New Angels pitching coach Barry Enright sees pitching as art, not science

TEMPE, Ariz. — When Barry Enright came to Angel Stadium last year as the Arizona Diamondbacks’ assistant pitching coach, he was surprised to see the scoreboard showed not only pitch velocity, but vertical and horizontal movement.

Enright put that on the list of changes he planned after he was hired as the Angels’ pitching coach.

“You’re not going to see those metrics on the board any more,” Enright said, referring to the movement numbers. “If you’re looking up there and all of the sudden you say, ‘Oh, my curveball doesn’t have the same depth today,’ you’re chasing a metric instead of chasing outs.”

The Angels have been trying to find the answers to their pitching woes for much of the last decade, and they’ve now hired Enright as their fifth pitching coach in eight seasons.

So far the pitchers have fully endorsed both Enright and new bullpen coach Steve Karsay.

And much of what they like is the way the organizational philosophy has changed under Enright.

“They’ve been awesome so far,” right-hander Griffin Canning said. “Just a different approach to things. They don’t really let us get super off track with trying to chase those numbers on our pitches.”

Veteran left-hander Tyler Anderson said the emphasis is no longer slanted so heavily toward the Trackman.

“He seems to be less about chasing stuff,” Anderson said, “which I felt was the M.O. last year, as opposed to pitching, which is what I like.”

Make no mistake, Enright likes the Trackman and all of the associated data that has become ubiquitous around major league teams. He said he’s excited for the pitching lab the Angels are planning to build at their spring training complex.

“That’s a great asset, a great tool,” Enright said. “But when you’re out there, you’re trying to win a baseball game, trying to get outs. … I’ve seen too many times where two people have the same exact slider on the Trackman and one gets whacked around the yard and one is really good. … Eventually, the hitter is going to tell you if it’s a good pitch or not.”

Enright, 37, learned to have one foot in each camp – the old and new schools – during a nomadic pitching career.

The Diamondbacks selected him out of Pepperdine in the second round of the 2007 draft. He reached the majors with Arizona in 2010, and pitched briefly for the Angels in 2012 and 2013.

After that, Enright went between four organizations and Mexico, never returning to the majors. He was in Mexico when he got an urgent text from his wife: “Get your (butt) home.” She and their young children needed him, so Enright called the Diamondbacks to essentially beg for a job that would bring him back to the U.S. Enright said the Diamondbacks obliged, but it was really just because they wanted to get him in the organization to put him on a coaching track.

After coaching for a few years in the Arizona system, he saw something that needed to change.

“We were chasing movement,” he said. “I felt like in my soul that it was wrong. We had some combative arguments at times, going back and forth.”

In 2022, the Diamondbacks hired Brent Strom to be the major league pitching coach. Strom is a veteran of nearly three decades as a pitching coach, including the previous eight years with the tech-savvy Houston Astros. If anyone could blend the new and old schools, it was Strom.

Enright, who joined Strom’s staff as assistant pitching coach, found it to be a perfect mix.

“I still view pitching as an art,” Enright said. “I don’t see it as a science. The science aspect helped us go in different directions with guys, but if you just chase the science, we’re dealing with human beings. We don’t have robots yet. You have to understand the heartbeat of that kid, what they can handle and can’t handle that day. Where their two feet are. That’s what I take pride in.”

Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said Enright was good at balancing the art and science.

“He’s right down the middle,” Lovullo said. “He knows what it’s like to toe the rubber and compete at a high level. There’s a time where you just go out and compete and not worry about pitch shaping and spin rate. But he can. He’s been educated in that area because all young pitchers are expected to get that information. He knows how to deliver that. I think he’s the perfect blend of understanding the new wave of analytics in combination with being able to go out and compete. He’s a great one.”

Enright has been spending the spring drilling Angels pitchers on strategies that are focused on the big picture. He wants his starters to know how to navigate a lineup multiple times.

That begins with throwing strikes and getting quick outs.

Beyond that, Enright wants his pitchers to think about using their arsenals in a way that will make them effective deep into the game.

“If you get two outs in the first inning on six pitches and the No. 3 hitter is up, and you strike him out by throwing seven sliders, when you walk off you should not be happy,” Enright said. “You showed him your best pitch seven times. Now what are you going to do when it’s the seventh inning, two out and the bases loaded and it’s the same guy?

“If you’re in lower-leverage situations and you have four or five pitches, don’t give him your No. 1 pitch more than once in an at-bat. Let’s try to get through that with our second or third option. If we give up a solo homer, that shouldn’t beat us.

“It sounds simple, but simple doesn’t mean easy.”

Enright also said he’s been given the latitude to direct the pitching staff as he sees fit, even if it counters the ideas from the front office.

“In my interview I was told ‘We’re going to come down with stuff. Some of our mistakes were that we force fed (the coaches and pitchers) in the last few years. You have the ability to say no,’” Enright said. “That was a big selling point for me. They were able to kind of admit some of the faults from the past. They basically said before I even had the job, ‘If we give you this job, we need you to say no at times.’”

Finding a different strategy will be a key for the Angels, who are bringing back the same starters – minus Shohei Ohtani – from a unit that produced a 4.47 ERA.

The Angels are hoping that a different type of coaching can lead to better results.

Lovullo watched it happen with the Diamondbacks, all the way into the 2023 World Series.

“He was on an unbelievable trajectory with us,” Lovullo said. “He’ll offer the Angels and (manager) Ron Washington everything he possibly can, with a great effort, great intensity and great willingness to learn. … He’s going to help those pitchers get better every single day in Anaheim. I can say that wholeheartedly.”