Roger McDowell seems to be the only member of the Braves’ operation everybody can agree on. He hasn’t been accused of botching lineups (manager) or making bad trades (front office) or failing to improve slumping gazillionaires (hitting coach) or caring more about profiting off a publicly funded stadium development than improving the on-field product (ownership).
McDowell is just good really at what he does, which is coach the Braves’ pitchers. Despite a blur of retirements, defections and surgeries, especially surgeries, the Braves’ pitching staff has ranked in the top five in ERA for six straight seasons.
He’s not a guru. His focus isn’t “Hold the ball here,” or “Release the ball there.” It’s more about fixing a pitcher’s mental approach, getting him to focus on what’s within his control.
“If you give him the clay, he’ll be able to mold it a little,” said John Hart, the Braves’ president of baseball operations.
I bring up McDowell because after working a string of miracles in recent years — particularly last season after losing starters Kris Medlen and Brandon Beachy to elbow surgeries in the spring — he is being asked for an encore. The Braves’ offense may be limited this season. So when any starter allows more than two runs, it may seem like dropping the rest of the team into a canyon.
But McDowell, who sees and thinks the game as well or better than anybody in the dugout, knows that none of his young pitchers can let that thought sink into their craniums.
He said his objective is the same every day, every season, regardless of the backdrop It doesn’t matter, he said, if a pitcher “… has the pedigree of a 20-game winner or eight seasons of 200 innings or he’s Alex Wood and in his first year out of college. What do we have? What do we need to do each day? It’s about understanding where they come from and how much do we need to bite off?”
McDowell understands the narrative this season. But is it really much different from last year, when the Braves ranked 29th in the majors in runs scored?
“The greatest line was from John Hart, who said, ‘It’s not like I’m breaking up the ’27 Yankees,’” McDowell said. “Hopefully from a pitching staff standpoint, our focus isn’t where we are offensively, whether we’re a great offensive club or we’re below average. We can only control one thing — the baseball. We can’t control how many runs we score. We can’t control what happens after the ball hits the bat. We can’t control good plays, bad plays.”
It’s easy to see how Julio Teheran and Wood have matured so quickly under McDowell, how Medlen battled back from a slump early in 2012 after a short talk with his coach, how 35-year-old Aaron Harang suddenly seemed to have been sprinkled with pixie dust after the Braves picked him up in desperation when Medlen (again) and Beachy (again) were lost to Tommy John surgery (again).
McDowell: “(Pitchers) have to look at it like a golfer. Whether you’re on the leaderboard or not, you’re not playing against the guys in your group, or Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell or Tiger Woods. You’re playing the course. When we look at lineups, our mentality has to be, ‘I’m playing that course.’”
The Braves’ starting rotation is young again. The top three starters — Teheran, Wood and Shelby Miller — are all 24. Mike Minor, who struggled in 2014 after offseason urinary tract surgery and then shoulder tendinitis, is 27.
But youth won’t cause problems. Little has caused problems for McDowell. Since ranking 21st in the majors with a 4.46 ERA in 2008 — PTSD flashbacks: Mike Hampton, Charlie Morton, Jo-Jo Reyes — the Braves have finished third (3.57), third (3.56), fourth (3.48), fifth (3.42), first (3.18) and fifth (3.38).
Even with last year’s ERA uptick, it might have been McDowell’s greatest accomplishment of all, given the injuries and the fact Harang, who had been released by Seattle, the New York Mets and Cleveland, threw over 200 innings for the first time in seven years. Teheran, in his new role as No. 1 starter, led the Braves in innings (221) and had a 2.89 ERA. Wood, in his first year out of Georgia, led starters with a 2.78 ERA.
It can’t all be a coincidence.
This isn’t to diminish the accomplishments of prior pitching coach Leo Mazzone, but McDowell hasn’t had the benefit of working with Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Greg Maddux. He has been given several prospects and some spare parts and molded them into one of the best staffs in the majors. Over the last four seasons, Braves’ relievers also have combined for the majors’ best ERA (2.88).
Medlen had a meteoric rise late in 2012 after returning from his first elbow surgery. But after starting 1-6 with a 3.48 ERA the following year, McDowell sensed he had jumped the rails mentally. He told him: “Stop trying to win three games in one night. Control what you can control. Focus on the inning.”
“It leveled me out,” Medlen recalled. “I started going on some kind of roll.” His next five starts: 4-1, 1.69.
The message for Braves’ pitchers hasn’t changed: Control the ball, let go of everything else.
And maybe say the serenity prayer a few times.
