A Padres pitcher was throwing in the bullpen earlier this week and struggling to get his changeup to do the proper dance to the proper place.

Once, twice, a third time. Wasn’t happening.

Darren Balsley spoke up, the way he does. Softly, without moving.

“Hey, just think of spinning it,” Balsley said. “Don’t worry about where it’s going. Just spin it.”


Clayton Richard happened to be watching this session. That he’d seen something like it plenty of times before, that he’d experienced Balsley’s whispered mind-altering powers on many occasions, didn’t make it any less impressive.

“Next pitch,” Richard said, “it was a perfect change-up down in the zone with a lot of action.”

This is why Balsley has been the Padres pitching coach for 15 years, the second-longest tenure by any major league pitching coach. It’s why he’s working for his third manager.

“It’s his ability to be relentlessly optimistic and – more important – his ability to communicate with the pitcher in a way the pitcher can apply,” Richard said. “It’s very difficult, because when we go out there, our mind drives our body. And so many pitching coaches want to analyze what your body is doing. But if you can’t make a connection with what your mind is telling your body to do, it is not going to be able to change anything. He’s able to tell us the small keys that get our mind to work the way it should.”


This is why, while the Padres have been dreadful for much of Balsley’s time with the team, their pitching staff has been somewhere between superb and good (or at least better than expected) pretty much every year.

We all wonder sometimes, right, what exactly a pitching coach does?

Well, spend much time around the Padres, and the question becomes what the pitchers would do without their guru/sensei/soothsayer and counselor/mentor/teacher/friend.

Honestly, get someone to talk about you the way Padres pitchers talk about their pitching coach.


Or the way the Padres pitching coach talks about his pitchers.

“I’m fortunate to have been here such a long time,” Balsley said. “But I’m more so fortunate the guys I’ve had around me.”

As he whirred through a mental Rolodex over the course of multiple conversations this week, Balsley continually fretted he wasn’t giving credit where it was due.

“I’m afraid I may be leaving some guys out,” he said at one point. “... They’re super special to me.”


Passion, positivity, preparation

Darren Balsley was meant to be a pitching coach — and the Padres pitching coach, in particular.

“I’m so passionate about the Padres,” he said. “I grew up as a Padres fan. I went to games with my mom at the Murph. I always wanted to be a Padre. It didn’t happen as a player. It happened as a coach. I don’t know if anybody is born to coach, but for me to wear the ‘SD’ is super important to me.”

After playing at Mt. Carmel High School – where he was part of Sam Blalock’s first two CIF champions in 1981 and ’82 and credits Blalock with running practice even back then “like major league spring training” – and also Palomar College, Balsley was drafted by the A’s. He pitched six seasons in the minor leagues for the A’s and Blue Jays.

He then coached 13 years in the minors before being summoned from Double-A and installed as the Padres’ pitching coach on May 17, 2003.


There was immediate improvement. And in the 14 full seasons since, his staffs have been ranked in the top five in ERA six times. Since the start of ’04, his first full season, the Padres pitching staff ranks eighth in ERA, seventh in WHIP and fifth in batting average against.

How?

Well, Balsley would list the 224 pitchers who have appeared in a game for the Padres in that span if he could.

He says he learns more from players than they do from him. He repeatedly talks about a few, in particular.


“A big help to me was Trevor Hoffman was here in 2003,” Balsley said. “He treated me like gold right away. That helped me. I was intimidated, being a Padres fan. … Trevor helped me tremendously in the early years. I had Trevor and (Greg) Maddux. They treated me really well, but they also accepted coaching and they also were all about team. As I’ve moved forward, I’ve tried to teach that concept.

“I’ve been fortunate to have those type of guys around. It makes me work harder. It’s kind of hard to tell Trevor Hoffman or Greg Maddux ‘I don’t know’ when they ask a question. So I have to be prepared. And if I don’t know, I’ll find out. That’s something I learned quick. … David Wells, Greg Maddux, Andy Ashby, so many names that had been super successful in the big leagues. I was terrified for one of them to ask me a question and I’d have to say, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

Balsley unfailingly re-directs praise to the dozens of pitchers whose careers he has either jump-started or resurrected.

“It’s the character of the guys I get,” he said. “They’ve been really good at trying new things, having the courage to try new things. … A lot of them have had to make pretty large changes. It takes a lot of courage to do that. I allow them to make the decision, with a suggestion, and they’ve had the courage.”


He points out his failings and what he learned from them.

“It’s trial and error,” Balsley said. “I was a coach at the age of 25. To this day, I have failures as a coach. Probably far more back then. Working with a lot of pitchers in 29 years, you learn different personalities, what guys need, different talent levels, ways of communicating.”

It has to be mentioned how much Balsley and bullpen coach Doug Bochtler prepare, the ways they find to empower their pitchers for success. To a man, every pitcher who played elsewhere before joining the Padres say the scouting reports they receive on opposing batters is more comprehensive – yet more easily digestible – than anything they’ve ever been given.

But it is in all those answers above from Balsley that it is revealed how he came to know so much about pitching, why he makes sure his preparation makes his pitchers are prepared and how his heart for their success drives his ability to touch their souls.


Passing it along

When Matt Strahm was traded from the Royals to the Padres last summer, he got a call from Chris Young.

“You’re going to be really excited to work with Bals,” Young told him.

When Craig Stammen signed before the 2017 season, he heard from his mentor, a 15-year veteran who played for nine different teams.

“Jason Marquis said he’s the best pitching coach he’s ever had,” Stammen said.


For Phil Hughes, it was Ian Kennedy who let him know how lucky he was to have been traded to the Padres last month.

Hughes, who had been designated for assignment and is still working his way back from a second shoulder surgery, found out right away why Balsley is spoken of so highly by his former pupils.

Among the few simple suggestions Balsley had, he suggested in their first meeting that Hughes throw a two-seam fastball, something he hadn’t done much in 12 seasons.

It’s too early to tell whether Hughes will be Balsley’s latest resurrection, and the results right now aren’t as important as this:


“He’s got a good eye for what guys can excel in,” Hughes said. “Right off the bat we watched some video. He talked about my arm stroke and what type of pitches would work well for me. He’s a guy who knows a lot about the nuances of pitches. He’s not just like, ‘You should throw the change-up and slider – and for no good reason. Guys will say that. But he actually understands what pitches will work for guys and maybe what pitches won’t.

“He’s the first guy that has ever even brought up that I do a weird thing with my wrist out of the glove. He’s the first guy who said, ‘This pitch will work for you because you do this.’ He just sees things that certain guys don’t.”

The reason

Tyson Ross called Darren Balsley before he talked to anyone else with the Padres – or even thought there was a chance to sign with the team this past offseason.

Balsley had turned him into one of the majors’ top pitchers after the Padres acquired him prior to the 2013 season.


“I got to the major leagues pretty quickly, but I found a million ways to fail,” said Ross, who had a 5.33 ERA and 1.60 WHIP in three seasons with the A’s. “And no one really had answers for me. Everyone wanted to change my mechanics or do different things that took away from me being me. He found a way to say, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good as you are. We’ve just got to get your timing a little better. We’ve got to get you to pound the strike zone and get a glove-side fastball that you can command.’

“He was able to do that in two bullpens when I first got here. It’s a gift, really. His ability to connect with an individual on a one-to-one basis in a language they’re going to understand and be able to apply immediately is why so many pitchers trust him.”

Ross had a 3.07 ERA and 1.23 WHIP for the Padres from 2013-15 before missing virtually all of the ’16 season and having surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. He signed with the Rangers in 2017, was in the majors by last June and was released with a few weeks remaining in the season, having pitched just 49 innings and amassed a 7.71 ERA and 1.84 WHIP.

When the season was over, he called Balsley to “pick his brain.” His old coach had some suggestions.


“He cares about his guys,” said Ross, who has been a revelation this season, posting a 3.51 ERA and 1.19 WHIP in 82 innings. “Once you’ve pitched for him, he cares. … He said he watched me a lot of games in the clubhouse. I believed him. I see how he watches (Andrew) Cashner’s games and different guys around the league who used to pitch for him.

“He was giving me some good feedback. He gave me some enthusiasm about my offseason throwing and what I needed to work on to get back to being me.”

That’s the theme. It’s remarkably simple.

Their best is all Balsley wants from his pitchers. He just has the ability to see a version of their best, where maybe other coaches and even the pitcher don’t.


“He’s realistic in his expectations and what we’re capable of doing,” Stammen said. “And his realistic view of us is really high. … There is no negative about it. But he’s always working with us to get a little little bit better here, a little bit better there. It’s not Pollyanna positive, where he says stuff just to say it.

“He’s been around so long. He’s helped people turn their careers around, turn their season around, turn their day around. He just has so many different ways he has a remedy. It’s like he’s got a medicine cabinet, a bunch of tools he has in the shed he can use.”

It’s a focus on the possible. And it’s a focus on positive.

Said Robbie Erlin: “If you talk to him about something that happened in a previous outing and you go, ‘I feel this pitch was a bad pitch,’ he’ll be like, ‘Yeah, it was a bad pitch, but these ones were good. So try to ingrain those ones.’ Any time you get done working with him, you always leave there with confidence.”


Kirby Yates recalls going to Balsley with a conviction that a certain pitch wasn’t working.

“Well, you’re wrong,” Balsley told him.

Said Yates: “And he’ll show it to you. He proves it to you. That makes you listen. You have no choice but to listen, because he’s right. It can be video, numbers. He shows it to you. He says, ‘I don’t care what you think your fastball is doing, because they’re not hitting it.’ He puts confidence in you. He breeds confidence. He’s an awesome human being.”

kevin.acee@sduniontribune.com