Connor McGuiness was hired as Dodger assistant pitching coach on Dec. 12. (Steve Saenz/Rancho Cucamonga Quakes)

by Cary Osborne

It was around midnight in November. Dodger minor league pitching coach Connor McGuiness and his girlfriend were watching a supernatural thriller on Netflix called “In the Tall Grass” at his home in Delaware.

Amid the startling moments of the film, McGuiness’ phone rang. McGuiness picked up and Dodger assistant general manager Brandon Gomes asked him what his plans were the following week. Then he dropped a stunner.

“We’d like to interview you for assistant pitching coach at the big league level,” McGuiness recalled Gomes saying.

McGuiness is refreshingly honest. He refers to himself as a “nobody.”

He had a career ERA of 6.75 in four seasons at NCAA Division III Emory University in Atlanta. He bartended and was pretty dang good at making a few common concoctions — a mojito and a black and tan. He coached children after college, then a few D-3s — his alma mater and Catholic University in Washington D.C.

So it was a pinch-me moment for the 30-year-old.

But McGuiness has been a rising star in coaching from the time he transitioned to it after earning a bachelor’s degree in economics from Emory and a master’s degree in management from Catholic. A strong communicator with an ability to analyze and interpret data, the Dodgers gave him an opportunity in 2017 as pitching coach for Low-A Great Lakes and another one the last two seasons with the same position at High-A Rancho Cucamonga.

So it’s easy to understand how McGuiness was floored by the Dodgers considering him for a big league job.

After interviewing with Gomes and Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman — among other front-office staff — and meeting with manager Dave Roberts and new pitching coach Mark Prior in Arizona and then San Diego during baseball’s Winter Meetings in December, McGuiness returned home to Delaware.

The phone rang again one day, and it was Friedman and Gomes on the other end to inform McGuiness that he was the Dodgers’ new assistant pitching coach.

“To be honest, I lost it. I broke down. It was a pretty cool moment for me,” he said.

After he hung up, he drove down the street to his parents’ home.

“I walk in and they’re hanging out, and I said, ‘Can a big league pitching coach buy you a drink?’” McGuiness recalled. “And they just lost it. It was such a good day.”

An Unremarkable Playing Career

Emory University is in the upper echelon of academic universities in the country. US News and World Report ranked it as the №21 university nationally in 2020. It’s a top research institution and highly ranked for its undergraduate teaching and graduate medical programs.

“It’s an Ivy League school,” says Mike Twardoski, head coach of the baseball team since 2000. “But we’re a pretty good baseball team to go along with that.”

McGuiness’ player bio on the team website said he chose the Atlanta school for academics … and baseball.

McGuiness played at Emory University from 2009–2012. (Photo courtesy of Emory University)

He played four years and battled through shoulder, elbow and back injuries — the shoulder injury a result of playing intramural football. The left-handed pitcher’s ERAs in each of his four seasons were 6.26, 7.48, 10.57 and 4.50. He appeared in 41 games, 34 in relief.

Twardoski described him, though, as a run-through-a-wall-if-you-asked-him-to type. Teammates liked him, and he was a great communicator.

“There’s a couple of kids who have come through Emory where I said, ‘He’s going to be president of the United States.’ ‘He’s going to be a high-end sports agent.’ ‘He’s going to own the west wing of the hospital.’ Connor was one of those kids where I said, ‘He’s got that ‘it-factor,’” Twardoski said.

Despite the struggles, McGuiness was passionate about pitching and baseball.

He set up his own small business called Slidestep Consulting while playing at Emory. He gave pitching lessons to kids and adults and provided data analysis to companies.

After college, he bartended and considered a law degree. But he knew he had more to offer in baseball and sought a career in coaching.

“I identified baseball as this giant mystery and I decided to go for it,” McGuiness said. “Everyone told me I was crazy. That it was never going to turn into anything.”

McGuiness was all in early on using weighted balls to increase velocity and the use of technology to offer better answers and alternatives for pitchers. He was a devotee from afar of baseball data scientist and trainer Kyle Boddy, founder of acclaimed pitching lab Driveline Baseball, and devoured his research.

“What I learned growing up in my studies and academics and even in bartending, if I’m trying to sell someone on a drink, if I lead with the why — it’s kind of how your brain functions — if I lead with the why and give you an explanation why I want you to try this and I have an explanation to back it up, I found there’s a much bigger buy-in,” McGuiness said. “Rather than me just saying I would love for you to loosen up your grip on this pitch, instead of saying humor me and try this, I can make a better-educated guess on what can help you based off the data, the spin, the reports we’re getting. I can give you a real reason to try this rather than, ‘This is what I did.’

A Foot in the Door

The only job McGuiness could get early in his search to coach was with a Virginia-based youth travel team coached by Eric Crozier, who appeared in 14 games with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2004.

“His wife was due with their child and he wouldn’t be able to be at all the team’s games. When I shot him the email it was perfect timing — he was in a desperate, back-to-the-wall situation, and he hired me,” McGuiness said.

Along the travel ball circuit, McGuiness networked and gathered more knowledge from coaches. Eventually, his alma mater heard he was coaching and offered him its pitching coach position.

“The first problem was, obviously, age,” Twardoski said. “He had just graduated, just coming back, he’s 24 years old and these kids are 20. Very close in age. But the one thing he did is he got them centered in that he was the pitching coach and they were the player. And that was the first hurdle as a baseball coach. He’s not their best friend. But saying that, he had a knack with kids.”

Twardoski said McGuiness was good at identifying mechanical issues and how they create a negative impact — for example, how a pitcher’s frontside balance affected his ability to locate pitches. But he was also a master communicator and simplified instructions and built relationships with his pitchers that turned the staff into a brotherhood.

In 2014, McGuiness’ first season on the job, Emory went 38–13 and made it to the NCAA Division III Championship Game. Two of its three innings leaders were freshmen. The pitching staff saw a 43 percent increase in strikeouts from 2013 and walks per nine innings fell from 4.5 to 2.9 (the third-best mark in program history).

After the 2015 season and a second berth in the Division III College World Series, McGuiness became pitching coach at Division III Catholic University in Washington D.C., as he pursued his master’s degree in management with a concentration in leadership.

After the 2016 season, McGuiness looked beyond Catholic — well beyond Catholic. He phoned his friend and former travel ball catcher Jeremy Zoll to ask if he could help with his resume. Zoll, now an assistant general manager with the Minnesota Twins, was at the time the assistant director of player development with the Dodgers.

“JZ said, basically, ‘Connor, you don’t understand. You get this data stuff, and you understand mechanics. I’m going to throw your hat in the ring (for a job with the Dodger organization) and see what happens.’” McGuiness said.

McGuiness was the pitching coach for the High-A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes in 2018 and 2019. (Steve Saenz/Rancho Cucamonga Quakes)

Soon after, McGuiness received a call from then-Dodgers director of player development Gabe Kapler. McGuiness said what was supposed to be a five-minute phone call turned into two hours.

Eventually, Kapler hired McGuiness, then 27 years old, into the Dodger organization.

McGuiness was originally slated in 2017 to be the pitching coach with Rookie League Ogden, whose season begins in June and lasts 76 games. Instead, he was assigned to Low-A Great Lakes for a full-season team.

“Insane, absolutely insane,” McGuiness said of starting at a higher level than expected.

There, he guided a group of pitchers that included Dustin May and 2016 first-round pick Jordan Sheffield. After the regular season, he was the pitching coach for the Arizona Fall League Glendale Desert Dogs and worked with catcher Will Smith on gameplanning.

In 2018, the Dodgers moved McGuiness up to High-A Rancho Cucamonga where he guided May again and Tony Gonsolin. The Quakes ranked second in the California League in ERA, WHIP and strikeouts per nine innings and led the league in strikeouts.

In 2019, Rancho broke the 1970 Bakersfield Dodgers’ California League strikeout record with 1,479.

In September, the Dodgers invited McGuiness to meet them in New York during a late-season road trip. He observed pitching coach Rick Honeycutt and then bullpen coach Prior. By that point, and with two of his star pupils — May and Gonsolin — contributing during the Dodgers’ regular-season stretch run, McGuiness had some familiarity with members of the big league club — including Prior, someone he had already made an impression on.

“This year we had him in Spring Training camp, and really getting to know him, just listening to his breadth of knowledge on pitching is phenomenal,” Prior said. “His passion for pitching is off the charts. Crazy knowledgeable, understands everything from an advanced standpoint, but he also has great feel for what pitchers can handle and can’t handle.”

After the season, McGuiness went back home to Delaware expecting to return to Rancho in 2020.

The Big League Gig

But the phone rang. The opportunity was presented, and now McGuiness is part of a brand new pitching coach staff that includes Prior as the pitching coach (hired after Honeycutt retired), Josh Bard, who returns as bullpen coach (where he served in 2016 and 2017 before a two-year stint as Yankees bench coach) and Danny Lehmann resuming duties as game-planning/communications coach after one season as a special assistant.

“I feel like he’ll be able to add some things these guys haven’t seen before on a daily basis,” Prior said of McGuiness. “I think he has a very good understanding of pitch characteristics and how you could tweak those in real-time. He’s been able to do some real special things in Cucamonga and in years previous in the Midwest.”

McGuiness said his role can help be the conduit between the data and the pitcher. He wants to help in any way he can.

“My goal is to get to know the individual and explain why we’re doing this, and then the relationship builds,” he said.

Some of those individuals have some special credentials — including a three-time Cy Young Award winner and MVP in Clayton Kershaw, the franchise’s all-time saves leader in Kenley Jansen and an emerging ace in Walker Buehler.

It’s not lost on McGuiness that every one of the Dodger pitchers has accomplished something that he hasn’t done and never will do — pitch in a professional baseball game. But baseball is evolving and no longer measures a coach by the dirt in his cleats. It measures a coach by what he can offer.

“It will be like it’s been my entire career in pro ball. Every new pitcher I get will Google me and they know I’m a nobody and I still consider myself a nobody. … (But) my thing is to be a resource for those guys,” McGuiness said. “We have Mark Prior there. I’m just a resource. … I’m sure I’m going to do the wrong things at times, but the one thing I can promise is I will adjust. I’m another resource for them to utilize.”