When Los Angeles Dodgers assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness graduated from Emory University in 2012 with his economics degree, he figured his next move would be to attend law school and follow in his father’s footsteps. “I was doing odd jobs, cutting grass, bartending, and doing some free arbitration work for (Major League Baseball) agent Jim McNamara. I was living in my parents’ basement studying for my LSAT,” he recalled. “I got into a couple law schools, but my dad sat me down and showed me what it would cost to go to law school. I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do.”
Just two days after that conversation with his father, McGuiness received a call from his former baseball coach at Emory, Mike Twardoski, that would change the trajectory of his life. “I had been giving pitching lessons on the side just because I loved baseball so much. ‘Coach T’ called and asked me if I would be interested in joining his coaching staff at Emory.” He jumped at the chance.
“Connor was a great ‘off the field’ type of kid,” Twardoski remembered. “He was a great teammate and leader, and his presence was very good for the team. When he took the job, it was challenging because he played with some of the guys still on the team. He quickly established himself because he was so team-oriented, and the pitchers would run through a brick wall for him. He was really good at what he did, and we got some real momentum going in the program with the pitching staff.”
Playing Career
Growing up in Arlington, Virginia, McGuiness acknowledged he was a better soccer player than baseball player. “My dad was a big soccer guy, but I fell in love with baseball. I played on various travel teams like the Barnstormers and Headfirst (Baseball Academy) Gamers. I started doing the recruiting circuit, but no one really knew what they were doing back then. I would play a soccer game and then run over to a Headfirst showcase,” he recollected.
Like many young players, he originally was dead set on playing Division I ball. He narrowed his final three college choices to DI schools Lafayette and Cornell, and Emory. “The Emory visit was incredible. It had everything I wanted: academics, Greek life, nice facilities, and an incredible alumni network,” he stated. “It had it all. I thought the place was great and would set me up for the future. I knew I was not going to be playing pro ball, so I wasn’t sacrificing by not going to a Division 1 school.”
The left-hander made 41 appearances in his four-year career, 34 of them in relief, and ironically had his best year in an injury-plagued senior campaign. “I blew out my arm playing flag football and wasn’t even going to play my senior year. Coach T told me he needed me there for the team culture,” he remembered. In his eight relief appearances that season, McGuiness was 1-1 with an 0.87 earned run average, while limiting opponents to an .036 batting average and giving up a run just once in nine appearances.
“He had a lot of injuries and things didn’t work out on the field the way he wanted, but he started to take on a mentor role with the guys who were down in the bullpen,” recalled Bobby Perez, who served as Emory’s assistant/associate coach from 2008-09 until taking over head coaching duties when Twardoski retired in May 2024. “Brian Clark was our pitching coach and had been a catcher at Alabama. He told us Connor had a great feel for pitching and leadership. I’m not saying that we knew he would end up working for the Dodgers, but he liked being a mentor and being in the bullpen. Most guys would do what they needed to do and then go run or work out, not watch others throw. He enjoyed helping others get better and that particularly showed in his junior and senior years.”
McGuiness and Twardoski vividly remember one mound conversation from that senior season. The Eagles were facing crosstown rival and nationally ranked Birmingham-Southern College with the game knotted at five in the top of the sixth inning. The Panthers had runners at first and third with two outs with future major leaguer Bruce Maxwell coming to the plate.
“Coach T was telling me how to pitch this guy to try to get him out, but I basically told him I wasn’t going to be able to get him out, so I’ll just pick the runner off first base instead,” he laughed. That is exactly what happened. He did “unintentionally intentionally” walk Maxwell to lead off the seventh inning with the intention of trying to pick him off but ended up inducing a double play. McGuiness ended up getting the win when Emory plated two runs in the bottom of the inning for the final runs of the game.
Twardoski recalled McGuiness’ pickoff move being so prolific that everyone knew he would try to pick runners off first base, but he still succeeded. “The funniest part was listening to the opposing head coach screaming to watch his move and seeing the first base coach grab the runner and tell him to look out for the pickoff. Connor would make a bad first throw over there and the next time would pick the guy off,” he reminisced.
Pitching Coach at Emory and Moving On
Steve Less served as the Emory pitching coach in 2013 and when he left, Perez immediately thought of McGuiness. “We needed a pitching coach and Connor came to mind. I called Mike and asked him what he thought, and he gave his blessing,” Perez recollected. “He was only one year out of school, and we knew there would be challenges coaching guys he played with, but we knew how well he connected with everyone. As much as he knows, his biggest strength is to communicate with people and how he relates to them. He knows so much about pitching and analytics, but how he relates to people is far and away his biggest strength.”
Coming back to Emory to coach turned into what McGuiness called the “perfect storm” in timing. “My first day on the job, this small, skinny guy named Kyle Monk walked on to the team. I saw this side-armer throwing in the mid-80’s and knew he was legit. Kyle was an excellent basketball player also, but without too much effort, we convinced him to play baseball.” Monk was a key component in the Eagles making back-to-back NCAA Division III Championship World Series appearances during McGuiness’ two years on the staff and finished his career as the program’s all-time saves leader. In 2014, when Emory finished as runner-up in the NCAA Division III tournament despite losing its second game in regional play and first in the championship round, the Eagles’ staff posted its lowest earned run average in seven years with a 3.31 ERA.
“It was a dream come true for me to be at Emory and be part of back-to-back World Series trips. It was awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed working with Coach T and Bobby. I figured I would keep doing it and bartend on the side,” he described. Twardoski had other ideas. “Emory isn’t like Alabama, where I went to school. We used to say if you play baseball there, you either go pro, coach baseball, or sell light bulbs,” he joked. “I wanted him to do more.”
“When Coach T first told me to move on, I thought, ‘He really hates me,’” McGuiness chuckled. “But I knew he did it out of love. He wanted me to leverage that great degree.” He got an interview with then Eastern Kentucky head coach Edwin Thompson (now head coach at Georgetown), who said he loved the content of what McGuiness was teaching, but without any pro ball experience, he would need to pursue a master’s degree to improve his future opportunities.
Catholic University
McGuiness took that advice to heart and after meeting with Catholic University Associate Head Coach Bobby Picardo, he joined the Catholic staff in 2016 as a grad assistant while earning his master’s in management with a concentration in leadership.
“I had wanted to hire him since I met him on the recruiting trail in 2013. We had to fill our graduate assistant position when our initial candidate fell through and I talked to Connor about it, but he was looking to get his law degree, so the timing didn’t work,” Picardo recollected. “In the next couple years, I kept hounding him to come back home, to get his master’s degree, and take our GA position.”
The GA plays an important role across the NCAA, but Picardo stresses that the Catholic baseball GA is the only coach whose role is full-time. “Even though he is in his 40th year, our head coach (Ross Natoli) is part-time, and I have multiple responsibilities in the athletic department. We can’t miss with this position, and we hit it out of the park the two years we had Connor.”
Picardo admits that though McGuiness’ methods were innovative, at times they seemed unusual, which required a lot of adjustments to his and especially the veteran Napoli’s views of pitching. “I had not heard of a connection ball (which measures movement patterns and can aid in the mechanical efficiency of a pitcher) and thought it was the weirdest thing I have seen. I was asking, ‘Why are we throwing a two-ounce baseball as hard as we can against the wall,” he chuckled. “He took a lead from TPI (Titleist Performance Institute) in golf and had pitchers swing the bat from their less dominant side, something that soon became commonplace.”
Connor also connected the Catholic baseball coaches to Ryan Yoshida, who had served as a physical therapist for the Dodgers and founded Armored Heat, daily arm care routines intended to allow pitchers to throw harder, recover faster, and stay healthy. “This gave our pitchers a way to train and stay healthy year around while complying with the rules. Emory and Catholic were the first two D3 programs to use Armored Heat. That doesn’t happen without Connor,” Picardo stated.
“Connor can connect with every person, whether it is someone who has coached for 15 years or a 17-year-old kid. He never made me feel like I was behind. He made it fun for players and turned throwing the two-ounce ball into a competition,” Picardo continued. “He turned an old school racquetball court into a pitching lab before it was such a thing. I remember taking video with a flip cam of Connor demonstrating exercises. To me, he was always destined for pro baseball. His ideal day resembled what I saw when I was in minor league baseball for 3½ years, making sure guys got their proper workouts in and ate well. He had a vision so early.”
Natoli mentioned to McGuiness that the 2016 MLB winter meetings were in the D.C. area (at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in the National Harbor in Maryland). McGuiness reached out to another Division III connection in Haverford graduate Jeremy Zoll, who is now the general manager of the Minnesota Twins and at the time, was an assistant farm director for Dodgers under Gabe Kapler. “I said, ‘JZ, I want to pick your brain on how to make my resume look better for an analyst or front office position.’ He asked me if I ever wanted to be a field level coach. I thought he was crazy. He said there was a ton of data available, but it hadn’t been translated into helping the players,” he explained.
“Connor was so ahead of the curve when it came to analytics and pitch development. When he got to Catholic, he started instituting stuff that is so commonplace now that you forget what you did with your pitchers before,” Picardo commented. “He was years ahead of D3 people and probably most D1 people. He told me about improving velocity and tunnel pitches (how pitches break before the plate while starting on same trajectory) in 2013 and into 2014. It bred this pitch development piece that changed how we coach as a staff. He made us better. There were some growing pains originally, but what he was doing with us in 2015 and 2016 was so advanced and changed us. We started looking at analytics and built in more time for pitchers even when they weren’t throwing. They weren’t just there to hit ground balls to infielders.”
Gabe Kapler and Becoming a Field Coach
Zoll set up a call between Kapler and McGuiness that would be the impetus to McGuiness becoming a professional field coach. “Gabe called me and said, ‘I’ve got five minutes. What do you have?’ I started rambling on and it ended up being a two-hour phone call. He started giving me side work for 3-to-4 months, watching all the video, and breaking down pitchers. We (Catholic) were playing an exhibition game against Navy with a 9 a.m. start. Gabe called me 15 minutes before game time, so I am in the bullpen taking his call,” he recollected. “He offered me a job as an A-ball pitching coach. I started telling everyone, but no one believed me!”
Right before that call, Twardoski received a call from Kapler. Their paths crossed in the Red Sox organization. “I was mowing my lawn and see a call coming in from Gabe, whose number I didn’t even know I had. He says, ‘Dude, I got your guy McGuiness. What can you tell me?’ I told him that he would get any staff so motivated to succeed and that he has the intellect to do all the analytics. The things he can teach are needed anywhere. That was the extent of the conversation,” he recalled. “I started the engine back up, mowed one more row, and the phone rang again. It was Connor telling me he had a meeting with the Dodgers.”
“A lot of (Emory) guys want to work in the business side of pro baseball,” Perez stated. “Connor wasn’t even looking for a job in baseball. We talked about all these other things, but pro baseball wasn’t his end game. It has been such a great thing to see where his career has gone. Kapler was so innovative and was starting to reach out beyond the usual paths to hire people.”
He remembers catching up with McGuiness at an event in Jupiter, Florida in November 2016. “He was in his second year of grad school, and I asked what was next. He responded by saying, “I have something working, but I can’t say much about it now, but I will let you know,’” Perez remembered. “Around Thanksgiving, he let me know he got hired by the Dodgers and we laughed. He said he didn’t really think he would get the job, so there was no real reason to expound on it.”
Shortly after Perez had seen McGuiness that November, Picardo and his wife Jenny were having dinner together. “It was election night in 2016 and we were at The Big Stick in the Navy Yard. We were watching the Gold Glove announcements on a small tv, while everyone else was watching the election coverage. Connor got a call and came back to the table to tell us he got a job with the Dodgers, but didn’t know which team yet,” Picardo reminisced. “Jenny’s father had recently passed away and she was really struggling. We were so excited, and it was the first time Jenny smiled in 1½ months. The whole world was fixated on the election, but we were focused on someone close to us getting an opportunity like this. It wasn’t until a couple days later that I started thinking, “Oh no, we are going to lose Connor in February!”
He was hired as an assistant pitching coach for the Dodgers’ then low A Great Lakes team in 2017 and spent the next two seasons with then high A Rancho Cucamonga squad. McGuiness noted in 2017 that some coaches were using hockey pucks to work with their pitchers on throwing curve balls. “At the Dodgers’ spring training facility in Arizona, I was at the spin field station seeing pitchers use the hockey pucks to learn how to front spin the baseball. That appealed to me because the curve ball is a lost art,” he remarked. “It is one of the best neutral pitches that can take out left- and right-handers. Pitchers like (Rick) Honeycutt, (Charlie) Hough, and (Mike) Cuellar could throw any kind of slider. If you can front spin a baseball, you can do a lot.”
CleanFuego
McGuiness remembers his brother Mike calling him during the Dodgers’ spring training and was shocked that they were using hockey pucks and sometimes tennis canisters to improve the spin of the baseball. “He said, ‘You are the Dodgers and that’s all you can get?!’ We believed that we could develop something that could centralize the weight and get the physics of the ball right to improve the ball spin. We started working on the training tool ball with (Texas engineer) Ronald Plummer working on the design, keeping the Dodgers in the loop all the time.”
In what seems like an appropriate number for the Dodgers organization, the brothers went through 42 prototypes before finalizing the product to train pitchers to maintain high spin efficiency. Named CleanFuego, the device officially launched in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and two months after McGuiness was promoted to the Dodgers. “The Dodgers gave us the blessing to start selling it and it took off. Previously, there had been an old leather spinner, but the weight distribution was wrong, and the overall weight was off. The CleanFuego is a hard, durable ball that generally lasts two to three years,” McGuiness described.
One of the first pitchers to find success with CleanFuego in 2020 was Jake McGee. “(Then Dodgers pitching coordinator) Brandon Gomes said that Jake has a great fastball and asked us to clean it up a little. I grabbed Jake and we started working with ‘Fuego. We ended up building a custom one for him and we’d be out throwing at Dodgers Stadium,” McGuiness stated. “He would play the ball during his takeaway, so the spin was not only efficient, but had a dirty spin like an infinity symbol.” McGee had one of the best years of his career that season, posting a 3-1 record with a 2.66 earned run average in 24 appearances, and signed with the San Francisco Giants, where he recorded 31 saves and a 2.72 earned run average with 58 strikeouts in 59.2 innings of work for the 107-win division winners in 2021.
One of CleanFuego’s regular customers is New York Mets closer Edwin Diaz. “He reinvented his career. He texted me in the off-season just to say thanks and said, ‘I thought it was stupid when I first saw it, but the pitching coordinator told me to use it,’” McGuiness described. “It is great to see him do this thing. He struggled after his surgery (Diaz missed the entire 2023 season after tearing a right patellar tendon at the 2023 World Baseball Classic). He just needed to get healthy.” Diaz finished 2024 with a 6-4 mark and 20 saves in the regular season, adding a win and a pair of saves in the Mets’ postseason run that ended in the National League Championship Series against the Dodgers.
He understands not everyone is happy with his invention. “All the hitting coaches hate me,” laughed McGuiness, who notes he takes some ribbing from his own players as well. “In 2021, we were in Milwaukee when we saw (Brewers pitchers) Devon Williams and Josh Hader playing catch with the ‘Fuego and Justin Turner got all over me, telling me, ‘Get your stupid hockey puck out of here!’”
The McGuiness brothers have continued to work on their technology, coming out with a golf ball version and a leather version for younger players, and are most proud of their latest prototype. “We finally launched our plyo ball, which is the same shape as the ‘Fuego with the weight centralized, about 1½ months ago and the reviews have been great,” he communicated. “The industry answers are out there, and it is just a matter of what are we going to do with all the data that is available.”
Los Angeles Dodgers
The 2024 Dodgers ended the season in Hollywood fashion by capturing their first full season World Series title since 1988, keyed by Freddie Freeman hitting the first walk-off home run in World Series history in Game One and Walker Buehler putting the final touch on an improbable comeback and finish in Game Five.
Yet the season was one of trials and tribulations, particularly for the pitching staff. “It was frustrating. We couldn’t keep anyone healthy,” McGuiness remarked. The Dodgers used 40 pitchers, including 17 starters, in 2024 and none of the starting pitchers from the season-opening series against the Padres in South Korea lasted the entire season.
Two starting pitchers who McGuiness coached came up through the farm system, Dustin May and Tony Gonselin, missed the entire season. Emmet Sheehan (missed all season), Connor Brodgon (146 games missed), Clayton Kershaw (130 games), Bobby Miller (58 games), ace Tyler Glasnow (51 games), River Ryan (45 games), and Gavin Stone (22 games) all suffered season-ending injuries. By the time the playoffs rolled around, the Dodgers were down to three starters: Jack Flaherty (who the Dodgers acquired in a trade with the Detroit Tigers on July 30), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (who missed 72 games with a right rotator cuff strain), and Buehler, who missed half the season in his continued recovery from a pair of Tommy John surgeries.
Buehler turned out to be a key component to the Dodgers’ title runs with a win and his save against the Yankees in the World Series, which did not surprise McGuiness. “He adjusted what he was doing. After the surgeries, he was never going to be able to get back to 3,000 rps (revolutions per second, measuring the spin rate), but he was more than talented enough,” he described. “Walker, more than any competitor I know, is the ultimate method actor. Everything he does on the mound is Walker. He doesn’t need to create an alter ego. He is not taking his mound persona off. With everything he has gone through for the team; to finish like that, it was so cool to see him put a bow on the World Series title.”
He compared Buehler’s playoff mound presence to that of Kiké Hernandez at the plate. “Kiké in a playoff game is a different animal. You can see it in his eyes,” commented McGuiness, who was sitting with Hernandez as Padres’ ace Yu Darvish was pitching against the Dodgers in the deciding game of the division series between the rivals. “Darvish is a great pitcher who knows how to spin the ball and was having success. I asked Kiké what the approach should be to hitting him and he just said, ‘I got him.’ Sure enough, he nuked the first pitch (to give the Dodgers the lead they would not relinquish). Walker and Kiké are very different, but they both use the adrenaline of the big games to their advantage. Not every player is able to do that.”
McGuiness was most proud of the Dodgers’ relievers and how the excelled in their roles not only in relief appearances, but also in their many bullpen starts/games or what he said Joe Kelly refers to as “nightmare games because they kill everyone in the bullpen.” The relief core may not have the biggest names in baseball, but they were instrumental in the title run. He emphasized that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to pitching.
“Everyone wants to have a sweeper like (Blake) Treinan. People ask me if I can talk to them about developing a sweeper and I always say, ‘I can talk to you about it, but it doesn’t work for every pitcher. Not everyone can throw a sweeper’. We are just trying to stay ahead of the industry and find what works for each guy,” he communicated. “For example, (Alex) Vesia is my four-seam ride guy and Anthony Banda is the guy we have seen the biggest change in. When Banda first came up, he was a bigger prospect than (2020 World Series pitching hero) Julio (Urias) with a great fastball and change-up who could run it up to 97 (miles per hour), but he needed a slider. We tried four or five different grips with him and once he found the right one after about 30 seconds, he ripped off an 86 mile per hour banger. He debuted it in a game a couple weeks later and punched a guy out on three sliders.”
The Common Threads Through Every Level
McGuiness recognizes that each coach brings different strengths to their position. Unlike (Dodgers pitching coach and former Cubs flame-thrower) Mark (Prior), I have never pitched in front of 40,000 fans and had to dissect an opposing major league lineup. My deal is mixing pitches, the mechanics of throwing, and deliveries,” explained McGuiness, who pointed out an additional fun chore he takes on. “I take young players like Gavin and Emmet, sit them down, and have them watch some YouTube videos of Mark, so they see how good he was.”
What he found has transcended each of his stops, whether in Division III, the minor leagues, or in the majors, is the importance of the team’s culture and communication. “Coach T and Bobby understood the heartbeat of an Emory kid. That helped groom me to end up with the Dodgers. We were trying to create a huge family and a role for everyone. At Emory, we always had a rallying cry, including a little plant one year we went to the World Series,” commented McGuiness, who saw the same thing in the major leagues. In 2019, we lost to the Nationals, who had their baby shark (outfielder Gerardo Parra's walk-up song) and in 2021, there was Joc Pederson and his pearl necklace. The Dodgers always leaned into being professional, not getting too high or too low, and I think that was our Achilles heel before this year.”
“Our players benefitted from Connor being with us, but his true impact was on the coaching staff. He may not have been here two full years, but he was here long enough to teach us things we didn’t know,” Picardo described. “People talked about being uncomfortable and getting out of your comfort zone to learn and our biggest growth came in that time learning things we had not even heard about before. Most importantly, he gave us a new way to think and to look at things. Now we always look to bring in coaches with that similar mindset, a growth mindset not afraid to try new things.”
Twardoski is not surprised at how quickly McGuiness has ascended the professional baseball ladder. “He went to A ball and worked his way up. He was very successful with those players and then had several guys at AA who kept moving up with him (including May and Gonsolin, who recently signed with the Dodgers for the 2025 season). He is such a motivator and is so good at teaching,” he remarked.
“It may have seemed pretty outlandish at the time for Connor to be hired when he was, but he has always possessed both great confidence and great humility to understand his role,” communicated Perez. “Connor was here when the Dodgers came through Atlanta in September. We had him come talk to the team and he sat in the locker room for an hour, and it was a great conversation. He joked that he couldn’t believe the Dodgers were going to hire him in 2016, but the truth is even back then, he was able to articulate the incredible things he knows about pitching.”
He believed the 2024 Dodgers and particularly their postseason mentality was more what he had seen in his Emory days and from other teams. “This was the first year that it felt like we had that kind of edge. Everyone was tired of hearing about 2020 (when the Dodgers won the World Series in a season shortened by COVID). We had different rallying cries this year,” he explained. “The veterans, especially Miguel Rojas, led that. It was my first postseason run where we weren’t focused on doing things ‘the Dodger way.’ We had much more of an edge and had brought in players with an edge like Teoscar (Hernandez). It was so much fun. Everything goes back to coaching D3 guys and finding ways to win. I am having the same conversations with a Kershaw or (Max) Scherzer (who played for the Dodgers in 2021), just with guys with more money in their bank accounts.”
Credits:
Photos courtesy of Connor McGuiness and Steve Saenz