Behind-the-scenes role suiting Diamondbacks pitching strategist Dan Haren

IRVINE, Calif. – Dan Haren sits back in his office chair and opens a program on his computer. On the screen is an image of a hitter. Next to him are hot zones and cold zones accompanied by dropdown menus and situational stats. Haren toggles through them quickly. He is in his element.

He’s looking for an area of the strike zone where a Diamondbacks pitcher can throw a fastball to a particular hitter. He’s having no luck.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, asking that the names of the hitter and pitcher not be revealed. “Most hitters are not like this. He’s basically going to have to flood him with curveballs.”

A decade ago, Haren authored two of the better seasons by a Diamondbacks starting pitcher in club history. He’s now a behind-the-scenes reason why the team’s rotation ranks among the best in baseball since the start of last season.

Haren is in his second year as the Diamondbacks’ pitching strategist. He devises scouting reports for the club’s rotation, poring through data on opposing hitters and matching it with the strengths and weaknesses of the Diamondbacks’ starting pitchers.

If you wondered last month why Zack Greinke threw so many change-ups to the Dodgers’ Chris Taylor or why Zack Godley went heavy on curveballs and cutters to the Giants’ Evan Longoria, Haren probably had something to do with it.

What Haren does is not that different from the way he survived in the majors in the final years of his career, getting by on guile and preparation.

Before that, he spent years as one of the game’s elite starting pitchers. Armed with a fastball that could reach the mid-90s and a nasty splitter, he could carve through lineups without needing to worry about scouting reports.

When his fastball velocity started to drop, Haren picked up a cutter. And when his body began breaking down and his stuff further diminished, he needed to reinvent himself again. He turned to analytics.

Haren pitched for eight teams in 13 seasons. He watched the way each club prepared its pitchers for games, and he says his approach at the end his career was a sort of blend of the best practices of all those teams. Armed with that knowledge, he sought to get back into the game just one year into retirement.

“I thought it would be cool to help – even if it’s one person who maybe struggled in their preparation in the past and it was holding them back,” Haren said. “I thought it would feel really good to be a part of helping someone along with their career. Even if it’s just a little bit. Little things can really turn someone’s career around. I wanted to be a part of something. I felt like I had something to offer.”

Not long after saying this, Haren reflects on how it sounds. He is conditioned by his years in the majors to defer always to the players. It’s why, he says, he feels uncomfortable being in the clubhouse too much; he doesn’t want players to think he is blurring the line between what he is (someone there to help) and what they are (the ones getting the results).

“I don’t want players to think I’m just one of them,” he said. “I know I’m not. Having been a player, it always annoyed me when people like me came in and thought they were still players.”

And he cringes at the idea of receiving credit, though the numbers are hard to dispute. In 2016, the Diamondbacks had the worst rotation (by ERA) in the National League. In 2017, theirs was the second-best. They rank fifth through 28 games this year. Right-hander Zack Greinke and lefties Robbie Ray and Patrick Corbin are among those whose numbers have improved since Haren came aboard.

“He’s really knowledgeable,” Greinke said. “Our pitching has done a lot better since he’s been doing stuff. Sometimes our pitchers don’t pay too much attention to it, but then our catchers can learn from it. We’ve been doing really good since he’s been doing stuff. He knows his stuff.”

Right-hander Zack Godley made similar comments, as did catcher Jeff Mathis. When told of this, Haren paused. He said the idea of a reporter asking around the clubhouse about his impact makes him self-conscious.

“Even doing an interview like this, I worry that anyone reading this thinks that I’m taking credit for the job the pitching staff has done over the last year-plus,” he said. “I don’t want people to think, ‘He really thinks he’s turned around the pitching.’ How much has my stuff helped? I don’t know. Has it helped a little? Yeah, maybe. Has it helped a lot? I don’t know.”

Haren does most of his work from his home office in Orange County, a room with old framed jerseys and shelves of bobbleheads both he and his wife have grown tired of looking at. “But where do you put all these things?” he said. “I threw away all the boxes.”

In the mornings, he drives his daughter to school before locking in for an hour or two at a time. Sifting through the data can be tedious. He likes to mix in a workout to keep his mind active.

Most of the time, Haren is working a series ahead of the big league team. He receives projected lineups for the opposition from advance scouting/coaching assistant Alex Cultice and creates a straightforward worksheet with information on each hitter.

Careful not to give away much, he won’t go into detail on his process. The way the Diamondbacks have pitched in his two seasons give hints at his recommendations. Most notably, several starters have been quick to load up on the pitches that lead to the best results, like Corbin with his slider and Godley his curveball. They seem less intent on some of the more traditional pitching maxims, like establishing the fastball or showing hitters their third- or fourth-best pitches.

Haren says his process was culled from several sources, including Padres catcher A.J. Ellis, his teammate with the Dodgers in 2014, and Cubs coach Mike Borzello, whom he crossed paths with a year later. Another influence from that year in Los Angeles was Greinke. They’ve continued to learn from each other the past two years.

“He’s done a couple things where I’ve never thought of looking at it but they’re decent ideas,” Greinke said. “Same thing where there are some things that I’ve done that have been new to what he usually does. We’ve probably both gotten better.”

With salaries exploding in baseball over the past several decades, it’s become more rare for someone of Haren’s stature to remain in the game after their playing days. He earned more than $80 million in his career, according to Baseball-Reference. But he seems to enjoy the challenge. The way he sees it, somewhere deep inside the numbers there’s a way to retire just about any hitter. His job is to find it.

“I’m just so happy that he’s doing this; he’s a guy that belongs in the game,” said Borzello, the Cubs’ catching/strategy coach who worked with Haren in the second half of the 2015 season, Haren’s final year in the majors.

“I think life is funny. Him becoming the second version of Dan Haren, the guy who had to study and have a mix of pitches to find a way to get through a lineup a couple of times, that got him to where he is right now. I think if he stayed a top-end starter with elite stuff, he probably wouldn’t be doing this. I don’t think he ever would have even experienced the stuff that he’s doing now. He would have never had to.”

Haren acknowledges some pitchers might benefit more from his reports than others. Corbin’s stuff has been so nasty at times this season he doesn’t need any help, Haren said. There’s also the fact that his reports don’t work 100 percent of the time. But Haren doesn’t expect them to; he’s just playing the percentages.

In Game 3 of the division series, the Dodgers’ Austin Barnes homered on an inside fastball – a pitch he’d struggled with prior to that. It was the right pitch with the wrong result. Haren says he feels terrible when something like that happens. If a guy who hits curveballs 10 percent of the time actually gets the hit, Haren just views it as the one time out of 10.

“Sometimes, I have to fight for that pitch and really explain myself on why I think it’s the right pitch,” Haren said. “And the guy will end up hitting a double down the line. At least I can back it with data. It’s not me guessing. That’s the whole thing. I can show you why. I have to take accountability for anything I put down on the paper and I back it with the data.”

Haren believes in his process because he has seen it work. By the end of his career, he had developed a Twitter persona based on the pitcher he had become in his later years. His account, @ithrow88, mocked his diminished velocity but glossed over the fact that teams continued to pursue him because he could still get outs.

“When my velocity was so diminished and even the quality of my pitches was so diminished, the way I was able to be somewhat successful with not featuring much out there,” he said, “it was kind of proof that the stuff that I do can really help.”

In his current role, Haren tries to enjoy the games themselves. Greinke starts are of particular interest. He said he probably communicates with Greinke, either via text or in person, more than with any other starter, and when he watches him throw, he can think along with him.

“What makes Zack so good is he’s able to execute everything,” Haren said. “He’s got every hitter down. When Zack pitches, I know exactly what he’s going to do basically at any time. That’s what’s really fun. Watching him pitch, I know exactly what’s coming.”

But Haren knows the difference between drawing up the game plan and executing it. He doesn’t want credit. He just hopes he can help.

“I never wanted to take credit for any of the success that any of the pitchers have had,” he said. “That would make me feel really uncomfortable. What would make me feel better would be if any pitcher came up and said that they liked the game plan for a specific game. That’s good enough for me.”

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Reach Piecoro at (602) 444-8680 or nick.piecoro@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickpiecoro.