Photo: Doug Gray
It’s been a busy past few days for the Cincinnati Reds and their coaching staff. First they lost out on yet another assistant pitching coach as the Washington Nationals poached Simon Mathews from them and named him as their pitching coach. Cincinnati promoted Matt Tracy from bullpen coach to assistant pitching coach. The Reds then hired Oscar Marin to replace Tracy as the team’s bullpen coach.
Assistant pitching coaches under Derek Johnson in Cincinnati have not lasted very long in their job as other teams have hired them away from the Reds. Caleb Cotham was hired to become the pitching coach for the Philadelphia Phillies. Eric Jagers is now with the New York Mets as their director of pitching development. Alon Leichman is now with the Miami Marlins as their assistant pitching coach. Simon Mathews is now on that list as the coaching tree of Johnson has yet another branch on it.
Matt Tracy is taking over the role as assistant pitching coach. He was a 24th round draft pick by the New York Yankees in 2011 and pitched in one game in the big leagues back in 2015. He pitched in the minor leagues from 2011-2018 before joining the Toronto Blue Jays coaching staff in 2020 at their alternate site and then remained with them in 2021 and 2022 where he was their pitching analyst and development coordinator. In November of 2022 he joined the Reds as their bullpen coach and had been in that role for three seasons before being promoted.
Oscar Marin pitched in college from 2001-2004, with his final two seasons coming at Arkansas-Little Rock. The following year he was back with the team, but this time as an assistant coach. In 2010 he got his first job in professional baseball as the pitching coach at the complex level with the Texas Rangers. He remained in the minor leagues for various organizations as the pitching coach until 2017 when he joined the Mariners organization as their minor league pitching coordinator. Marin served in that role for two years before becoming the Rangers bullpen coach in 2019. Following that season he was hired by the Pittsburgh Pirates as their pitching coach and held that job until the end of this past season when he was let go.
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