The New York Yankees fired pitching coach Larry Rothschild the other day. There was a general “thank you for your service” and some stuff said about needing to “make a change” at the time of his dismissal, which speaks less to a guy they felt screwed up or anything as much as it speaks to a simple desire for some fresh ideas from a fresh voice.
Their desire for a fresh voice is certainly borne out in who they’re interviewing to be Rothschild’s replacement.
Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball.com reports that the Yankees are interviewing University of Arkansas pitching coach Matt Hobbs today. That follows a report from ESPN’s Jeff Passan the Bombers have spoken with University of Michigan pitching coach Chris Fetter about their pitching coach vacancy.
The Yankees have had some trouble with promising young pitchers reaching a certain point and either not continuing to develop or, in some cases taking a step back. A lot of that is injury related and, in at least one case, some of that is behavior related, so it’s not like having a new pitching coach was going to cure that. Still, in an age where teams are going with younger and younger still-developing pitchers on their big league rosters, it might make a lot of sense to look at coaches who, by design, deal with younger, still-developing pitchers as part of their job.
SOURCE: In addition to interviewing @umichbaseball pitching coach Chris Fetter yesterday, the @Yankees are interviewing heralded @RazorbackBSB pitching coach Matt Hobbs in NYC today.
— Kendall Rogers (@KendallRogers) October 30, 2019
I don’t expect the list of college pitching coaches interviewing with the #Yankees to end there.