Trevor Bauer, who is very familiar with freshly installed Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake, strongly approves of New York’s staff addition.
Many fans wanted the New York Yankees to acquire Trevor Bauer before and during the 2019 MLB season. Instead, the Bombers just hired a guy Bauer apparently respects a lot to be their new pitching coach.
That man is Matt Blake, who had worked as a minor league pitching coordinator for the Cleveland Indians since 2016. Cleveland is where Bauer, now a member of the Cincinnati Reds, developed into one of the game’s top arms.
In a tweet on Thursday night, Bauer extolled Blake’s baseball virtues:
“…He’s awesome. One of the smarter guys I know. (He) knows a lot about pitching. A lot about development. Good communicator. Etc. Really excited for him getting this opportunity and pumped to see the results.”
Bauer is known as a bit of a pitching genius himself. Therefore, his words could serve to bolster Yankees fans’ confidence in the first-time pitching coach.
According to most reports, Blake is driven by analytics. That fact might explain Bauer’s appreciation for him.
Bauer goes to the extreme when it comes to utilizing scientific data to inform his mound plans.
Blake is only 33 years old—almost half as old as his predecessor, 65-year-old Larry Rothschild. The latest Yankees’ hire’s only experience as a pitching coach came in 2015. Don’t put too much stock in that, though.
Blake’s last pitching coach gig was with the collegiate summer league Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox, per his LinkedIn profile (h/t to Daily News reporter Bradford William Davis).
But don’t worry about youth and inexperience, Bombers fans. Blake has a stamp of approval from Trevor Bauer, a guy who threw a ball over the centerfield fence during an in-game temper tantrum and who now plays second fiddle to failed Yankee Sonny Gray.
Everything should work out wonderfully.
