Get To Know Q&A: Pitching coach Derek Johnson an anonymous but integral part of Brewers

The Journal Sentinel's Todd Rosiak caught up with Milwaukee Brewers pitching coach Derek Johnson to discuss his coaching duties and style, his unlikely path to the major leagues and the book he authored in 2012, The Complete Guide To Pitching. 

Johnson, 46, is a native of Gibson City, Ill. and was a left-handed pitcher at Eastern Illinois University. After graduating in 1994 he coached at Eastern Illinois, Southern Illinois, Stetson and Vanderbilt in the college ranks before being hired by the Chicago Cubs as their minor-league pitching coordinator in 2013. Johnson was hired by the Brewers on Nov. 2, 2015 and under his tutelage, along with bullpen coach Lee Tunnell, Milwaukee's pitching staff ranks sixth in the major leagues this season with a collective 3.47 earned run average.

Q. For all the improvement the pitching staff has enjoyed during your tenure, you’ve been a pretty anonymous guy. Is that just your personality?

A. I would say for sure. First off, this game is never about a coach. It’s always about the players. Players play, coaches coach. For me, we’re grinding away in the bullpens and we’re working on stuff in the games and trying to figure out what to do next and really, that’s my main job and my main focus. The interviews and all that kind of stuff, that’s for the players.

Q. What is a typical game day like for you as a major-league pitching coach?

A. I’d say it’s sort of split in half. Half of it is devoted to yesterday and then half to today. If I go back to yesterday, it’s watching the starter and the relievers and just kind of seeing the game for what it was, and trying to draw notes from that, questions that come up that I can ask the front office or the analytical department. I try to figure out what went wrong, what went well, what we’re going to do next time. Then the other focus would be on what’s today, and that’s my side work with the starting pitcher, and then today’s game and planning for that as well. So, the best way to describe it is it’s cut in half between yesterday and today. Then once the game’s over, a lot of times it ends up going into the next series.

Q. You mentioned analytics. There’s so much information available now that wasn’t there even several years ago. Is a big part of your job picking through all that and giving the pitchers the most important or digestible pieces?

A. It’s picking and choosing when you do it, too. We have a lot of people upstairs that are devoted to analytics and there’s a ton of information out there. If we want to use it the best way we can, the bottom line is we’ve got to fit it into kind of where the player’s at and what we think he can use quickly to make a difference and positively impact his next performance. That in and of itself is hard. There are times when you kind of feel like you can’t give this to this guy quite yet; other times you’ll put it into play right away. But there’s a fun part of it, and there’s a lot of stuff at our fingertips that’s really useful. Then it’s about being able to put it into words and into play as to how you’re going to manage that. That’s the fun part.

Q. You’re the pitching coach. Lee Tunnell is the bullpen coach. How much spillover is there for you with regard to the relievers?

A. I’m with the starters every day, so Lee and I talk constantly. We’re heavily involved with all of it. We’re talking about the relievers. We’re talking about what he saw, what I saw and trying to put that together. And sometimes it’ll be me that will talk to that player; other times it will be Lee. But the bottom line is we’re on the same page with the route we’re going to take. I give him a lot of credit. He’s out there with them every day and he’s done an unbelievable job for us, and those guys have a lot of respect for him. At the end of the day it’s about us communicating and coming up with as good a plan as we can, and really who delivers it to the player is a matter of choice.

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Q. There have been Baseball Hall of Fame players who have struggled managing or coaching, and there have been coaches who have never played in the major leagues who have thrived. In the end, does it all come down to what kind of teacher an individual is?

A. I think there’s different ways you can slice that. One thing that a former major-league player has over me is experience in playing in this environment. I’ve never played in this environment, it’s an experience I don’t have. But in the end, it’s about the players and coaching and teaching. It boils down to relationships. Every experience, whether it’s good or bad, can help you. It can hurt you in some ways, too, I guess. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve coached a lot of players and I’ve coached for a long time, and that experience comes into play. Maybe the one advantage that I have is, instead of playing all those years I coached all those years. It was learning how to teach and coach and how to build relationships, and maybe in a different way than the guy who was a major-league player.

Q. You began your coaching career at your alma mater, Eastern Illinois, in 1994 after pitching there. Was it something you always wanted to do?

A. The game kind of tells you when you’re done. Unfortunately I didn’t want to be done, but the game said that I was. I loved it, and like any kid I wanted to be a major-league player and that didn’t happen. But I couldn’t really see myself doing anything else. A 9-to-5 job behind a desk didn’t appeal to me, so I always kind of knew I’d be a teacher or a coach. I thought for a while I’d probably be a high school teacher and a high school coach, and I was fine with that. But I had a chance to coach in college right after I was done playing, and it was a unique setup because a lot of the guys that I was coaching were my friends and guys that I had played with the year before. So I had to kind of figure out what my role was and how to approach things. But I was really fortunate that I got to stick around the college game. Then one thing led to another and I got a couple more jobs, and the rest is, I guess, history. 

Q. You coached at three colleges before reaching a major school at Vanderbilt, then was the minor-league pitching coordinator for the Cubs before finally reaching the major leagues. Would it be accurate to call you a grinder?

A. The funny part about it is, every place I was at I thought was going to be the last place I would be at. Early on at Southern Illinois I was a graduate assistant, so I knew that I would have to move eventually from there. But once I got to Stetson I loved it there, I loved the coaches, I loved the school, I loved the town and honestly, I could have seen myself there for the rest of my career. Then Vanderbilt showed up and I took that job and it was the same thing. I was there for 10 years and I really didn’t have huge intentions of leaving. Then the Cubs called. So it’s been one of those things – maybe right place at the right time or whatever. But gosh, I got some really incredible opportunities, and I took them.

Q. You didn’t have personal relationships with either Brewers general manager David Stearns or manager Craig Counsell, so how did you wind up being hired as pitching coach?

A. I’d never met either. Of course I knew who Couns was from his playing days. (Bench coach) Pat Murphy was a friend of mine, and that was probably the connection. But even Murph and I, we were friends, but we weren’t talking once a week or anything like that. So I think it was good timing. David getting the job here and being with the Cleveland Indians, I know a lot of the guys from the Indians that he knows, and I know a few of the guys in Houston where he was before. So that ended up probably working in my favor.

Q. Looking back, how great has the fit been for you?

A. Tremendous. The people here I’ve really grown to be fond of. It’s a smaller environment. It’s not the big-market type of thing. I love the fans. The fans have been awesome. They come out, they support us all the time. And inside the community I’ve developed good friendships with people. It’s been a really good deal.

Q. What went into your decision to write your book, The Complete Guide to Pitching?

A. Ironically, I didn’t really want to write one. It was another circumstance of right place, right time. A guy called me from Human Kinetics, which is a publishing firm, and asked me to write a book. Frankly, I had never thought about it; it never had really dawned on me. So I agreed to it. I had no idea how to approach it, really. But I had read a lot of pitching books and they were always kind of generic, or books that only kind of talked about 1-2 topics. I wanted to try to build a book that had a lot of different things in it. So I devoted the chapters to basically different parts of pitching. It took me a long time, over five years, to write. You’ve got to remember, that was back at Vanderbilt when we were winning and building a program. I was recruiting a lot, we were recruiting a lot, we were playing a lot. So it was, ‘Midnight to 2 a.m. I’m going to work on the book and see if I can get a couple pages done,’ and then refining it. I’m really proud of it. I said when I wrote it, and I still mean this – it’s a book that I’ll never really stop writing or re-writing. Because things change and your mind changes about how you see the game. And that’s the beautiful part about the game, really, in that it’s kind of ever-evolving. It’s a neat thing.

Q. When you meet a pitcher for the first time, do you hand him a copy and tell him to get back to you when he’s finished?

A. (Laughs) You know, it’s funny. I try to keep it low-profile. As a matter of fact, some of the pitchers were kidding me earlier this year because some guys that have been with me here the last couple years didn’t even know that I wrote one. And I’m OK with that. I wouldn’t want to throw that in anyone’s face. But if they were going out to research and wanted to find a book that might help them, that book might pop up. And if it helped them, great, that’s what I wrote it for.

Q. Do you know if any of your guys have read it?

A. I think a couple have. Or, at least have copies of it and have at least dabbled in it. I’m not going to sit here and say it’s easy reading – or fun reading, for that matter. It can be technical. There are some bits and pieces that a pitcher can take out of it and really like. I wrote it for college-aged pitchers and coaches, and not that it can’t bleed into the professional ranks because I think it can. A lot of the stuff I still use and think is contained in that book. But at the same time, to me, that’s probably winter reading for most pitchers.

Q. The sentiment outside the organization coming into the season was that Brewers needed to sign or trade for 1-2 established starters in order to contend. Instead, Jhoulys Chacín was signed to a smaller, shorter deal and you’ve relied on your holdovers to fill out the rotation with Jimmy Nelson out and Chase Anderson and Zach Davies not pitching as well as they did in 2017. How satisfying is that?

A. I’m very proud of them. I’m very proud of how they’ve gone out and competed and stuck with some of the things that we’ve done in the bullpen and where we’re trying to go. I think a big part of my personality and the way I think of things is, ‘These are our guys – they’re Brewers.’ And right now, the other guys who aren’t Brewers, they don’t concern me at all, and they won’t until they become Brewers. That’s above my pay grade. What I have are 13 guys and we’re doing the best we can with them. They’re our guys right now, and I like it that way. I don’t want for anything else. It’s what we are and who we have and these are the guys that are putting the uniform on every day. I think it’s really important and honorable for us to think of it that way. I don’t care about other pitchers; I care about them.

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