'Immediate connection' brings Brian Kaplan to D-backs as pitching coach

When he was interviewing Brian Kaplan for the vacant pitching coach job, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo couldn't get over how in sync the two seemed to be.

"I felt an immediate connection," Lovullo said. "The way he was explaining things to me is how my mind works and I could tell we were aligned with how he was thinking through the process. I thought as far as our relationship would go during a baseball season that it would really work for me because he was hitting on things exactly the way I would be saying them as well. Every time I was getting ready to ask the next question, he was already answering it."

Kaplan will replace Brent Strom, who was Arizona's pitching coach from 2022-24 before being dismissed following the regular season.

The Arizona pitching staff was supposed to be a strength of the club heading into the 2024 season, but injuries and struggles by some key contributors ended up turning it into a liability.

Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez and Ryne Nelson all were on the injured list for varying amounts of time, while veteran free-agent signee Jordan Montgomery struggled to find his way after missing all of Spring Training.

Kaplan brings with him a diversified background. He spent the previous three seasons as the assistant pitching coach and director of pitching for the Phillies, and from 2019-21, he was an integrative baseball performance consultant with Philadelphia.

A college pitcher for Notre Dame, Kaplan saw his college career cut short by an arm injury, and after a few years away from baseball, he founded Athletic Development Performance, a sports training facility in Jupiter, Fla.

That led him to co-founding Cressey Sports Performance, a training facility for professional baseball players whose clientele included pitchers Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Corey Kluber.

"Some of the things I want to bring here are an emphasis on health and an emphasis on performance, and what it means to tie those things together," Kaplan said. "So having really strong relationships with the strength staff, the medical staff, being able to handle a lot of complex information going back and forth from the analysts, and trying to filter those things and simplify those things and relay them to the players in a digestible manner to put together the most well-rounded message."

One of the things that drew Lovullo to Kaplan was his reputation for being able to communicate with pitchers. Lovullo cited Kaplan telling him during the interview that you have to know what day between starts that a pitcher wants to get information because it differs.

To that end, Kaplan will spend the next couple of months before Spring Training begins shuttling back and forth between his home in Jupiter and the Diamondbacks' Spring Training facility at Salt River Fields.

"I think that was the part I tried to emphasize the most when talking to Torey and talking to other coaches and the front office -- none of this works if the relationship is not in place, and that relationship requires a very unique understanding of the individual," Kaplan said. "The next couple months are a really good opportunity to kind of find out what makes them tick, find other things they feel passionate about, even just learning about their families and what their offseasons are like. Just the little details that go into what any normal relationship would look like. That's really important."