ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Jim Henderson understood the end of his pitching days was near during his 2016 season with the New York Mets. He couldn’t throw daily, something he had always prided himself on, because his right shoulder “was killing” all the time, and the days of recovery he needed between outings made him feel like “an anchor” on the bullpen.
“As a reliever in this league, you have to be able to go every day,” he explained. “If you're unable to do that, whether it hurts or doesn't, the game’s not for you anymore.”
So, his future felt very uncertain when during a rehab assignment that summer, he ran into Stubby Clapp, a Canadian national team coach who was then hitting coach for the double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats in the Toronto Blue Jays system.
“I said, ‘Stubby, what do you got? What do you think about me coaching afterwards and what's your advice?’” Henderson recalled. “And he just said, ‘If you want to get into it, get into right away. Don't wait or you'll be forgotten. Don't take a vacation. Try to get into it right away.’”
Two summers later, his body and pathways to pitching exhausted, Henderson accepted when the Milwaukee Brewers, the team he debuted with and pitched for in 111 of his 155 big-league games, asked him to be their pitching coach at rookie-ball Helena in 2018. The Calgary native immediately took to the role, adapted as data revolutionized pitching and after working his way up to pitching co-ordinator on manager Pat Murphy’s staff, is now on the cusp of winning the World Series.
Pretty sage words, Stubby.
“I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, didn't even know if I wanted to coach, but him saying, ‘Just go, get your foot in the door and then if you like it, keep going, if you don't, you can always stop, right,’ I took that advice,” said Henderson, who served as the Brewers’ bullpen coach from 2022-23, assistant pitching coach in 25 and an assistant pitching and strategy coach last year before his latest promotion. “When the Brewers offered me a position, I jumped on it pretty quickly and just went for it.”
Now 44, Henderson is front and centre in helping map out Milwaukee’s daily pitching strategy, a key element throughout a dominant 10-1 post-season and in building a 3-0 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays heading into Game 4 of the World Series on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT, Sportsnet, Sportsnet+).
While pitching coach Chris Hook “still leads the group as far as being the voice,” he’s part of everything in between, putting together plans for starters and relievers, co-ordinating games and working alongside Murphy in the dugout.
His work shines through on days like Saturday, when Logan Henderson only made it through three innings and the Brewers pieced together six innings of relief. JoJo Romero, Dustin May and DL Hall came on to log one inning each before four outs from Abner Uribe and five from Aaron Ashby locked down a 5-4 win, all while closer Trevor Megill idled in the bullpen.
Before each game, Henderson has “an ideal set-up written down and prepared and an, uh-oh, one as well. Then I have to adjust when Murph comes up to me in the fourth inning and says, ‘I want to switch out,’ and improvise. … For us to put the puzzle together and figure out how to get through that game, matching up, that's fun to me and I've enjoyed that part of the gig.”
The decision to stick with Ashby in the ninth in Game 2, rather than Megill, demonstrates the enviable pitching depth assembled by the Brewers. Murphy said the way Ashby has been extended in the post-season – he’s gotten at least five outs in seven of his eight appearances so far, maxing out at three innings twice, something he didn’t do during the regular season – “has been incredible” and that “sometimes you make mistakes, sometimes you go with it.”
“We're lucky,” Murphy continued, “Jimmy Henderson and I, we fight about it all game on the bench. I don't know who the arbitrator is, but we fight about it all game, and then we come up with something. So far, so good.”
Henderson’s open-mindedness and curiosity is a big reason for that.
Detailed metrics on pitch shapes captured by tools like Trackman and Rapsodo and Edgertronic cameras providing frame-by-frame looks useful in training finger positioning and release movements were just beginning to reach the pro game as his pitching days were wrapping up.
Henderson recalls receiving reports from the Mets at his locker but never having the info and how to apply it explained to him. Even in 2019, after he was promoted to pitching coach for then-low-A Wisconsin, “they handed us a Trackman and just said, go collect data. Pitchers were asking me what it is, and I still didn't even know so I had to learn on the go.”
The pandemic season of 2020 accelerated his education as he ended up working at the Brewers’ alternate site with Cam Castro, then the club’s minor-league pitching co-ordinator, who understand the data side well from his time at Driveline. The pairing proved to be symbiotic as “I could learn all that tech stuff from him and he got to learn all the baseball stuff from me,” said Henderson, seizing an opportunity “to really educate yourself at the same time a handful of guys were going back and forth to the big-leagues.”
Melding new tools with the best coaching practises of old is the secret sauce of top teams in the majors and Henderson is finding ways to walk the line.
Ashby’s climb up the ladder has nearly mirrored that of Henderson and the lefty said “he can see me from across the field and know what I'm doing wrong. He knows what cues I need to execute pitches or execute a throwing program that day.”
“He's contributed so much to my success as a pitcher and my development through this organization has pretty much been at his hands the entire time,” Ashby continued. “I can't say enough good things about Jim. I hope he's my pitching coach for the long haul.”
That type of cohesiveness is essential when the Brewers bullpen their way through games as regularly as they do, a necessity given the budgetary restrictions they operate under.
As Henderson points out, “starters aren't going deep anymore, we all know that, and they're expensive, and we can't afford them, so we have to piece it together,” and that’s precisely what they’ve done with versatile pitchers that can fill a number of roles.
Jacob Misiorowski, Henderson and Robert Gasser have provided some length at the front end, but Ashby is their innings pitched leader at 15.2 heading into Tuesday night’s play, with Abner Uribe, Megill, Hall and Romero also doing some heavy lifting.
“When you trust the numbers and you trust a front office – you might look at it with your eyes and go that doesn't work there, then you test it out and it does – you're like, OK, you grow some faith in it,” said Henderson. “Then the players start feeling more confident that they're put in the right spots, in the right pockets and all the sudden they start getting better and more confident, too, so it all blossoms together.”
For Henderson and the Brewers, it very much has, all the way to the verge of a World Series championship.
