Under Pat Murphy, the Brewers Will Have a Visible, Collaborative Coaching Staff

Pat Murphy has climbed a 35-year ladder to this summit. He coached college baseball for two decades, spent another fistful of years managing in the minor leagues with the Padres, and then assumed the role of bench coach to Craig Counsell in 2016. Counsell actually played for Murphy at Notre Dame; Charlie Greene nearly did so. There's kismet all over Murphy's promotion, and Murphy's approach to his new job shows the creativity that got him here and a self-effacing bent toward collaboration.

Ask Murphy about almost any aspect of the team, and he mentions two different coaches who are playing a role in it. Greene, promoted to a big-league coaching staff for the first time, is nominally the bullpen coach, but that's an old-fashioned, rigid name for what will clearly be a novel and flexible role.

"We're not that divided, that one guy can't affect that," Murphy said, when asked whether Greene can still be a boon to the team's catchers from his new position. "He knows all these guys, he knows their personalities, he knows their backgrounds. He's such a valuable resource, and he knows the game. So he'll help in all areas. And [newly promoted assistant pitching coach] Jim Henderson is still gonna be heavily involved in the bullpen, so we're just adding a great resource."

Murphy doesn't live by buzzwords, so don't expect him to repeat 'collaboration' six times a day or anything, but he's clearly built and organized a staff he expects to work together in overlapping, interlocking, non-territorial ways. For as long as there have been designated coaches for MLB teams, there have been professional jealousies and mistrustful relationships between some should-be colleagues, but Murphy's approach seems focused on pulverizing those instincts. His vision for the role of associate manager Rickie Weeks (a job title that defies convention, in itself) illustrates the point.

"He's been wonderful. i say this over and over, but he impacts people. He's got a great presence," Murphy said Monday, when asked about that very subject. "He's kind of going to be in charge of our whole offensive production. Instead of putting all the onus on the hitting guys, we're going to have a team of people, kind of like what they do on football staffs. We're going to have an offensive team and Rickie's going to head that production--deliver the message, if you will."

Weeks, then, clearly will play a huge role in the team's hitting gameplans, the same way many hitting coaches do. Rather than stepping on the toes of hitting coaches Connor Dawson and Ozzie Timmons, though, he's meant to empower them and work alongside them. Though Murphy doesn't want to call him one, it seems like Weeks will be a bit of an offensive coordinator for the team--or a run production coordinator, if you like, to neatly counterbalance the title of run prevention coordinator Walker McKinven.

"Well, Walker's the receiving guru. He's taught himself, and he's had teachers like Charlie, Nestor [Corredor], and catching guys around the league who've tutored Walker on what they look for, and he's dove into it," Murphy said of McKinven, who will continue to work closely with catchers this year in collaboration with both Greene and Corredor. "This guy's an underrated part of our staff. It's amazing the amount he does for this team. Walker's a genius of getting those receiving numbers up."

McKinven was a pitcher in his playing days, so he almost automatically stands astride the frequent divide between position players and pitchers. He's one of several people in the clubhouse whom Murphy envisions knitting the roster together.

"Jason Lane presented today. He was unbelievable," Murphy said of Monday morning's team clubhouse meeting. "I wanted to let our guys know who our staff is. A lot of these staff members just get pushed aside; nobody knows them. 'Oh, that's that guy.' There are some great stories in the room, so let's start with that."

Stories matter a great deal to Murphy, an inveterate storyteller and relational thinker. So, too, does ensuring that every member of his deep and intermeshed coaching staff is known to the rest of the room, not just by name or sight but by story and personality. 

These are the promises most teams make in most spring trainings. There's no guarantee that it will work for Murphy's Crew. In a unique and very frank way, though, the 65-year-old rookie skipper has laid out the priorities and structure of a new-age coaching group, and if they fail, it won't be for lack of having tried something new and trusting.