SF Giants must avoid recently-fired Angels pitching coach like the plague

Expect some changes this upcoming offseason for the SF Giants. No, president of baseball operations Buster Posey and manager Tony Vitello aren't going anywhere, but pretty much anyone else in the front office or on the coaching staff could be let go.

Specifically on the coaching staff, it wouldn’t be surprising if they shook up the pitching coaches. Justin Meccage is in his first year as a big league pitching coach even though he had experience as an assistant with other organizations. Frank Anderson is new to MLB and came from the University of Tennessee along with Vitello. Christian Wonders is the assistant pitching coach.

It would be completely unfair to ascribe all of the team’s pitching woes this season to the coaching staff. The front office deserves the lion’s share of the blame for that one for not adequately addressing either the starting rotation or the bullpen. The fact that the Giants have walked 487 batters this year, tied for sixth-most among MLB teams, reflects poorly on the coaches, though.

Plus, when a team is likely to lose 100 games that means things are going to be shaken up. The last time the Giants had a season this bad was in 2017 and after that year the Giants decided to reassign longtime pitching coach Dave Righetti so it wouldn’t be a surprise if Meccage is gone.

If the Giants do move on from him, they absolutely have to resist the temptation to replace him with Mike Maddux who was recently fired by the Los Angeles Angels which you may have learned about from a very funny hot mic moment from Duane Kuiper.

Giants cannot bring Mike Maddux aboard next season

The Angels let him go apparently because he was unwilling to fully embrace or utilize technology and analytics and since his dismissal, Los Angeles has had the best ERA of any MLB team.

It should be noted the Angels haven’t gone up against the stiffest competition since that move, but it’s still impressive and may prove that Maddux is not the answer for the Giants.

Still, there could be a temptation to bring him aboard. He was Bruce Bochy’s pitching coach from 2023 to 2025 when he was the manager of the Texas Rangers so he would surely speak highly of Maddux since they’re both old school baseball types. Bochy is and always will be a legend amongst Giants fans, but he did influence the Giants to sign Tyler Mahle and that signing was ill-advised, to put it charitably.

A return to the past may not be what the Giants need, though. In many ways the hiring of Posey after firing Farhan Zaidi was a rejection of Zaidi’s analytics-oriented approach. While it was far from perfect and had its flaws, the Giants now seem to be restoring an era that they would have liked to forget.

While old school baseball types still have a place in the game because their experience can be invaluable, teams have to have a multi-faceted approach. Posey has acknowledged that before in his comments on analytics so if the Giants do shake up the coaching staff they should be looking at future-oriented thinkers who are in touch with the modern game and use all the tools at their disposal while also understanding that analytics aren't the answer for everything and some pitchers may benefit from a different approach.

Maddux does not fit that description as evidenced by the reason for his dismissal by the Angels so the Giants should look elsewhere if they hire a new pitching coach this upcoming offseason.

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