Brent Strom’s influence on the winningest era in Astros history extends beyond the Cy Young Awards, the reclamation projects, all the learned breaking balls and the routinely high strikeout totals.
It also includes all of the pitching coaches he mentored, especially the two who’ve succeeded him after he left the Astros at the expiration of his contract last fall and joined the Diamondbacks.
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With Josh Miller and Bill Murphy as their co-pitching coaches, the Astros believe they can continue the run of excellence that began under Strom, their lead pitching coach for the previous eight seasons. And while the absence of Strom’s big personality and seemingly boundless energy are unmistakable, the team’s pitching program and processes have appeared to keep rolling in spring training.
“I feel like the transition has been incredibly smooth,” Astros set-up man Ryne Stanek said. “I feel like there is such a good job done here and such a good emphasis put on making each player’s strengths better. So the philosophy never really changed. Obviously, Strommy’s really good at his job. But the ability to keep the continuity that we already had here I feel like is more of a factor than anything. … It stays very streamlined in approach and thought process. Weirdly, it feels the same even though he’s not here. It feels very similar to what we had last year.”
The continuity stems from both Miller and Murphy being on the major-league staff with Strom last season as part of a pitching guru triumvirate. Miller, the Astros’ bullpen coach in 2019 and 2020, actually held the title of pitching coach last season, same as Strom, while still coaching in the bullpen during games. Murphy was the assistant pitching coach and stationed in the dugout.
During conversations last season about Strom’s future, Astros general manager James Click said Strom was adamant that Miller and Murphy were ready to take over and were deserving of the opportunity. After Strom decided to leave, the Astros removed the assistant qualifier from Murphy’s title and elevated him to co-pitching coach. The plan, according to Click, is for Murphy to be the one who coaches out of the bullpen this season and Miller to be in the dugout with manager Dusty Baker.
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“I think one of the things that made Strommy so good and such a great leader and such a great coach is that he empowered everyone around him,” Click said. “He involved everyone around him. And so he leaned, to my eyes, very heavily on Josh and Murph throughout last year especially and certainly before that. So they have gotten the experience that they needed to be able to step into these roles without missing a beat.”
Both Miller, 43, and Murphy, 32, came up as coaches with the Astros in the minor leagues when the then-Jeff Luhnow-led organization put itself at the forefront of leveraging data and technology in an individualized approach to pitcher development. Their working together “is something that comes really, really naturally,” Miller said. Their relationship dates to 2016, when Miller was the Astros’ complex pitching coordinator (essentially the No. 2 minor-league pitching coordinator) and Murphy was just starting out as the pitching coach for the team’s now-defunct rookie-level Greeneville (Tenn.) affiliate. As he does Strom, Murphy considers Miller to be a mentor.
Miller ascended to becoming the Astros’ primary minor-league pitching coordinator in 2018. When he was promoted to be major-league bullpen coach in 2019, Murphy was the young coach the team tabbed to succeed Miller as coordinator. Think of any of the slew of homegrown pitchers on the Astros right now and it’s safe to say Miller, Murphy or both played a role in their development. And then any Astros reliever who has been with the team in the last three seasons has spent a lot of time during games with Miller, who lefty reliever Blake Taylor described as “like the dad of the bullpen.”
“They’ve been behind the scenes and nobody’s really seen it (on the outside), but they’ve been around and they know what they’re doing,” Astros closer Ryan Pressly said of Miller and Murphy. “We still have all of the faith and trust in them. It’s just ‘pick up where we left off last year.'”
Strom was often lauded for his ability to wed the old school and the new school, to combine lessons from his experiences as a major-league pitcher with an open-mindedness to new ideas and the influx of data and technology in baseball. The Luhnow-era Astros aligned their minor-league pitcher development strategies with how Strom and their analysts approached pitching strategy in the majors, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Miller and Murphy try to coach with similar thought processes and objective reasoning.
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Miller and Murphy are both fluent in the Astros’ way but differed in their backgrounds. Miller has the perspective of someone who has lived the life of a pitcher grinding through the minor leagues and independent ball for about a decade. Murphy didn’t play beyond college but is so adept at the new-age elements of the job that he is like a data/video analyst and coach in one.
“There’s a good complement there,” Miller said. “But I feel like we both have a good understanding of how to deal with people and a similar method of caring, being compassionate and taking all of that into the equation.”
Josh Miller has worked for the Astros since 2011, has been a pitching coach in their system since 2013 and has been on their major-league coaching staff since 2019. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)Miller has worked for the Astros since 2011 (the final season of Ed Wade’s GM tenure) when he began his post-playing career as a pro scout. As a player, he topped out in Triple A. A native of Melbourne Beach, Fla., he was a 32nd-round draft pick of the Phillies in 2001 out of North Carolina State. Miller threw a ton of strikes but didn’t throw hard and lacked a major-league quality put-away pitch, which exposed the righty in the upper minors against left-handed batters. He was released by the Phillies in the spring of 2004. The Astros signed him out of the Atlantic League in 2005, and he remained with them in Double A and Triple A through 2008. Two more years of indy ball and even a stint in Taiwan followed before he called it quits.
Miller knew he wanted to stay in baseball. He did not know exactly in which capacity. He sent his resume to any decision-maker for whom he could find an email address in the hopes of landing a job with a team, be it in an office, as a scout, in coaching or whatever else was needed. His time with the Astros as a player gave him an in with them, and they were the first team to interview him. He took the scouting job and did it for two seasons before taking a pay cut to move to the coaching side.
“I liked pro scouting. I thought I was pretty good at it,” Miller said. “But I wanted to be more influential, more part of it. As a scout, you feel like you’re alone on an island.”
Beginning at rookie-level Greeneville in 2013, Miller coached his way through the minors. He grew as a coach as the Astros grew as an organization. His early years coincided with the beginning of the team’s foray into incorporating the likes of TrackMan data and Edgertronic high-speed video cameras into its player development processes, which is now commonplace.
Murphy’s introduction to analytics and technology in baseball came through his own research, which was then expanded when he joined the Astros. A native of Cranford, N.J., Murphy pitched at Rutgers, where he got his degree in psychology in three and a half years and played first base at Wagner College (N.Y.) for his final season of eligibility while working toward an MBA. Around this time, he also helped coach at his high school alma mater and realized coaching was the path he wanted to pursue when he was finished school. He coached in the Cal Ripken League, got a volunteer position at Georgetown and then landed an assistant coaching job at Brown. While at Brown, he stumbled upon a job posting by the Astros via Twitter. A fellow Brown assistant encouraged him to apply, and before he knew it he was hired.
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Murphy shot through the Astros’ system after his 2016 season at Greeneville and his 2017 at short-season Tri-City. He moved up to be the pitching coach at Double-A Corpus Christi for 2018 before he was chosen to succeed Miller as the minor-league pitching coordinator in 2019 and then promoted to the majors in 2021. In explaining such a rapid rise, Miller said Murphy has “a super smart, genius-level understanding of things that we value and (is) a tireless worker that is willing to do whatever. He’s just a great person and he cares a ton and he knows his stuff.”
“There’s not a day that goes by that I take this for granted,” Murphy said. “I realize that this could end quicker than it ever started and you never get this opportunity again. When I first got the job with the Houston Astros in 2016, I never thought I’d coach in professional baseball, let alone be in the major leagues in this position.”
The Astros’ decision to have Murphy get his feet wet as the third pitching coach on the major-league staff last season looked prescient when Strom announced after the World Series he would not return, especially given how the lockout shut down offseason communications between players and coaches. Even with the disruptions caused by the labor spat and the shortened preparation time for the regular season, the day-to-day rhythms of Astros spring training have been largely consistent with past springs. Pitchers are on similar programs and have similar things communicated to them as before. The familiarity and pre-existing relationships between the pitchers, Miller and Murphy are why the transition has looked so seamless.
“They’re both incredibly prepared, borderline overprepared because they take a lot of pride in their job and they know obviously with Strommy gone there are some shoes to fill,” Stanek said. “I think if we’re going to lose somebody like Strommy, the best people to replace him are here.”
(Top photo of Bill Murphy, left, and Josh Miller watching pitcher Phil Maton: Jake Kaplan / The Athletic)
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