When assessing the state of pitching, particularly on the MLB level today, Leo Mazzone isn’t shy with his opinions.
Mazzone isn’t so much disenchanted with the way baseball is being taught and presented today at all levels, from travel ball to players being signed by MLB clubs, but there are just a number of questions that the former Atlanta Braves’ celebrated pitching coach over 16 seasons hasn’t found answers to.
Starting throwers and starting relief pitchers is how Mazzone is classifying today’s pitching staff of MLB clubs. With a swollen baseball resume that includes 10 seasons pitching in the minors leagues (reaching as high as the Triple-A level while with the Oakland Athletics organization), followed by managing and coaching for 11 seasons in the minors, in the Braves’ chain, when someone of Mazzone’s pedigree speaks, audiences offer undivided attention.
“As a pitching coach, the way I got to the big leagues was because our staffs in the minor leagues stayed healthy. If you have staffs breaking down, you weren’t going anywhere,” Mazzone said earlier this week during a phone conversation with The Epoch Times. “Today, I see, from travel ball on up, pitchers are sent to the mound to throw as hard as they can. Tommy John surgeries with younger players are up in numbers.”
The debilitating elbow procedure that shelves players, predominantly pitchers, for up to a full season and beyond, is Mazzone’s deepest concern in how clubs are educating their players. Speaking from experience, it was during his tenure with the Braves that Mazzone’s methods in handling arms resulted in success few clubs have ever claimed. Six Cy Young Awards were earned by Braves starting hurlers—Greg Maddux (who collected three consecutive Cy Young’s as the National League’s top pitcher), Tom Glavine (earned two Cy Young’s), and John Smotz (one Cy Young Award) all dominated hitters, thanks in part to Mazzone’s training methods.
“Today, from the MLB level on down, there are clubs that don’t know how to run a pitching staff. The health of the pitchers has to be the key to their success. You don’t hear about mechanics or touch on the ball. What you hear is how hard somebody could throw,” said Mazzone, who this coming February will be inducted into the Georgia State Sports Hall of Fame as part of the 10-member Class of 2025.
Advising pitchers to throw more frequently between starts is one difference that separates Mazzone and the success his staffs experienced, and those of clubs struggling today to keep their top arms healthy. A badge of honor that Mazzone points to as why technique over speed brings to a club’s overall success, he traces this back to when he was appointed Atlanta’s pitching coach in June 1990.
“My pitching staffs in the minors didn’t get sore arms. When Bobby Cox (then Braves skipper) was going to select me, Hank Aaron (National Baseball Hall of Famer and then Atlanta’s senior vice president and assistant to Braves’ president) made the point to Bobby that wherever I was coaching, my pitchers didn’t get sore arms.” he said.
Mazzone, 76, is an independent thinker; a baseball purist. He knows what worked for Braves pitchers in the past. Coming into a ball game, and just throwing hard, with hopes of registering 100 mph on the radar gun, isn’t a sustainable plan. Under his guidance, Mazzone’s pitching rotations turned out perennial all-stars. Glavine, Smoltz, Maddux, and others all experienced the best seasons of their careers working with him.
The late pitching sensation of the 1940s and 1950s Johnny Sain envokes much pride in Mazzone’s theories on the men on the mound. Sain, who was part of six World Series championship clubs as a player and coach, was Mazzone’s pitching guru.
“[Sain] pretty much invented the terminology that is used today with pitching. Spin rate. He, and then I, have been teaching proper spins on baseball for years,” Mazzone recalled.
Mazzone’s last season in an MLB uniform came in 2006 as the Baltimore Orioles’ pitching coach for his best friend Sam Perlozzo—then Orioles’ manager. In 2016, Mazzone assumed the role of a special adviser for pitching at Furman University. In May 2020 Furman canceled their baseball program. Today, when not traveling offering motivational speeches, Mazzone appears on behalf of the Braves in a public relations role.
Excitement in his voice is growing while talking about his true love of baseball, and of his former bench boss Hall of Famer Bobby Cox. Mazzone has a routine he is sure not to alter. Living two hours north of Atlanta, in the Lake Hartwell area in South Carolina, every two weeks Mazzone makes the drive to visit his friend. Suffering a severe stroke in 2019 that left him struggling to speak or walk, Cox isn’t forgotten by Mazzone.
“I see Bobby and his wife Pam. [Bobby] doing better. Bobby can understand what is being spoken to him. He just struggles a little,” said Mazzone.
Looking out for the health of pitchers today, at all ages, is Mazzone’s major concern. He wants to see pitchers experience the highs that his core staff in the 1990s did. First and foremost, Mazzone is a baseball fan. He has no challenges when recalling his first MLB Game attended at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. He also enjoys telling how he has met all of his New York Yankees’ childhood baseball heroes throughout his career, from Mickey Mantle, Rogers Maris, and Whitey Ford, to many others.
Mazzone loved going to the ballpark every day. That’s all he did until retiring. Happy and healthy, today, Mazzone just wants the very best for all pitchers.
