe we should change course here.’”

On getting buy-in: “We’re contacting the players during the offseason, with ‘What do you think of this? Would you be comfortable doing it?’ It’s an open dialogue. Making it personal to the player is another level of care that the Dodgers organization is trying to take with each guy.

“The response has been extremely positive so far. We really encourage feedback. We don’t want them to just say OK, we want them to ask why. At the end of the day, it’s their career. If they’re passionate about something, and we’re saying the opposite, they can tackle that themselves. We’re not forcing anybody to do anything. These are suggestions. But again, the feedback has been really good. The players seem to appreciate that we’re taking the time to do this.

“I think it hits home a little bit more. We can talk about major-league averages, and all this stuff, and generally, the guys will fall in line with that. ‘Hey, if you don’t throw strike one, your strikeout rate goes way down.’ To actually see their specific numbers is more impactful. It can change their thinking to, ‘Maybe I really should attack the zone 0-0.’”

On expanding the knowledge base: “One of the best parts of working here is that there’s a lot of freedom to explore things that are maybe not traditional. The resources are there. There are some unbelievably intelligent people working in R&D and baseball ops. We’re building great relationships, and trying to work together, because we’re all trying to get at the same end game.

“There have been quite a few articles out there about useful spin, and things of that nature. We’re trying to take a deeper dive and not just say, ‘High spin equals this, and low spin rate equals that.’ Like the vast majority of things in baseball, it’s a lot more gray than black and white.

“We’re trying to integrate everybody into these conversations. That’s one of the initiatives we’re taking. We’re including pitchers and catchers. We want them to take the bull by the horns. Go watch video. Learn how to read hitters. We want them to understand heat maps, and what these different numbers mean all while building strong relationships with each other. That way, the pitcher won’t have to solely rely on the catcher, the catcher doesn’t have to solely rely on the pitching coach’s scouting report. For development purposes, we would rather them have their own game plan that they’ve built, than have the exact right plan that was dictated to them. 

“We’re making it a priority in the minors, because with all the data that’s being provided in the big leagues, if you’re not doing it in the minor leagues, you’re eventually going to be overwhelmed. Everybody in the big leagues is at least considering some of this stuff. It goes a long way toward helping a pitcher game plan and navigate a lineup.”

On sequencing and tunneling: “With game planning, you’re basically taking what you do well, and what the batter doesn’t do quite as well, and trying to match those up. If I’m really strong at a down-and-away fastball, and I’m throwing 91, it may not be a great idea to attack Mike Trout down and away with that pitch. More goes into it than that. 

“The Kyle Hendrickses and Greg Madduxes of the world tunnel very well. But there are also the Rich Hills and Barry Zitos, who have huge break. That’s also effective. So I don’t think there is one set sequence of how we go about things. It’s really difficult to quantify, even with the tunnel information we’re getting.

“Can we separate the guys in the minor leagues who tunnel better than others do? You’d imagine that guys in the big leagues usually tunnel pretty well, at least good enough to dominate the minor leagues and get to the big leagues. Is there a point where tunneling is good enough at a certain point? That’s one of the things we’re exploring.

“At its root, we’re trying to go with what the pitcher does well, and then the hitter’s weaknesses, and we base the sequences off of that. That’s as opposed to just saying, ‘Fastball followed by a down-and-away slider; that’s the sequence we have to use all the time.’ There are multiple combinations. Some are probably better than others, although I don’t think we have enough data to say which sequences are always most effective. That’s another example of the type of thing we’re exploring.”