Andrew Bailey strikes a good chord in first remarks as Red Sox pitching coach

Craig Breslow and Andrew Bailey have had their Boston Red Sox partnership worked out for a while now.

Even longer than you might think…

The former teammates were scheming over a decade ago about the possibility of working together in a major league front office… while they were wearing Red Sox uniforms sitting in the bullpen at Fenway Park. 

“(I was) sitting in the bullpen with Craig over parts of five seasons together and talking about how he was going to be a GM, and I’m like ‘well, I’ll be a bullpen coach, pitching coach, manager… whatever you want to do,’” Bailey said his press conference on Tuesday introducing him as the Red Sox’s new pitching coach. “I think it’s a pretty unique relationship.”

When Breslow came calling as the team's new CBO with a job offer, it was an offer Bailey couldn’t refuse. 

“Life’s too short to turn down opportunities like this,” Bailey said. “I’m excited, I’m motivated, I’m ecstatic about the opportunity because I know it doesn’t come around that often and I know what baseball and the Boston Red Sox means to the city.”

Bailey was a member of the 2013 World Series title team, but after pitching in only 30 games that season — and none in the postseason — that alone isn’t good enough for him. He says he’s determined to make things right in his second go around with the team. 

“I’m selfishly really excited for this opportunity,” Bailey said. “I know I was brought there to do a job and unfortunately as a player, I wasn’t able to do that job to the best of my ability due to injuries. It’s not too frequent you get a second opportunity to kind of right the ship in a different capacity.”

While Bailey’s tenure as a Red Sox player lasted all of 49 games, that was plenty long enough for him to learn what playing baseball in Boston is all about.

“I know what failure feels like in a major market — and in Boston specifically,” said Bailey, referring to the team’s disastrous last-place finish in the AL East in 2012. “I know what it’s like to blow a save in Boston, I know what it’s like to be a player (in Boston), to have success as well.”

That is exactly what you’d want to hear from the next pitching coach of the Boston Red Sox. He wants revenge — not against a specific individual or team, but for the opportunity that was taken away from him.

Not only is Bailey coming back to Boston with a chip on his shoulder, but he had circled Boston as a preferred destination before the job was even offered to him. In fact, he was interested in being the Red Sox’s pitching coach before Breslow even got the job. 

Even if his former team, the San Francisco Giants, had won the World Series a season ago (they didn’t), Bailey said he knew his time on the West Coast was over. He wanted to be back on the East Coast — for his family, and for his career. 

And also, to work with guys like Brayan Bello… 

“He’s a special player,” Bailey said. “(He has) a very, very high ceiling, and we expect him to keep on developing. … All these guys, I think there’s a litany of arms that are special in Boston. I’m hoping to help them perform at their best as often as possible.” 

Bailey added that Bello has the potential to be a “front-line starter,” which would indicate to me that the organization doesn’t seem him as one just yet — nor should they, he’s 24 years old and is only entering his third big league season. 

Ultimately, though, Bailey deferred questions about the team’s offseason pursuit of pitching talent to Breslow’s office and said his job is merely to serve as a consultant to the team’s pitchers, trying to bring out the best in them. 

“I’m not the best pitching coach in the world, I’ll tell you that right now. I think it’s a product of a lot of smart people around us, working departmentally with strength and conditioning, with medical, pitching assistants, throwing trainers, (Alex Cora), everybody. There’s a litany of people that have impact on players and it’s how we can maximize the strength of everybody.” 

Bailey already sounds like he’s fallen right in line with Breslow and the new baseball ops regime. That is a good thing, because you don’t really want your pitching coach going rogue and thinking it’s all about him.

Notably, though, Bailey did not shoot down the notion that he might be interested in a managerial job some day — which makes me wonder if he could be a potential manager in waiting should things go south with Cora in the final year of his contract. 

For now, he insists he’s only interested in this (pitching) side of the ball. And his philosophy on pitching sounds like a mix of the old and new school. Ultimately, that’s exactly where you want your front office and coaches to be. Tradition is tradition for a reason, yet the game is always evolving and it’s important to keep that in mind, too. 

“I’m a fan of run prevention,” Bailey said. “Strikes are everything. Stuff in zone, place, limiting walks, being aggressive and ahead in counts. Obviously there’s been a big change in stuff and swing and miss and velo and all of that, so there’s a handful of things, but identifying the KPIs (key performance indicators) that we can hold ourselves accountable to is really (a) priority.” 

All told, Bailey’s presser lasted about 22 1/2 minutes. It’s November. We don’t have a clue what caliber of pitchers Bailey will have to work with by the time spring training rolls around. So for a first impression, Bailey struck a good chord. 

Now, it’s time to get to work…