When new Orioles pitching coach Roger McDowell was introduced in a conference call earlier this offseason, it didn’t take long for him to recite a commonly used phrase he learned from his predecessor and mentor, Dave Wallace.
“They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” he said.
It’s a quote Wallace used early on to describe his approach to developing young pitchers. And many Orioles pitchers – closer Zach Britton, right-hander Chris Tillman, and young arms Kevin Gausman and Dylan Bundy – have credited Wallace and bullpen coach Dom Chiti for playing a major role in the strides they made.
McDowell first met Wallace while he was still a player with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Wallace was the team’s pitching coordinator. Wallace was instrumental in getting McDowell into pitching coaching, getting him his first minor league job in 2002 with the South Georgia Waves. They reunited in Atlanta, where McDowell continued to learn from Wallace as he made his way to becoming a major league pitching coach, a post he owned for the past 11 years before joining the Orioles.
“We have a relationship I value tremendously,” McDowell said at FanFest this weekend. “He’s most instrumental in, one, getting me to become a pitching coach at the minor league level … to getting to come here. … We’ve had those conversations. He’s always been a contributor to success and everywhere he’s gone he’s had success and whether that’s with pitching coaches or players, he’s been a very successful person.”
Though only one of them comes out of the Orioles’ minor league system, the hiring of Roger McDowell as the club’s new pitching coach and Alan Mills as bullpen coach has the feel of an entirely internal transition.
McDowell, who ended his playing career with a season in Baltimore in 1996, hasn’t…
Though only one of them comes out of the Orioles’ minor league system, the hiring of Roger McDowell as the club’s new pitching coach and Alan Mills as bullpen coach has the feel of an entirely internal transition.
McDowell, who ended his playing career with a season in Baltimore in 1996, hasn’t…
And that advice that Wallace passed along to McDowell – that teaching pitching is as much about the building strong relationships as it is about mechanics – has been one McDowell embraced since he began coaching.
“It stuck with me a long time,” McDowell said.
If McDowell – along with new bullpen coach Alan Mills – can offer some continuity in regards to the bond Orioles pitchers developed with Wallace and Chiti, who are both now back in Atlanta in non-dugout developmental roles, it would speak volumes for a staff that will see its sixth major league pitching coach since 2010.
While McDowell said he will likely bring some of Wallace’s philosophies with him, he said he has learned from many pitching coaches along the way. That list includes Pat Dobson, who was Orioles pitching coach when McDowell was a reliever in Baltimore in 1996, and Mel Stottlemyre, who was McDowell’s first major league pitching coach in his five seasons with the New York Mets from 1985 to 1989.
“More than anything else, I’ve learned from all my coaches that the player is first and foremost,” McDowell said. “Obviously, we have a bunch of very intelligent minds in this organization, and the important thing is the player, the pitcher, understanding that we care about them.”
See more from McDowell on his regard for Wallace and his coaching philosophy in the video embedded above.
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