Coach Mike Maddux

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Just mad about Maddux
Arms of Brewers have helping hand

It was late in the 2002 season, and Atlanta third base coach Ned Yost was standing in the outfield during batting practice in Houston, chatting with Braves ace Greg Maddux.

One by one, a procession of Astros pitchers approached Maddux to say how much they had learned from his brother, Mike, who was the organization's pitching coach at Class AA Round Rock (Texas).

Yost listened to the testimonials and was suitably impressed.

After hearing Greg Maddux also praise his brother's baseball knowledge and teaching prowess, Yost thought to himself, "If I ever get a big-league managing job, maybe Mike Maddux should be my pitching coach."

On Oct. 29 of that year, Yost was given his first big-league managerial job by the Milwaukee Brewers.

As he started to assemble his coaching staff, one of the first telephone calls Yost made was to Mike Maddux.

Yost gave Maddux the job over the phone, hiring a pitching coach he never had met.

"I knew what I wanted in a pitching coach if I ever got the opportunity to manage," Yost said.

"I knew it had to be a positive person, a teacher, a guy who paid particular attention to detail, a guy who was unafraid to teach major league pitchers how to pitch. And a guy who had a feeling for the game."

Not that Yost needed confirmation, but the first half of the 2004 season provided ample evidence of Maddux's positive influence on the Brewers' pitchers.

Working with a budding ace in Ben Sheets, a couple of proven relievers, a host of journeyman types and a handful of young, inexperienced wannabes, Mike Maddux helped transform the staff into one of the best in the National League.

At the break, the Brewers ranked fifth in the league with a 3.89 team earned run average, third in fewest walks allowed (260), hits allowed (746) and home runs allowed (80), third in saves (28), fifth in strikeouts (582) and sixth in runs allowed (378).

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Saved by pitching, defense

Without the yeoman work of the pitching staff and solid play from the defense, the Brewers would not have made it to the all-star break four games over .500 (45-41). The offense has sputtered all season, mostly due to a dearth of clutch hitting, ranking 14th among the 16 NL clubs in runs scored (375).

In other words, the pitching has saved the Brewers' bacon, sausage, ham and any other pork products imaginable.

"My experience has been that you work your butt off that first year and then the results start to come the next year," Yost said. "It's a process.

"Because of all the work Mike did last year, it's not surprising to me that we're better this year. The pitchers feel comfortable around him. If a pitcher thinks a pitching coach has his back and is willing to do whatever it takes to make him better, there's a confidence level that develops."

Maddux does not limit his instruction to throwing a baseball from the mound to the plate. He emphasizes the physical and mental fundamentals of the game, knowing the signs, backing up bases, pickoff moves, communication with the fielders, the proper mechanics of a delivery, understanding what the hitter is trying to do.

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A planned approach

"They work hard on every aspect of pitching," Yost said. "He provides a plan of attack for them. He studies the hitters to tell them exactly how to get them out in any situation.

"He does all the pre-work for them, so all they have to do is go out and execute."

The first-half results were dramatic:

Victor Santos, who bounced from team to team while compiling a 2-8 record and 5.48 ERA in 65 career appearances, is 8-3 with a 4.04 ERA and an established starter in the rotation.

Left-hander Doug Davis, dumped by two teams last year and previous owner of a 5.08 career ERA, is 9-6 with a 3.46 ERA.

Already the team's No. 1 starter, Sheets elevated his game to elite status with a major league-best 2.26 ERA, an 18-strikeout game and a berth in the All-Star Game.

Right-hander Dan Kolb, who couldn't stay healthy in Texas, emerged as one of the top closers in the game (26 saves in 27 chances) and another all-star. Convinced by Maddux to focus less on strikeouts and more on getting out hitters efficiently, Kolb did not allow an extra-base hit until his final appearance of the first half.

The bullpen has been one of the best in the league with a composite 3.76 ERA. Luis Vizcaino bounced back from a poor 2003 season to compile a 2.88 ERA in 41 appearances; youngsters Mike Adams and Jeff Bennett made solid contributions; two-way player Brooks Kieschnick developed into a viable reliever; and veterans Dave Burba and Matt Wise provided reliable middle-innings work.

"He simplified my mechanics and made it seem a lot easier," said Davis, who overcame longtime control problems after Maddux refined his delivery.

"He picks out the stuff that he learned that helps pitchers and focuses on that. He will spend whatever time it takes to get something done. He takes the positive out of everything and works with that."

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Round Rock beginning

Where did Maddux develop his philosophy and approach to pitching? Much of his knowledge was accrued during a 15-year major-league career, during which he made 472 appearances, mostly in relief, for nine teams and studied under countless pitching coaches.

But Maddux points to his two-plus seasons on the staff at Round Rock as the time and place where his ideas and beliefs crystallized into a concise coaching plan. He gives credit to his manager there, Jackie Moore, a well-respected baseball man who has spent nearly 40 years on the instruction side of the game.

"He put me on a time warp development plan," said Maddux, 42. "He had so much knowledge. He held my hand. Every time I was ready to fall off a cliff, he pulled me back and said, 'Think about what you want me to do.' He really got me thinking like a coach."

Moore, still managing at Round Rock, appreciated those sentiments. But he quickly returned the compliment, noting Maddux didn't need much direction to figure out ways to help pitchers better themselves.

"You don't have to be around him too long to realize he's a complete student of the game," Moore said. "You could see this guy is special.

"This is no surprise to hear of his success in Milwaukee. It was just a matter of time. Guys like him stand out."

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Multiple methods

The key for any successful coach is communication, how he imparts his theories and observations in a manner that makes sense and is applicable to each player's needs.

Maddux laughs at the notion that you can churn winning pitchers off an assembly line with one teaching method.

"No two guys are alike," Maddux said. "We have 13 pitchers. That's 13 different methods, really.

"Some guys think you can cookie-cut pitching, but you can't. Everybody's an individual and everybody thinks they're the most important guy, the center of your attention. The second you shun somebody, you lose them.

"Gaining trust is probably the biggest thing that anybody can do in any walk of life. You have to be trustworthy and accountable and make the players accountable."

Maddux couldn't argue with the success last season of Kolb, who converted 21 of 23 save opportunities after taking over the closer's role. But the powerful righty was a maximum-effort guy who reared back and tried to blow fastballs past hitters whenever possible.

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The new Kolb

That approach worked in the short term, but considering Kolb's history of injuries, his mounting pitch counts and the fact that all good hitters eventually catch up to fastballs, Maddux coaxed him into changing his approach.

Kolb now takes something off his pitches at times, uses a split-finger fastball as a changeup and gets hitters to put the ball in play early in counts. His strikeouts are way down (11 in 331/3 innings), but how can you argue with converting 26 saves in 27 opportunities?

"Basically, what he has done is make my career a lot easier and saved a lot of pain and hassle that I've gone through the last five or six years," Kolb said. "He's a guy you can trust."

Maddux also made it clear he considers the catchers part of the pitching staff. Chad Moeller and Gary Bennett are consulted and apprised of each detail of every game plan, and encouraged to offer feedback.

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A charged battery

Consequently, both ends of the battery are on the same page, and you'll rarely see a Brewers pitcher shake off a sign from his catcher.

"It's how it needs to be," Moeller said. "It's all planned out. We go over certain scenarios. We have an idea of what we want to do when we go out there. It's a collaboration."

Not blessed with the same physical talents as brother Greg, who is putting the finishing touches on a Hall of Fame career with the Chicago Cubs, Mike learned what it took to survive in the big leagues. Accordingly, Greg is hardly surprised that Mike quickly made his mark on the Brewers' staff.

"I see him preparing for it in December," Greg said. "A lot of people don't realize what it takes, the preparation.

"Your coach can give you thoughts and ideas. It takes time to work them all in, with your makeup and personality. He's been working with those guys over a year now."

No one projected the Brewers to have one of the best staffs in the league this season. If anything, pitching was considered a major question mark as the club broke spring training.

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Total package

But Yost watched behind the scenes and saw the impact Maddux was making on the Brewers' pitchers, many of whom had never thrown the ball as well as they have this season.

"There are very few pitching coaches that are the total package, and Mike is the total package," Yost said.

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Maddux has Brewers staff excelling
Young pitchers have club in midst of division race

MILWAUKEE -- No one is surprised a guy named Maddux is impacting the race in the surprisingly competitive National League Central.
But who knew the Maddux making the biggest impression would be Mike?

While future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux has certainly bolstered the Chicago Cubs' already imposing starting rotation, his older brother Mike, in his second season as the Milwaukee Brewers' pitching coach, could be the first-half MVP of one of the league's more surprising ballclubs.

Through their first 81 games, the statistical halfway point, the Brewers ranked fifth-best in the league with a 3.93 staff ERA. A few days earlier, before a trip to thin-air Colorado, it was 3.74, good for second-best in the Major Leagues.

The Brewers? Among the Majors' pitching leaders? What in the name of Rollie Fingers is going on here?

"It's one thing if you have a staff full of established stars having success," said Brewers manager Ned Yost, who named Maddux his pitching coach in November 2002. "Compare that to a bunch of no-names having success, and there's a huge difference there. Mike deserves a bunch of credit."

Of course, he defers it.

"I was dealt a better hand this year," Maddux said. "More talent."

Maddux also shifts credit to bench coach Rich Dauer, who has shown a knack for positioning Brewers infielders to turn would-be hits into easy outs. And to Joe Crawford and Karl Mueller, who implemented a new video scouting system this season.

And then there are the pitchers themselves. Ben Sheets has developed into one of the elite starting pitchers in the National League, Doug Davis is among the staff leaders in wins and Victor Santos came out of the minor leagues and solidified the No. 3 starter spot.

In the bullpen, Dan Kolb established himself as the Brewers' version of Eric Gagne and made his first All-Star team. The ageless Dave Burba has served well as the staff's lone veteran, mentoring surprising young upstarts like Mike Adams and Rule 5 pick Jeff Bennett. Luis Vizcaino is back to form and Brooks Kieschnick has proven that he is more than just a do-it-all sideshow.

On and on down the roster, almost all of those players single out Maddux.

"Guys are starting to take what he says to heart," said Kolb, who has emerged after years of injury into one of the league's best closers, boasting an ERA below 1.00. "That's helped a lot of guys out, including me.

"Our stuff is not exactly the same, but if you watch guys throw, we're throwing a lot of the same pitches in the same count. I think pretty much all of us are throwing a split-fingered fastball now. That's Mike. Guys are putting their trust in Mike and Mike is leading them to the right spot."

It was not that long ago that Maddux was in those spots himself. He pitched parts of 15 seasons through 2000 with nine teams, going 39-37 with a 4.05 ERA.

"He pitched at this level for a while, and, if you ask him, he did it with average stuff," said catcher Chad Moeller, who has handled Sheets and Davis all season. "He learned from that. What makes him good is the knowledge he has and his creativity. He takes chances."

Perhaps that is because of the competitive fire that runs in his family. Maddux said he could never replace the adrenaline rush of toeing a big league pitching rubber, but watching his pupils compete comes pretty close.

"I'm in the same foxhole," Maddux said. "That's one of the things I like [about Milwaukee]. I played for a lot of managers, a lot of coaches. Some of them were very standoffish, but this staff is right in there with the players and they respond to that very well."

He is the Brewers' man with the plan. Maddux meets with pitchers before each game for a rundown of opponents' tendencies.

"He sets everything up for them," Yost said. "He watches film, he knows the hitters, he keeps notes so they know exactly how to get guys out. All they have to do is go out and execute. He gives them everything they need to be successful. Everything."

The difference is that this year, the pitchers are actually executing. This year, the staff ERA is its best since 1992, which was also the team's last winning season. Last year, the team ranked 14th of 16 NL teams with a 5.02 ERA.

Go ahead, call them overachievers.

"That's probably the biggest compliment you can give them," Maddux said.

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The Maddux brothers
Brewers face pitching coach's ace brother

CHICAGO -- It was the star pupil against the Hall of Fame brother, and Mike Maddux found himself right in the middle.
Maddux, the Brewers' pitching coach at the center of the team's surprising success, was surely pulling for Milwaukee ace Ben Sheets. But on Saturday, Sheets was matched up against the Cubs' Greg Maddux, Mike's younger brother.

"I always said when we matched up, a perfect game would have been a 1-0 win when I hit a home run," said Mike Maddux, who actually did get an RBI hit off his brother and was 1-1 in a pair of Major League starts against him.

Greg Maddux entered Saturday's start with 296 career wins, 254 more than Sheets, who turns 26 years old on Sunday.

"Greg Maddux is one of my favorite people," Brewers manager Ned Yost said.

One of Yost's favorite Maddux stories unfolded at Wrigley Field, when Maddux made his Braves debut on Opening Day at Wrigley Field against his former team.

"[Fans] were lined up 50 deep by the bullpen here, screaming and yelling," said Yost, then the Braves bullpen coach. "I was getting nervous. They were yelling, 'Maddux, you bum! You traitor!' They were cussing and yelling and screaming.

"And he threw a shutout, won the game. He's dead serious out there, man. He's not a guy who plays around."

Yost's pre-game advice for Brewers hitters?

"When you get a good pitch, hit it," Yost said. "He ain't playing around. He's coming after you. ... He's going to be around the strike zone so you'd better be ready to hit. He's going to come at you with fastballs; he's going to move the ball in and out; he's going to run it; he's going to sink it; he's going to throw change-ups."

Mike Maddux's advice?

"I told them if I can go out there with an .068 batting average and get a hit, you've sure got a chance," he said.

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Go-o-o-al!

Before batting practice, Alex Sanchez, a batboy and clubhouse attendant who used to play soccer for Milwaukee Pulaski High School, was fooling around with a soccer ball behind the batting cage.

Emerging from the dugout, pitching coach Mike Maddux challenged Sanchez to try to put some penalty kicks past him. Maddux's only soccer experience was in his early teenage years when his family lived in Spain (his father was in the Air Force).

Using the advertising panels behind home plate as the goal, Sanchez took 11 medium-speed kicks from about 12 yards. Maddux couldn't make the save on the first three, then stopped four in a row, and wound up with five saves overall.

He tried one kick against Sanchez, who made the classic "kick save, and a beauty."

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Maddux hails brother's 300th
Says family has some relief the milestone chase is over

MIAMI -- The wait is over for the Maddux family. Greg got his 300th career win on Saturday for the Cubs, and nobody was happier than his brother Mike, the pitching coach for the Brewers.
"It's a relief. We're both glad it's over," Mike Maddux said Sunday.

Mike Maddux spoke to his brother by phone after Greg's milestone win and was relieved that both can get on with their respective careers. Mike was getting a lot of media attention in recent weeks as Greg approached the magic number and politely asked reporters to wait until the moment came.

"As kids growing up, you spend countless hours in the backyard thinking about pitching with two outs in the bottom of the ninth," Mike said. "But I don't think you ever think about winning 300 games."

Mike Maddux spent 15 years in the Majors and logged 39 wins, one of them against his brother.

"I was 1-1 against him," Mike said. "If I had been 2-0, I guess we'd still be waiting on him to get to 300 for another few days."

Mike Maddux said his brother's biggest accomplishment might not necessarily be winning 300 games, but being a consummate team player. He wasn't surprised when one of the first things Greg did in his post-game press conference was thank the Cubs bullpen for pitching four strong innings of relief.

"It's never about him," Mike said. "With Greg, it's about his teammates. He needed his bullpen to help him get that win last night, and I'm sure he was the first to thank them for it. If that doesn't spark that team now, I don't know what will."

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Back in the fold

Pitching coach Mike Maddux has a new item on his offseason to-do list.

"I can take down the 'For Sale' sign in my front yard," he joked.

Maddux and the rest of the team's coaching staff met with Melvin, Ash and manager Ned Yost at Busch Stadium on Saturday morning and were asked back for 2005. Maddux, bench coach Rich Dauer, hitting coach Butch Wynegar, first base coach Dave Nelson, third base coach Rich Donnelly and bullpen coach Bill Castro will return for a third season under Yost.

"We don't doubt their work ethic," Melvin said. "What we're doing here is building something, and stability is important."

Between them, the staff has 117 years of Major League playing and coaching experience.

"I am pleased," Yost said. "They're hard-working, they're dedicated, and it's a group that gets along well together. It's hard to find a staff throughout Major League Baseball that gets along as well as we do and works as hard as we do."

The news came as a relief to Wynegar, who had wondered aloud about his status as the Brewers slumped throughout the second half. The team's offense entered the weekend with the Majors' worst team batting average at .247, and was hitting .222 with runners in scoring position. The Brewers ranked next-to-last in the National League in runs scored, home runs and strikeouts, and last in total bases.

"I think there's something to be said for stability and giving people the opportunity to go through some of the adversity," Melvin said. "Nobody is more upset than Butch is about our offense."

Said Ash: "Experience shows that you may get a temporary lift from a change, but I think over the long haul, the experience I had told me that continuity was much more important."

Wynegar, a tireless worker even two days before the end of the season, was too busy working with hitters in the batting cage to meet with reporters.

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Maddux 'sees everything' ... and then some

The Milwaukee Brewers' manager of human resources ran a demonstration on focus and distraction one day this spring. Roughly 25 coaches and front-office staff members watched a film of a three-on-three basketball game, and had to count how many passes were made. Pitching coach Mike Maddux, and others, got the correct answer: 14. "And I saw the gorilla," Maddux said.

During the basketball film, a gorilla ran into the middle of the screen, beat his chest, then ran off. Maddux and one other person were the only ones to see it. "When I said I saw a gorilla, everyone thought I was nuts," Maddux said. The film was then showed again, in slow motion. "I said, 'There's no way that gorilla was in there the first time,' " said Brewers third-base coach Rich Donnelly. "But it was. I don't know how I missed it. Mike saw it. Mike sees everything."

That's why he's one of the best pitching coaches in the game. It is why the Brewers, a horrendous offensive team last season, managed to win 67 games -- and finished with a team ERA of 4.24. He's one of the best pitching coaches because those Maddux boys are pretty smart. Younger brother, Greg, is a genius in baseball terms, he's The Computer Who Wore Metal Spikes. Mike wasn't nearly as good a pitcher as his brother, but he went 48-48 over 15 seasons for 10 different teams. The journey, the success and the struggles, is what he draws from as a coach.

"When I came up, I had good stuff, but two arm surgeries later, I said to myself, 'I better figure this out,' " Mike Maddux said. "I couldn't survive in the fat part of the zone. That's when I started getting into the mental part of the game."

He can spot a mechanical flaw a mile away, but he's best at talking to his pitchers and getting the best out of them. "He can relate to everyone, from Ben Sheets to the kid who's just up from minor-league camp," Brewers pitcher Brooks Kieschnick said. "No matter who you are, he can help you."

Maddux has been a pitching coach "officially for five years ... unofficially for about 10 years," he said. When a teammate was having a problem, whatever it might be, he often went to Maddux because he was a veteran player -- and had a really good idea about pitching. His first pitching coach job came in the Astros' system with Double-A Round Rock. "I was like a medic in Vietnam," he said. "They brought me in there and gave me a crash course."

He was so good at Round Rock, some of his protégés, including Roy Oswalt, would go to Greg Maddux, then with the Braves, and tell him how much his brother had helped them. A coach on that Braves team was Ned Yost, who was so impressed that, when he got the job to manage the Brewers two years ago, he remembered those endorsements and hired Maddux.

The results have been dramatic. Maddux took Doug Davis, a journeyman, and helped turn him into a 12-game winner last season. He helped transform another itinerant, Danny Kolb, into a 39-save reliever. He took a bunch of young kids and helped make a legitimate pitching staff. This spring, one of his projects is Derrick Turnbow, a former pitcher with the Angels who is throwing in the mid-90s. Maddux says Turnbow could be a closer someday.

"Our big thing we talk about is not power or strength, it's hiding the ball," said Maddux, who taught Davis to hide the ball better. "You know those pitching machines when the ball just shoots out? That's pretty hard to follow the ball. Same with pitching."

His philosophies come from playing for so many managers in his career. "I learned a lot on my own, by watching," Maddux said. "[Former Astros manager] Larry Dierker told me that there are some things that you want to pass on, and some things you don't want to pass on. I've got a big hat collection. I learned -- good and bad -- from every manager I played for."

And now the Brewers are learning from Maddux. A lot of their pitchers, Kieschnick said, are even learning to eat like Maddux: waffles lathered with peanut butter and bananas for breakfast. "I don't eat that; it gives me a stomachache," Kieschnick said, smiling.

The Brewers follow Maddux's lead because he has been where most of them have been, and he has been where most of them want to be someday. He has seen it all. Hey, he saw the gorilla.

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Taking the inside pitches from Maddux