Reds to promote Eric Jagers to assistant pitching coach

The Cincinnati Reds are promoting Eric Jagers to the assistant pitching coach role according to Mark Sheldon of Reds.com. The opening is there after the Philadelphia Phillies hired now former assistant pitching coach Caleb Cotham away from the Reds after just two years of professional experience to be their new pitching coach – replacing former Reds pitching coach and manager Bryan Price, who retired after just one year into a 3-year deal.

The move can be seen as a bit of payback to the Phillies. Jagers, who had previously worked at Driveline Baseball, had been hired on by Philadelphia in 2019 as the Phillies pitching strategist. According to the Reds Media Guide, that job “largely focused on technical pitching work, including pitch design, rehabilitation and advanced delivery work.” Prior to the 2020 season he joined the Reds as their minor league assistant pitching coordinator, joining up with Kyle Boddy as new hires to try and take the pitching development on the farm to a different level.

But then 2020 reared it’s ugly head and the Minor League Baseball season never really got started. While there was an early instructional league camp before spring training, and then the very beginning of minor league spring training – they never even reached the point where games began to be played – there wasn’t much time for what was hoped for to get started in the sense that the coaches could work with the players on a daily basis.

For Jagers, though, he wasn’t staying home all summer. When Major League Baseball’s plan came together for a 2020 season, it included the alternate site for the players in the 60-man player pool that weren’t in the big leagues. Jagers was one of the coaches that was sent to Prasco Park in order to help the players develop in Mason and be ready to go if and when their time came to join the Reds during the season.