A View From The Cheap Seats … Hale’s First Hire Is A Home Run

Posted on July 6, 2021

 

A View From The Cheap Seats
Rich Herrera’s blog for Wildcats Radio 1290.com

By Rich Herrera

Wildcats Radio1290 / CBS Sports Radio

The fireworks in the Pac12 conference carried over to July 5th when the University of Arizona announced that Chip Hale will succeed Jay Johnson to become the next Head Coach of the University of Arizona Baseball program.

It’s a bold move for both Dave Heeke and Chip Hale.  As I wrote in this space if Hale comes back to Tucson it would be a passion project for him to give up a big league job to return to college baseball.  On the field Hale can run a game as good as anyone, he can manage a pitching staff and is a tremendous teacher of the game.  That is why he has been so successful in professional baseball and he owns a World Series Ring.  He is as good as it gets inside the dugout.  But the Wildcats are not pro ball, they are far from it.  The job of a college baseball head coach is very different than that of a MLB Manager.  A manager doesn’t recruit, he doesn’t fundraise, he doesn’t deal with Alumni, he manages his team and in the off season he goes on a long vacation after a 162 game grind.

“Cousin Eddie” out, new RV in.

Joe Maddon inks deal with Winnebago https://t.co/L3RL4zLCEF via @ChristopherHine pic.twitter.com/qHl1yLyofb

— Chicago Tribune Sports (@ChicagoSports) May 9, 2017

But college baseball is different.  Hale will have different responsibilities than he has ever had before.  He will be asked to fundraise, he will be more involved in public outreach and marketing,  He will also be involved something major league managers and coaches hardly ever get involved in and that is recruiting.  In pro ball each team has a machine made up of pro and amateur scouts, special assistants, national cross checkers and scouting directors that report to the GM who reports to the President of Baseball Operations.  I skipped over some of the layers because it is so complicated it can be overwhelming.  In college baseball, the Head Coach has a staff of maybe half a dozen at best to find players, in baseball there are ten times as many.

That is why the first decision that Hale has made today says a lot his hire.  Dave Lawn will remain in Tucson as Hale’s pitching coach,  Why is this such a big decision?  As I reached out to college baseball people around the game and those who cover the game, all told me one thing.  On the field Hale is going to one of the best in the college baseball.  But off the field he has a steep learning curve because he hasn’t worked in college baseball, and it’s a whole other world.  By retaining Lawn he has someone with him who has not only institutional knowledge that Hale does not have of the Pac12, where is the batting cage at UCLA, where do we stay on the road when we play Stanford, where do we eat in Corvallis?  he has someone who knows the ins and outs of recruiting.  Lawn knows high school and travel league coaches around the west coast.  He has relationships on the high school level, he understands that you have to over recruit, because you are going to lose your top high school recruits to the MLB Draft.

He also has an understanding of the NCAA Transfer that Hale will figure out.

This is why Hale’s decision to hire Dave Lawn is a home run.  He brings something to the table that Hale is going to need, and for me that is all I need to know.  The Wildcats have a new head coach that understands what he is, and has a game plan and a vision of where he is taking the Wildcats.  For Hale the easy part is now over, he is the Head Baseball Coach at his Alma Mater. They tough part begins now.

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