How new Angels coach Bill Hezel went from analyzing retirement plans to pitchers

TEMPE, Ariz.  — There are a lot of things Phil Nevin likes about Bill Hezel. But one that stands out is his hair. The Angels manager has observed that whenever his assistant pitching coach takes off his hat, his hair remains perfectly kempt.

Last season, the Angels’ secondary pitching coach was Dom Chiti. A gruff baseball lifer. His look — with a thick white mustache — was old school. His replacement couldn’t be more different. Hezel, 28 years Chiti’s junior, was brought in as a modern baseball mind. Directly from the Driveline pipeline. An embodiment of the organizational shift the Angels’ front office is hoping to foster.

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And, most importantly, he has the clean-cut look to match.

“He’s been incredible. He really has,” Nevin said. “The difference he’s made, first off with the throwing programs — everybody came in and they’ve followed it all winter. The guys that were on it are stronger.

“You can see that people flock to him. He was a leader (at Driveline) and he’s done that here.”

Although I’m a free agent I wanted to share that I worked with Bill Hezel when I went up to driveline back in the 2020 off season. I have nothing but great things to say about him. He’s incredibly smart, knows the mechanical side and works his ass off. Halos got a great one.

— Ty Buttrey (@tybuttery) November 7, 2022

Hezel is the assistant pitching coach. But it appears as though his role is more important than it sounds. The 36-year-old was poached from Driveline, where he served as the director of pitching. It is considered a premier baseball development service and counts many high-profile major leaguers among its clientele.

It’s been a somewhat meteoric rise for Hezel. Less than five years ago, he was a retirement plan analyst and salesman for ADP. He worked a side job as a community college pitching coach on a volunteer basis.

Now he’s tasked with modernizing the Angels’ pitching strategies and improving velocities. He’s both a coach and an analyst, understanding pitching metrics better than anyone else in the dugout.

“Coming from the Astros, they were able to translate everything they had to the players. And I see a lot of that in Bill,” said Angels starter Patrick Sandoval, who worked with Hezel at Driveline. “It’s good. The guys are going to get a lot better here.”

Hezel was, by his own estimation, a bad pitcher. He made two appearances for Division I Lehigh University and had a 13.50 ERA before transferring to Division II East Stroudsburg University.

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He was good at that first job out of college, where he stayed for seven years. It was a cubicle job. He wore business attire. He worked a 9-to-5 for seven years, consulting on retirement plans. It was, as he said, not fun. But coaching was in his family’s blood — his dad is a longtime youth coach in Pennsylvania.

Hezel’s first coaching job was helping out his father. Then he got a job as a pitching coach at Northampton Community College. That role was unpaid, but he took it on in addition to his full-time work.

He’d drive from the office and change in his car. His vacation time was used during the team’s spring training trip to start the season. Every sick day went to baseball. Some days of hooky. Every sliver of time he could find, he would use coaching.

“I missed the competitive aspect of things,” Hezel said. “I missed the game. And I wanted an opportunity to give back to players. … It was trial by fire. I had no idea what I was doing that first year.”

But he got better, and eventually, Driveline became an incredible opportunity for Hezel. He got the job because he acted on a burgeoning interest in pitching analytics.

He came across a post from eventual Driveline founder Kyle Boddy, who had written a blog for Hardball Times. That post broke down the mechanics of the upcoming draft class.

It was different from how Hezel looked at pitching, and he liked it. He started introducing weighted balls, a Driveline signature, because of what he read from Boddy. Hezel started utilizing some analytics and Driveline methods in his small-time baseball program, then at DeSales University.

At the same time, he started promoting the work he was doing with his players on his social media. It caught the eye of Driveline, and the rest is history. He sold his house, quit his job and moved with his wife across the country.

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“I think if guys buy in and give Bill an opportunity, there’s some insights there that not everybody gets. He’s not the traditional pitching coach, I would say,” said longtime DeSales head coach Tim Neiman, who hired Hezel because he admired his forwarding-thinking approach at the community college level. “I think what the guys on the staff will be getting is a guy that’s absolutely committed to improving their numbers, improving their velocity, improving their spin on breaking balls. Understanding when those pitches are useful. When those pitches are getting swings-and-misses.

“I think that perspective (is) much different perhaps than your old-school guy like me.”

It wasn’t that Hezel wanted to move on from Driveline when he came to the Angels. But the job was just as much business as it was coaching. He was tasked with fixing some pitchers and improving others. But in the end, they’d be shipped off to their teams and his work was paused or completed.

Joining a major-league organization allowed him to be invested in the success of both the players and the team. He can now be a part of something bigger. Part of a team effort to do something special.

“Bill is a very talented individual. He’s worked with a lot of our pitchers before joining the club,” Angels general manager Perry Minasian said shortly after Hezel’s hire. Hezel has notably worked with Shohei Ohtani and Sandoval.

“Adding Bill to the mix, it’s a different outlook on things. He specializes in different things. I think it’s a great compliment to Matt.”

Angels pitching coach Matt Wise, who is now in his third season as the Angels’ pitching coach, definitely sees the difference from this year to last.

“Bill is obviously very versed in all the latest tech,” Wise said. “Which is something that really helps me out a lot. We’re still getting to know each other and how we’re going to operate in this relationship. I’ll spend more time with him than I will my wife in the next eight months.”

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For as bad as the Angels were last year — and a 73-89 record can’t be viewed as anything but bad — their pitching was good. They were No. 9 in ERA, No. 12 in WHIP, and third with 17 shutouts. There’s a foundation to build from, and Hezel came in and immediately wanted to learn about every pitcher in the organization.

It’s not just about coaching the big-league players. It’s about building a sustainable pitching staff.

Poaching a Driveline coach is in style these days. The Angels hired Connor Hinchliffe from Driveline a year prior. He was once hired by Hezel years prior. But just hiring people with analytical backgrounds doesn’t always translate if the culture and resources don’t back that organizational strategy up.

Thus far, Hezel is happy with the Angels and they’re happy with him. The transition has appeared seamless.

“You hear a lot about players that don’t want to access this data, or they don’t want to hear some of these things,” Hezel said. “Or too much of it is information overload. And there probably is some truth to that.

“But if a player feels like you’re invested in their success, as much as they are their own success, then it just really makes the communication a lot easier.”

(Photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)