January 14, 2008
Podres Passes
Via Baseball Think Factory, Johnny Podres died on Sunday. He had a fine career and is known best for pitching the Dodgers to a World Series title in 1955. In six series starts, he posted a 2.11 ERA.
He also made his mark as a pitching coach:
Podres was essentially a three-pitch pitcher - fastball, curveball and changeup - all of which, Zimmer said, were exceptional. He is credited with being one of the greatest masters of the changeup, having taught it to dozens of pitchers, including Curt Schilling and Frank Viola, in later years as a pitching coach with the Red Sox, Twins and Phillies. As a pitching coach, Podres was strictly old school, scoffing at pitch counts, and that was probably the result of having hurled 77 complete games himself. In 1993, he took a Phillies staff that had ranked last in the National League in ERA the previous year to the World Series.
The Phillies ERA only dropped a few points, from 4.11 to 3.95, but with the surge in offense in 1993, that drop was good enough to rank the Phillies sixth in ERA.
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Posted by David Pinto at
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re: Johnny Pods Podres Passes Away Jan 2008
There were two whole pages in the Philly Daily News today on this, including an emotional and long column by Bill Conlin, whose dad knew Johnny Podres in Brooklyn and whose son was a Phillies minor league pitcher coached by Podres during his cup of coffee in the bigs.
Johnny Podres was always a legend to me, due to my reading about him in the Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn, where he assumed monumental proportions for pitching the Brooklyn Dodgers to their only world championships over the dreaded Yankees in that 2-0 shutout victory in Game 7 in 1955, the game saved by the Sandy Amoros catch.
Podres was the first World Series MVP, a fact he duly noted on his personalized license plate.
But Podres the pitching coach was something altogether different and better. He took projects, rejects of other organizations--guys like Schilling who had been rejected by THREE other teams, Tommy Greene, who was jettisoned by the vaunted Atlanta Braves, Terry Mulholland, a journeyman, Danny Jackson, who was thought to be over the hill by the KC Royals, and he turned that staff into winners--
winners that only beat the Atlanta Braves in the 1993 NL Playoffs. How good was the Phillies pitching staff? Well, they beat three guys named Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz. Last time I checked, all three are going into the Hall of Fame, and last time I checked, that was the greatest starting rotation in baseball history. The 1993 Phillies, throwing the change-ups that Podres taught them, baffled and buffaloed their way past the Braves and their outstanding pitching staff in six games flat--and almost pulled off the upset of the Monster Blue Jays, who had leveled the Braves in five games in 1992, but were stretched to six games by the Phils, and would have lost in six but for Mitch Williams blowing two saves in Games Four and Six (including the Joe Carter game and series ender).
You can talk about all your great pitchers and all your great pitching coaches. The greatest one game performance by a pitcher was Johnny Podres in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series. The greatest pitching coach performance, season, was 1993 Phillies by Johnny Podres, pitching coach.
He was and always will be my pitching hero.
And whenever life expects you to throw the fast ball, change speeds and throw the change. It's always your best pitch. It's surely what Pods would have done.
--art kyriazis, philly
