Chip Hale is entering his fifth season as Arizona’s head baseball coach. He’s had the same hitting instructor (Toby DeMello) and recruiting coordinator (Trip Couch) the entire time. The program as a whole has been a model of stability — with one notable exception.
The Wildcats are working under their fourth pitching coach in five years — their third in the past eight months.
The upheaval began last June when Kevin Vance left to become the head coach at San Diego State. It continued in December, when Vance’s successor, John DeRouin, took a job with the New York Mets. It concluded — for the most part — later that month when Hale lured Sean Kenny away from Iowa.
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New pitching coach Sean Kenny, right, works with Owen Kramkowski in the Hi Corbett Field bullpen as Arizona players start their afternoon workout, Feb. 3, 2026, in Tucson.
Kenny officially joined the program Dec. 22, less than two months before the Feb. 13 season opener vs. Stanford in the College Baseball Series in Surprise. Since then, Arizona has lost director of pitching development Owen Cuffe, who last week took a job with the Colorado Rockies.
DeRouin and Cuffe are among many college coaches who recently have landed jobs with MLB clubs seeking bright minds who can relate to young players and understand how to use the technology that has become integral to modern baseball instruction.
“I think what’s happened is, Major League Baseball has realized that the analytics lab, pitch design, whatever you want to call it, is very important to these kids today, and there aren’t a whole lot of people at that level right now,” said Hale, who spent 15 years coaching in MLB.
“You see these organizations turning people over. John and Owen had made a real big name for themselves in the social media area. And teams were very intrigued with that.
“It’s like dating now. I ask players all the time, ‘How did you meet so-and-so?’ ‘Well, I met her online. I DM’d her. She DM’d me.’ That’s how these coaches are getting jobs. It’s just the way of the world now.”
The recruitment of Kenny was a bit more old-fashioned. Couch, who knew him from their SEC days (Couch at South Carolina, Kenny at Georgia), sold Kenny on everything Arizona had to offer — tradition, talent, weather, etc. He wasn’t the only interested party.
“When that job opened, there was no lack of people that wanted to come in,” Hale said. “I wanted somebody who was, No. 1, experienced at doing this, but also that knew what was going on in the (pitching) lab. He didn’t have to be as proficient as John … but he had to understand how important it was and had to know what goes on in there.”
Kenny has embraced that part of that job. Now Hale is trying to get him some help.
Arizona coach Chip Hale goes over the ground rules with the umpiring crew and Central Arizona coach Sean Cashman before first pitch Oct. 25, 2025, at Hi Corbett Field.
Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star
Cuffe was supposed to be Kenny’s assistant. The UA has posted the position of director of player development; it’s really director of pitching development. Having knowledge of all the technical tools the program uses is a must.
Although he wants to balance the coaching staff, Hale won’t rush the next hire. Most of the offseason lab work — maximizing movement, increasing velocity, improving pitch shapes — has been done.
“We’re trying to gamify our approach now — our mindset and our practice habits — but we will absolutely have check-ins in the lab to make sure they’re moving properly,” Kenny said. “I’m still familiarizing myself with their pitch profiles and their shapes. Trackman’s up and running, so we’re always looking at that. But the deeper-dive stuff, they’re done.”
Kenny, who spent last season at Iowa and has been coaching for nearly 30 years, will put his personal imprint on the pitching staff eventually. For the time being, he’s letting the pitchers — who already have established their routines and repertoires — take the lead. The staff is anchored by returning weekend starters Owen Kramkowski and Smith Bailey and closer Tony Pluta, the national Stopper of the Year.
“Very rarely do you take over a healthy situation,” Kenny said. “You just don’t. Normally, you’re taking over a situation that’s fractured in some form or another — the hired-and-fired part of our business. So my message to them was, ‘My job is to adapt to you, not the other way around.’
“I tried to assure them that it’s business as usual. They’ve already done the heavy lifting in the fall. My job is to integrate myself into the Arizona program. … I just tried to assure them that the things that they’ve been doing are going to be the things that we’re going to keep doing.”
Arizona finished in the top 11 nationally in strikeout-to-walk ratio and walks allowed per nine innings each of the past two seasons and reached the College World Series last year.
Kramkowski, who had a team-high nine wins last season, acknowledged the “strange timing” of DeRouin’s departure and Kenny’s arrival but said the transition has been smooth so far.
“Obviously it’s not what you’re expecting going into the year, but I think we all realize that we’ve got our foundation and we just need to stick to that,” Kramkowski said.
Freshman right-hander Jack Lafflam throws during bunt-defense drills as Arizona baseball gets ready for its season opener, Feb. 3, 2026, at Hi Corbett Field.
“We got lucky with Kenny coming in here. He’s been awesome for us. He’s been learning us. We’ve been learning him.”
On ‘The Deuce’
Two UA regular-season games will air on ESPN2, the Big 12 announced this week.
The first is the series finale vs. Arizona State on Saturday, April 4, at Hi Corbett Field. The second is the series wrap-up at TCU on Sunday, April 12.
Three additional ASU games are scheduled for ESPN2: March 29 vs. West Virginia and May 8-9 vs. Oklahoma State.
The championship game of the Big 12 Tournament on May 23 is slated to air on ESPNU.
Most UA games will be streamed on ESPN+. The season-opening College Baseball Series will be streamed on FloCollege.
Inside pitch
– While Kramkowski and Bailey are set as the Nos. 1 and 2 starters, in some order, the other rotation spots are up for grabs. The top candidates are right-handers Collin McKinney, Jack Lafflam and Nolan Straniero, and left-handers Luc Fladda and Mason Russell.
– Russell was the top recruit in Arizona’s 2024 signing class. He struggled in limited duty last season, missed most of the fall because of injury, but has shown encouraging signs during preseason practice.
“I have extremely high hopes for him,” Kenny said. “For one, the makeup’s off the charts. He’s low-maintenance, he’s a worker, he knows who he is. It’s all the things that mature people do.
“The stuff is awesome. You can see immediately why he was drafted and was a prospect.
“I just feel like he’s so close to getting over the hump. I think he feels that way, too, which is the most important thing. So very high hopes, trying to figure out where he fits right now, trying to ramp him up a little bit.”
Sophomore outfielder Carson McEntire legs out a triple during a simulated-game situation as Arizona baseball gets ready for its season opener, Feb. 3, 2026, at Hi Corbett Field.
– Freshman right-hander Benton Hickman is trending toward a late-inning relief role. Kenny dubbed Hickman the Wildcats’ “future closer.”
– Outfielder Chaz McNelis suffered a fractured fibula on a hit-by-pitch and will be out at least four to six weeks. The opening-day outfield likely will feature newcomer Carson McEntire and returnees Easton Breyfogle and Andrew Cain, who also could DH.
– With more than nine candidates for the starting lineup, Hale expects to experiment with different personnel early in the season.
“I’d be shocked if the first three games we had the same lineup every day,” he said. “At some point you gotta make a commitment to something. But also we have to … see some guys play under the gun.”
Up next
What: College Baseball Series
Who: Arizona, Michigan, Oregon State, Stanford,
When: Feb. 13-15
Where: Surprise Stadium; Surprise, Arizona
UA schedule: Feb. 13 vs. Stanford (6 p.m.); Feb. 14 vs. OSU (2 p.m.); Feb. 15 vs. Michigan (4 p.m.)
Watch: FloCollege (streaming)
Contact sports reporter/columnist Michael Lev at mlev@tucson.com. On X (Twitter): @michaeljlev. On Bluesky: @michaeljlev.bsky.social
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