How Andrew Bailey and the Red Sox Run Prevention Unit are revamping the pitching staff

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Shortly after the Red Sox hired Justin Willard as director of pitching in early December, a group text formed.

The participants included Willard, new pitching coach Andrew Bailey, who’d been hired just weeks before, bullpen coach Kevin Walker, game-planning coordinator Jason Varitek and analysts Dave Miller and Devin Rose.

For all intents and purposes, they were the brain trust chosen by chief baseball officer Craig Breslow tasked with turning around the Red Sox pitching infrastructure at the big-league level. Such a task requires as much focus and dedication as it does levity for the enormity of the job at hand.

“We were texting each other on the group text, and next thing you know, the top of the text chain changes to ‘Run Prevention Unit’ because our business is to prevent runs, everything that we do, everything we talk about, the way that we try to help guys, it’s all about preventing runs and winning games,” said Walker, who joined the Red Sox as an assistant pitching coach in 2020 and transitioned to bullpen coach the following year. “If we keep that theme of our group as being run preventers and the ‘Run Prevention Unit’ — hopefully that is the goal every day, to prevent runs.”

The Run Prevention Unit has had a busy three months.

Implementing a new organizational philosophy in a matter of 90 days is a monumental task that requires a significant amount of focus and energy. Anyone who’s met Bailey can attest he’s not lacking in either category and the early days of Red Sox camp have been a microcosm of his personality: intense.

What does it look like to overhaul a pitching program?

From the outside, it’s pitchers throwing live batting practices on the second day of camp, more than a week earlier compared to previous years. It’s music blasting on the backfields to simulate game action. It’s creating games within the game to enhance the level of competition from the get-go and break up the monotony of spring training drills. Points, prizes, glory, it’s all on the line. A series of leaderboards printed out and tacked to a bulletin board inside the front door of the Red Sox clubhouse show some of the early frontrunners.

From the inside, on a more granular, analytical level, it’s honing in on exactly what the pitchers needed to change. Perhaps overhaul is too strong a word; the basics have been here, but Bailey and his group have reined in the focus.

It’s no secret Breslow, formerly the Cubs director of pitching, was hired in large part to revamp Boston’s pitching program. As chief baseball officer, however, that’s just one part of his job. Hiring people to do the work was an early but important step.

Bailey spent the previous four years as the Giants pitching coach helping pitchers like Kevin Gausman, Carlos Rodón and Logan Webb become Cy Young contenders. From 2021-23, the Giants posted the sixth-best ERA in baseball (3.71) and the second-lowest walk rate (6.9 percent).

Willard joined the Red Sox from Minnesota, where he’d been key in the development of young pitchers like Louie Varland, Griffin Jax and Bailey Ober.

After hiring Bailey and Willard, Breslow met with them to lay out a general vision about the areas of focus for Red Sox pitchers. Velocity, pitch shapes, strikes in the zone, first-pitch strikes and platoon neutrality became the core tenets everything was built around.

Bailey and Willard created the initial plans, Breslow critiqued and helped simplify some messages and from there Breslow stepped back and let them carry out the process.

“I was very clear my job is not to mandate with our coaching staff how to coach, it’s just to try and influence the way we think about development and maybe the broad guardrails we put around this,” Breslow said.

“This isn’t my system, this is our system,” Breslow said. “So I can have a conversation with Justin or a conversation with Andrew and then a week later they are making a presentation and it’s like, ‘Yes that’s exactly how I’m seeing these things,’ so I think everyone is taking what has worked in their past lives and meshing that with new ideas and new perspectives that are brought in by others and so I think what we’ll end up with is the optimal mix of those perspectives.”

Bailey chats with Nick Pivetta (left) and Lucas Giolito. (Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)

Once Breslow signed off on the pitching plans, Bailey and Willard brought in the rest of the Run Prevention Unit to ensure the individual player plans were strengthened by the on-field perspective and experience of Varitek and Walker and backed by data from Miller and Rose.

Walker estimates the group spent hundreds of hours this winter not only formulating plans for each pitcher on the 40-man roster — 22 in total — but also for 11 non-roster invitees. The planning process was lengthy and detailed. It was an enormous process that began with going under the hood to understand each pitcher’s profile, Bailey said.

“What are the ideal ranges we need them to be in? Then what we’re trying to problem solve for, whether it be lefties or righties, whether it be a walk-rate issue or damage control or punch outs,” he added. “Stripping it down to that level and then from an arsenal standpoint, how do we solve those problems? Is it using a pitch more or is it adding a pitch? Is it subtracting a pitch?”

Throughout December and January, the Run Prevention Unit hosted anywhere from one to five Zoom calls a day, typically an hour each, so they could explain each pitcher’s plan to them in detail and ensure they knew exactly what was expected of them upon arriving in camp. Not only were the Red Sox staff on the calls, but any coach or trainer the pitcher might be working with at his facility in the offseason was welcome.

“The way I view my job is as a consultant to the players,” Bailey said. “Our players and major-league players, minor-league players, surround themselves with family and agents and advisors that kind of guide their decision-making process. I think of each player as his own LLC, their own business. I played for a handful of teams and you’re never really married to one, right? It’s really hard to play for a long time for one team.”

Bailey said it was important for the pitchers to feel like they could allow him into their inner circle.

“I want them to lean on me and our group as consultants for them in their careers from a baseball standpoint, and we want to advise them on things to do,” he said. “We’re professional suggestion makers at the end of the day.”

That approach has created a lot of early buy-in from a staff that hasn’t necessarily been with the Red Sox for long. Nick Pivetta, who arrived via trade in 2020, has the longest tenure with the Red Sox.

“It gives you a little bit more of a concrete plan,” Pivetta said. “(Bailey) gives you the right amount of information and it’s very structured about how they give it to you so that you’re not getting bogged down by everything because that can get overwhelming as a player. It’s good communication throughout and I think it’s just going to help a lot of the younger guys take those steps forward.”

With the plans in place, there’s so far been a noticeable sense of urgency and competition in camp.

Pitchers have appreciated that the offseason plans have translated to a very structured, metric-based system this spring, down to how pitchers attack bullpens and even pitchers fielding practice.

Bailey instituted a three-pitch bullpen sequence as one way to hone the focus. Instead of just aiming to “throw strikes,” the drill creates competition. Bailey’s group tracks the number of strikes to avoid “mindless” bullpens, as he put it. It’s led to more efficient results. A pitcher wins an at-bat if he gets ahead 0-3 or 1-2 and loses the sequence if he falls behind 2-1 or 3-0. Right-hander Josh Winckowski is a fan of the drill.

“I’ve found sometimes you get done with a bullpen and have a certain feeling you located the ball, but it was just a feeling,” he said. “Now it’s like, ‘OK I had 5 out of 6 today or 3 for 3. You can compare your feelings to the numbers now.”

Every bullpen and live BP has a purpose. It’s not just about building up arm strength. One day might be working on pitch shapes, another on delivery, another on attacking the zone.

“We want to face 10 hitters and how many first-pitch strikes can you get on 10 hitters?” Walker said as an example. “How many hitters can you face when we get to 0-2 or 1-2? With our structure, we’re trying to really nail down, we want to be the best club at throwing strikes. And that’s been a constant theme. We want to dominate first-pitch strikes. We want to dominate being ahead and be a really good club at that. When we start to practice that way and talk about it, it becomes kind of a culture here and we’re off to a really good start.”

Spring training is generally more relaxed than the regular season. But not so in Fort Myers this spring. It’s why music is blasting in the bullpens and pitchers are screaming as they come off the mound. Before he was traded, John Schreiber was throwing a bullpen on the back fields and envisioned two runners on base with two outs, he fired his final pitch — a strike — and let out a holler that echoed through the complex. It was a surprising amount of emotion for the third day of camp, but exactly what Bailey wanted to see. The players and coaching staff can’t control roster moves, but they can put all their energy toward improving their own game.

“That drives focus and intent,” Bailey said. “Creating that environment in the training space is very productive from a mindset, from an execution standpoint. They feel the pressure. There’s people around them, there’s music going. It’s just a high-energy environment. It’s hard to slow the heart rate down when you’re pitching in front of almost 40,000 at Fenway and so that way, when we get north, they’ve done it before. And again it’s just attention to detail.”

It might seem simple and some of it the Red Sox did do in the past, but maybe not in as structured or consistent a manner.

Manager Alex Cora has appreciated the focus on getting quicker outs. In previous years, pitchers may have been too focused on pitching to the edges instead of attacking the zone.

“Everybody talks about throwing strikes, but we went from one philosophy to another in three years, and I think, with all due respect to the people that were running things (chief baseball officer) Chaim (Bloom) and the group, sometimes you got to be more consistent in that aspect,” Cora said. “There were reasons for it and we tried our best, but it didn’t work out. We got hit hard in the zone last year.”

Red Sox pitchers were 22nd in ERA (4.68) and ranked 27th in innings (774 1/3). As Cora noted, they also ranked 22nd last season allowing a .514 slugging percentage on pitches in the zone over the heart of the plate.

“If you’re not ahead in the count, if you cannot throw your best pitches in the zone, then it doesn’t work,” Cora added. “Hopefully we can accomplish that and the guys, they got the message.”

Ensuring there’s intent and purpose in pitcher fielding drills has been another focal point. One of the leaderboards on the clubhouse bulletin board is titled ‘King of the Hill’. Pivetta described the game as essentially target practice for hitting the first baseman’s glove when fielding a ball off the mound.

Pitchers must field the ball and throw into a net. Hitting the middle gets more points than hitting the outer net while completing the drill in under four seconds adds more points. Missing the target altogether subtracts points. The entire drill is done at game speed. A playoff among the top pitchers in points earns a prize and bragging rights.

“PFPs have been around forever and they get monotonous and mundane, so why not make it fun and add a little competitiveness to it?” Walker said. “Get guys engaged. So far, guys love it.”

Varitek has his own set of games and competitions for the catchers, including Reese McGuire and Connor Wong. The ‘No Drops’ leaderboard in the clubhouse shows McGuire with a perfect score so far. Catchers are penalized for dropping pitches even if pitchers misfire.

“We don’t have any leeway,” McGuire said. “Even if a guy throws a cutter when he was calling a fastball and it kind of cut and you miss it, no, that’s still our job to catch. We’re just playing it hard, catching all the pitches you can.”

The catcher drills, PFPs and three-pitch bullpens are all in the name of run prevention.

There was so much planning and preparation crammed between when Bailey and Willard were hired and spring training, that there was little time for anything else. In fact, the Run Prevention Unit didn’t meet in person until the Red Sox held their Winter Weekend festivities in Springfield at the end of January.

“It felt like we’ve known each other forever,” Walker said. “But just seeing each other face to face, it was great. I think that in relationship building, especially with staff to having those two months of being on the phone or being through texts, seeing each other on Zoom all the time was a great jumpstart to spring training because it already felt like we were on the same page and you just onboarding for spring training ready to go.”

But everyone knows all of this only matters if the results follow.

The Red Sox have been lambasted for not adding more pitching this offseason, but Bailey and the Run Prevention Unit are trying their best to maximize the potential of pitchers currently in camp. Whether it works remains to be seen, but the buy-in has been apparent.

(Top photo of Bailey with Brayan Bello: Maddie Malhotra / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)