Since taking over as the pitching coach/guru/director for the Cincinnati Reds, the club has consistently established itself as a pitching-first organization that’s earned quite the bit of respect around
the league.
They’ve drafted well in that time, too. Adding the likes of Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Andrew Abbott, Rhett Lowder, Chase Burns, Tony Santillan, Graham Ashcraft, and Lyon Richardson, among others, has helped build a staff from within, and identifying pitchers like Connor Phillips, Chase Petty, and Brandon Williamson as targets from other organizations has helped build up some pretty enviable depth.
What Johnson’s tenure has also produced is a lot of promotions for the coaches that coach alongside him. Caleb Cotham took over as pitching coach for the Philadelphia Phillies several years back and has helped build that staff into perhaps the one consistently better (with more resources) than that of Cincinnati. Alon Leichman got plucked away by the Miami Marlins after serving as Cincinnati’s assistant pitching coach, Eric Jagers now serves as director of pitching development for the New York Mets after a tenure assisting Johnson.
You can now add Simon Mathews to the list of guys who broke in helping Johnson with the Reds who’ve gotten promoted elsewhere. The Washington Nationals took to Bluesky this afternoon to announce that Mathews, 30, will be their next pitching coach.
Mathews, in case you weren’t already aware, pitched in college for both the Temple Owls and Georgetown Hoyas. He went undrafted following his big league career’s end in 2017, but pitched for a trio of years across the minors in the Los Angeles Angels system, eventually reaching the AAA level for a trio of games during the 2019 season.
After the lost 2020 minor league season, he went to work for Driveline before eventually working his way up through the Reds organization for four seasons prior to his work at the big league level last year. Obviously, the former Georgetown Hoya now gets to call the DC area home again with this move.
All the best to him in every game except those against the Reds going forward.
