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…
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