BlogLab

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — In 1997, Derek Johnson was serving as the pitching coach for the Anchorage Glacier Pilots. One day that year, as the now-Reds pitching coach watched right-hander Marc Bluma, he noticed something written on the brim of his hat.

In black Sharpie on the left side of the underside of the bill of his cap, Bluma had written three letters: F, A and H.

Advertisement

Johnson inquired just what FAH meant.

“F— all hitters,” Bluma told him.

More than 25 years later, Johnson said he’s found a way around the unprintable word.

“FAH can also mean fearlessly attack hitters,” Johnson said. “You don’t have to use the other one, there’s a PG version.”

The only thing funnier than being called by a reporter out of the blue about a summer league coach you had before Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo or Graham Ashcraft was born, is the thought that FAH could be softened. That’s because softening anything is the antithesis of FAH.

“It was just kind of a mindset you had to have on the mound — FAH,” Bluma recalled. “It may be a friend or someone you know, but he’s a hitter and hitters are the enemy.”

That mindset, and the phrase, were tenets of Wichita State pitching coach Brent Kemnitz. An All-American at Wichita State, Bluma finished his career as the Shockers’ all-time saves leader, breaking the record held by his older brother, Jaime Bluma.

In the same spirit as FAH, Jaime Bluma remembered Kemnitz telling his pitchers not to worry about hitting opposing batters, “if he’s not a good enough athlete to get out of the way,” Kemnitz would say, “f— him.” That was the mindset both Bluma brothers (and their teammates) took to the mound. Jaime Bluma played in three straight College World Series when he was with the Shockers.

Ultimately, coaching in the summer collegiate Alaska Baseball League was more than a chance to pick up a paycheck — it was a place for Johnson to learn.

“He’d always pick guy’s brains about what they did at their schools and what he might be able to he could incorporate with his guys,” Marc Bluma recalled. “Coaches like that are awesome, that come in with an open mind and try to learn more than push anything on you.”

Johnson went on to coach at Stetson and Vanderbilt before moving on to professional baseball, first with the Cubs, then the Brewers and finally, starting in 2019, the Reds. Johnson was named Baseball America’s MLB Coach of the Year in his first year with the Reds and is widely considered one of the top pitching coaches in baseball. After the 2021 season, Johnson was named the organization’s director of pitching, and charged with developing and implementing the organization’s pitching philosophy.

Advertisement

As much as anything, Johnson coaches the coaches. There are two pitching coordinators, Bryan Conger and Casey Weathers. Those are the two doing much of the heavy lifting, along with the coaches at every level and Simon Mathews, the team’s rehab coordinator and director of pitching initiatives.

“It starts with people and it ends with people,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s (and hence, the Reds’) philosophy comes down to three phrases Johnson uses repeatedly. They are simple sayings, but memorable and, more importantly, effective.

“Be great at what you’re good at”

If everything is attitude, a pitcher has to believe in what he’s throwing. The word you’ll hear over and over from any person in the Reds organization is that a pitch must be thrown “with conviction.”

A belief in what you’re throwing is important. And what fosters belief more than encouragement? If D.J. tells you your slider is dominating, well, you may just believe it, right? You throw that pitch without fear and it has a much better chance of being good.

Connor Overton had a bit of a rough start this spring. After impressing early last season, he missed most of the year with an injury and then was fighting for a spot in the team’s rotation. Not blessed with the velocity of Hunter Greene or the breaking ball of Nick Lodolo, the 6-foot Overton was maybe trying to have a little too much finesse in some of his early starts this spring.

Before his March 15 start against the Cubs, he and Johnson talked about his strengths, his aggressiveness. It’s not about what Overton didn’t have — but what he did have. The pair simplified his arsenal from six pitches to four for the start against the Cubs.

Early in the game, Overton’s slider became a bit “loopy.” That’s when Johnson visited him and gave him simple advice:  “throw the s— out of it,” Johnson told him.

Advertisement

“Next thing you know, it becomes a banger,” Overton said.

Overton’s stats from that rained-out game didn’t count, but it did help teach him a lesson.

“You need a kick in the ass,” Overton said. “We don’t need to redefine ourselves, reinvent ourselves — we got here for a reason. What we do is good and what we have is good. Sometimes you just need that mental … let’s go. I needed that.”

“Everything you need to know about pitching you learned in Little League”

Last spring training, Brandon Williamson had been traded over from the Mariners to the Reds and when asked about the differences in the organization, he said they were vastly different.

That quote was even brought up once this spring to David Bell.

Williamson winced a bit a couple of days later when asked about that statement.

“My first impressions I had was that it was really different,” Williamson said. “Once I got involved in it all, it was really similar.”

That’s because in the end, it’s not that difficult of a formula. Over and over, Johnson preaches to his pitchers that everything his pitchers needed to know about pitching, they already knew.

“The game doesn’t really change,” Johnson said. “You’re still trying to do the same thing your Little League coach taught you — throw strikes, get ahead and when you get to two strikes, figure out how to put them away. It’s harder to do that here, for sure. But it’s still the same in terms of the outcome and how you go about it. I think finding simplicity is important too. That’s why I say it as much as I do, because they can go back to Little League and they didn’t have to think, they just had to play.”

Years before the Edgertronic camera was invented, Johnson had ordered his own high-speed Casio video camera from Japan so he could take it on the road to scout high school prospects he was recruiting for Vandy. Johnson has worked with the Cubs and Brewers, two teams who have embraced advanced metrics and coaching techniques. He’s learned from Kyle Boddy, the founder of Driveline and his predecessor as the Reds’ director of pitching. Many of the programs and technology that Boddy brought to Cincinnati were welcomed by Johnson and are still in use today. But Johnson also has the older perspective, listening to the grizzled vets talk about pitching back in their day. Learning the mechanics and craft of each pitch.

Advertisement

But in the end, knowledge is nothing if it can’t be communicated. That’s why his goal is to simplify for the masses and then lean into the specifics with each individual pitcher, for what their specific needs are. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to pitchers.

“He’s good because — take Graham Ashcraft and I, for example,” Williamson said.

Williamson is a lanky lefty whose arm angle comes over the top, while Ashcraft, the more stout right-hander, is pure power on the mound

“Graham and I are polar opposites, as far away from me as you can get. D.J. can talk to Graham and coach him perfectly. D.J. can coach me perfectly. Those two ways of coaching are the same, the way we do things aren’t the same,” he continued.

But they both have the same orders — throw strikes, get ahead and with two strikes, figure out how to put that batter away. The Reds stress first-pitch strikes and “the race to two” — if the batter gets to two balls before the pitcher gets to two strikes, he holds an extreme advantage. That’s why the race to two is so important. A pitcher with two strikes is in control.

Sure, some pitchers like Trevor Bauer wanted all the information in the world about themselves and what their pitches were doing. Others just go out there and pitch. Yet both Bauer and someone like Wade Miley speak of Johnson in glowing terms because regardless of their language or style, he can speak to them and let them hear what they need.

“FAH”

During the second spring training of 2020, the Reds worked out at Great American Ball Park. For many of those workouts, on the scoreboard were not the runs, hits and errors, but FAH points. Every spring, Johnson and his team have some sort of competition. The FAH title was scored on several categories, including things like first-pitch strikes, swinging strikes and the like. In the end, a winner was crowned.

Advertisement

If there’s one thing Johnson’s learned from being in the big leagues it’s that players like to compete. Not just on the field, obviously, but in any kind of test of skill — golf, 3-point shooting, weightlifting, running, chess, anything really.

Johnson stands behind pitchers on the six-pack of pitching mounds next to the team’s clubhouse in Goodyear. It’s the same vantage point he’ll watch a pitcher in the bullpen at Great American Ball Park. Quite often, Johnson will challenge a pitcher with a “money ball.”

“It’s $100 if you hit a certain spot,” Johnson said. “But you owe me $100 if you miss. It puts pressure on them to make that pitch in the bullpen. I do it all the time and I lose a lot of money from it. It’s great. It’s great to lose the money because immediately their focus sharpens. Immediately they’re in a better mode.”

Some days he’ll tell pitchers they’re competing that day and it ratchets up the intensity. One day this spring, there was a pitchers’ fielding practice drill wherein the pitchers had to field a bunt and wheel around and throw to third base. There was no player or coach at third, but a pitching dummy. The goal was to see who could hit the dummy the most times with their throw. Every hit grew cheers.

In the end, baseball is a competition. And in non-combat sports, there may be no more intense competition than pitcher versus the hitter.

“Generally players fight themselves and there’s that me-versus-me feel where your pitches aren’t lining up and when that happens, they forget to compete against the hitter. It’s always trying to get to the point where it’s just you versus the hitter. If that happens more often, it can take you further without your best stuff.”

In the end, hitting is hard. The pitcher has the ball. The pitcher has control. They have to hit what the pitcher throws. F— all hitters.

Curt Casali can’t imagine there are too many catchers who have as extensive a relationship with a pitching coach as he does with Johnson.

Advertisement

If Johnson relies on coaches to get the messaging to the Reds’ minor-league pitchers, it’s often the catchers who are the first line of communication to his pitchers. The 34-year-old Casali first played under Johnson when he was 18 and a college freshman at Vanderbilt.

Casali was drafted by the Tigers, came up to the big leagues with the Rays, became a regular with the Reds and then signed as a free agent with the Giants before being traded to the Mariners for a playoff run. He’s been around. He’s had experiences with all sorts of different types of coaches. Johnson, though, is the best.

“I think he’s maybe more mindset driven than other coaches I’ve been around,” Casali said. “I’ve been around some good ones. … D.J. is D.J. I don’t think he tries to be anyone he’s not.”

Sure, Casali’s heard some stories and phrases from Johnson hundreds of times. Casali can slip into “be great at what you’re good at” as quickly as anyone. But what he’s seen up close and for more than 15 years now, is that the basis of every lesson is Johnson’s mixture of intelligence, knowledge, feel and genuine love for his players.

“I feel like if he were my teacher, I’d be in graduate school,” Casali said. “I know the ABCs of what he’s talking about and now we’re on the XYZs.”

Casali came to Vanderbilt out of Connecticut in the fall of 2007. Jumping from high school to college — especially from the Northeast where players tend to have less experience — is extremely difficult. Casali remembers one of his first intrasquad games where Johnson was right behind the catcher (and a screen).

“I was trying to call pitches, I didn’t know what I was doing,” Casali recalled. “I was struggling. I wasn’t catching the ball.”

All of a sudden, he heard Johnson bellow.

“Hey Curt,” Johnson said loud enough for everyone to hear. “You have a gray butthole.”

Advertisement

“What?” Casali said back, not believing his coach just said what he thought he said.

“You have a gray butthole,” Johnson repeated.

“So I continued the game and all I was thinking about was what was he talking about? ‘A gray butthole?’” Casali said. “The game slowed down because I was thinking, ‘is that even possible?’ ‘How would you know?’ But I didn’t miss any balls after that.”

(Top photo: Aaron Doster / Associated Press)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k2xtbGxhbnxzfJFsZmlrX2h9cLDEq5ykZZqkta%2B%2Fzqdkq52UqHqxtdOcn6Kml2K9qbXLqKqoqJiufA%3D%3D