Menhart hopes to make quick difference after "emotional" call

PHILADELPHIA - Paul Menhart was walking his Australian Shepherd Husky Mix, Gracie, at home in Richmond Hill, Ga., three days ago when Nationals assistant general manager Doug Harris called.

Menhart and Harris have worked together for years as two key members of the organization's minor league operation, and they kid around with each other plenty. So when Harris explained why he was calling, Menhart at first thought this might be a joke.

Menhart was supposed to fly to West Palm Beach the next morning and try to help straighten out reliever Trevor Rosenthal. Harris told him to cancel the flight, which surprised Menhart, the club's minor league pitching coordinator.

Then Harris told Menhart he was going to be the Nationals' new big league pitching coach.

"And I just went: 'Whoa, Doug. Don't be messing with me,'" Menhart recalled today with a laugh. "And he goes: 'No.' Because we have that kind of relationship. It was emotional."

So it was that Menhart, who made 41 mostly nondescript appearances for the Blue Jays, Mariners and Padres in the mid-'90s, learned he was returning to the majors as the new pitching coach of the Nationals.

It's a job Menhart admittedly had always aspired to hold, but not one he expected to be given right now, not 30 games into a season. But when Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez made the decision this week to fire Derek Lilliquist, the person they wanted to take over a difficult situation on the fly was Menhart, the 50-year-old pitching guru who has spent the last 14 years working with every pitcher in the organization in just about every role.

"When he was one of the names mentioned, I thought right away - because of the history he has with our guys - that he'd be a good fit," Martinez said. "And to keep it in-house right now was really important for me."

Menhart said his preexisting knowledge and relationship with just about everyone on the current big league staff will help make this transition easier. But it's still going to be a transition, in a high-pressure situation, trying to help right a wayward Nationals pitching staff that has contributed to the team's 13-17 start.

"I'm not going in blind, so that's the good thing," Menhart said. "To have prior relationships with these guys is only going to benefit all of us. It's just a matter now of hearing something that they may have heard differently coming out of my mouth. And hopefully moving forward they get better as we try to do at every level. Big league guys need to get better, too. That's what's going to be the focus."

Nationals pitchers, who all say they were caught off guard when they learned about the change after Thursday's 2-1 win over the Cardinals, now must learn how to work with another new pitching coach only a year-plus after learning Lilliquist.
Familiarity with Menhart helps, but it still takes actual experience in the heat of the major league season.

"I've never dealt with a pitching coach change in the middle of the season, so this is something that's going to be new for me," said Max Scherzer, who threw his between-starts bullpen session today with Menhart alongside. "The only thing here is with Paul, I worked with him in spring training, so he knows kind of the basics of what I want to do. Now it's trying to get him on the same page of what I want to do in the season."

Menhart, who embraces analytics, also preaches a simple pitching philosophy that has stood the test of time.

"I'm a big believer in getting guys out as quickly as possible," he said. "Three or four pitches or less. I think that's something we've got to incorporate a little better. Attacking the zone and forcing people to hit the ball softly. A wise man told me that's the job of a pitcher. And it's something that I've tried to teach all of the pitching coaches down in the minor leagues and moving up to this level. Don't lose that fight, that ability to challenge hitters."

Nationals pitchers will try to find a balance between that mindset and the built-in approaches they've already been using each time they take the mound. That process starts tonight, at the outset of a 10-game road trip through Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Los Angeles that could become a make-or-break stretch for a team trying to fix major problems mid-stream.

"For me, I know the task I have on hand and what I need to do, and just try to get on same on page," Scherzer said. "For me, (catchers Yan Gomes and Kurt Suzuki) and I, we're really going to have to get on the same page even quicker than we even thought when you have something like this. We've been doing a good job of working together so far. It takes time, but now we really have an onus to really get on the same page."