Caleb Cotham recently interviewed for the opening in Philadelphia for the Phillies pitching coach job according to Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia. Cotham, the former Cincinnati Reds pitcher and current Assistant Coach, Director of Pitching was one of several people that the Phillies interviewed in the first go-around of interviewees as they look to fill the void left by former Cincinnati pitching coach and manager Bryan Price, who chose to retire following the 2020 season after serving as the Phillies pitching coach. Price had only fulfilled one year of his three year contract with the
Salisbury’s reporting indicates that it’s currently unknown if Cotham has moved forward to the second round of interviews with the organization or not. For the Reds, it would be a big blow to lose Cotham, who has been key – along with Derek Johnson and others – in helping the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff get to where they are today.
Cotham, who turned 33 last week, has only two years of coaching experience under his belt at the professional level. He retired as a player after the 2016 season after numerous injuries. He then took over as the director of pitching for the Bledsoe Agency, but that gig didn’t last too long as he then joined on as the assistant pitching coach with the Reds after they hired Derek Johnson before the start of the 2019 season. Johnson, the former pitching coach at Vanderbilt, was Cotham’s pitching coach in college.
Working with Johnson and bullpen coach Lee Tunnell, the trio have helped – along with all of the pitchers and catchers, of course – the Cincinnati Reds put together one of the better pitching staffs in Major League Baseball over the last two seasons. With the likely loss of Trevor Bauer in free agency, as well as Anthony DeSclafani, the group of coaches will have some work ahead of them to try and replicate the same level of success.
Losing Cotham on top of that probably wouldn’t help. But when you are a part of a team that’s doing what the Reds group has been able to do, you’re going to get interviews around the game as teams hope to pluck talent away and bring it into their own organization. Cotham has clearly been a key cog, as nearly every pitcher on the staff speaks highly of him whenever they get the chance to talk about adjustments they’ve made, and that’s earned him a spot on the lists for plenty of organizations to take a look at for openings.
Merde.
Scheisse.
As Frank Barone would say …
Holy Crap! (am I allowed to post that?)
LOL … it’s the off-season in MLB, but the comments section of RLN is in mid-season form.
TB Rays have lost their share of front office executives … Reds might end up being the same soon with pitching coaches.
Kyle Boddy/Derek Johnson/David Bell hopefully will be ramping up the mentoring of farm system pitching coaches in the whatever-is-the-new-arrangement for the Reds minor league teams.
Get the next generation ready to come to Cincinnati.
+5,000
A team looking to steal one of the Reds coaches. I guess that’s a sign that the Reds are heading in a good direction. Teams dont come sniffing around your backdoor when you are terrible. Now to get that hitting coach to do his job and get those bats cracking.
Not that nobody is coming after our hitting coaches.
No and how he still has a job is amazing. Basically the worst hitting of all time and he is still employed is mind boggling.