How Jim Hickey and Sean Doolittle transformed Nats pitching together
https://wapo.st/3zt7yph
this is a great article. I posted a few excerpts over in the Injury thread yesterday when we were talking about whether Gray would benefit from working with Doo and just how much Doo is the secret sauce behind the pitching improvement.
The article emphasizes how the two of them have sort of the same basic strategy of simplifying down to what pitchers do best and pounding the strike zone, and how rare it is in interviews for players to mention one without mentioning the other. The two complement each other and project a strong rapport. Beyond that sort of puff stuff you might figure would be the company line, the story is pretty concrete about how they complement each other's strength to achieve the common approach. Doo boosts pitchers confidence and focus on what their strengths are through data and video to get them to feel confident working in the strike zone even when analytics using statcast might suggest the staff does not have amazing "stuff" metrics. Quotes from Finnegan, Garcia, JBarnes, and Irvin on this. Great communication skills, too, as a recent player. At the same time, Hickey preaches the same strategy so there's no cross messaging, and is great at analyzing opposing hitters and reading mechanics, so he's good at simplifying the game for pitchers and keeping pitchers on track as innings start to spin out of control.
