Ep. 62 | Brent Kemnitz, Winningest Pitching Coach in D1 History

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley sits down with Brent Kemnitz, the winningest pitching coach in NCAA Division I history and now assistant athletic director for outreach and staff development at Wichita State University. Kemnitz was handed the Shocker pitchers on day one of his graduate assistant year, was running a Division I staff at 21, and is in his 47th year at the school.

The title started as a joke on himself in the middle of a 2007 speech: the only coach ahead of Gene Stephenson on the all-time wins list had employed several different pitching coaches, which left Kemnitz holding the distinction by default. Somebody did the research later and it held up.

He coached nine first-round draft picks and 19 pitchers who reached the big leagues, and almost none of this conversation is about velocity. It is about a head coach who empowered a 21-year-old, an approach built around what makes each pitcher work, and the case for playing catch the right way at every age.

The highlights:

• A 1982 staff with 46 complete games and three All-Americans on the weekend
• Why letting a closer keep his frogs and his backward hat was a coaching decision
• Gene Stephenson's habit of empowering people and handing over the keys
• The two questions he asked about a recruit before the game ever started
• Playing catch the proper way, from nine-year-olds to big leaguers
• Enjoy the journey, play every sport, and keep the little league mentality

Forty-Six Complete Games

In 1982, Kemnitz was a 25-year-old assistant with a senior-laden roster, and his staff finished the season with 46 complete games. He grew up on that version of the sport, a 1960s kid who knew every big league rotation and still wears No. 24 in a nod to Willie Mays.

Everything converged that year. The weekend rotation included the pitcher whose 51 career wins are still an NCAA record, a Tulsa product who would go to the Dodgers in the first round the following June one pick ahead of Roger Clemens, and a left-hander who went 18-2, was named college pitcher of the year, and was drafted fourth overall by the Twins one pick ahead of Dwight Gooden. Getting any of the three out of a game, Kemnitz says, was like a fistfight. In the New Orleans regional they threw three straight complete games and gave up one run in 27 innings.

The left-hander was the clearest coaching win of the bunch. He had struggled as a sophomore, arching off toward his glove side badly enough that the delivery looked backward for a lefty. They filmed it, worked on level shoulders and hips, and he threw all fall and winter until it took.

"You recruit really good pitchers, and all of a sudden you're a really good pitching coach."

Letting a Free Spirit Be a Free Spirit

Three brothers from the same family came through the program, starting with a bullpen arm on the national championship team who was not overpowering but could throw three pitches for a strike. The second was Jamie Bluma, a short-armed, deceptive closer who kept frogs and lizards in the bullpen and warmed up with his hat on backwards before turning it around on his way to the mound. Scouts asked why an old-school coach allowed it. Kemnitz gave them the answer he had given Bluma directly.

"You want to know why it's entertaining that you warm up with your hat on backwards? Because you never blow a save. The minute the results aren't there, everybody's going to think you're a bad teammate."

The free spirit, he adds, was also a great teammate. Ross knows him from the other side: years later he turned up at a men's league game in Kansas and realized the pitcher dealing out there was the Shocker closer he had grown up watching in the College World Series.

Gene Stephenson, and Being Empowered at 21

Kemnitz puts Stephenson on the Mount Rushmore of college baseball alongside Gary Ward, Ron Fraser, and Cliff Gustafson. He kept the final say on pulling a pitcher but generally went with his pitching coach, and as a program builder he pushed the sport forward — the intense, respectful rivalry with Oklahoma State in the early 80s was good for all of college baseball.

What stands out most is that Stephenson never held him back. Kemnitz had his own radio show and his own pitching camp as an assistant, at a time when plenty of head coaches would have insisted those belong to them; Stephenson's response was that if it promoted the program, go do it. He was a pitching coach at 21, living in the dorm with players older than he was, with free rein over the arms.

"He empowered you. There were high expectations, you better have a crazy work ethic, and we better win."

Enjoy the Journey

Asked whether he ever sits back and takes stock, Kemnitz says the honest answer is yes now, and no chance while he was coaching. He coordinated recruiting for more than three decades, which meant constantly feeding the monster and living up to the expectations that come with seven trips to Omaha.

"When you're coaching, I don't think you enjoy the journey."

Enjoying it is now the centerpiece of every talk he gives, including a recent one to a little league team. What stuck with him from the coaching years turned out to be the relationships rather than the record — old rivals included. A few years ago he heard a longtime Oklahoma State adversary tell a broadcast audience that they were not allowed to like each other in the 80s, but they really did.

How Wichita State Got Good and Stayed Good

His own path started in small-town Oklahoma. He played American Legion ball in Stillwater, went to Phillips University, and in the fall of his senior year accepted that pro ball was not happening, so he began handwriting letters to programs about graduate school. One of the head coaches he wrote to sent a handwritten note back suggesting he add Wichita State, because a school that had just hired Gene Stephenson was clearly serious.

Stephenson then answered a letter from a small-college pitcher he had no reason to answer and treated him, in Kemnitz's words, like a rock star. That attention to detail became the template, and so did the recruiting method: Stephenson handed his 21-year-old assistant a list of roughly a hundred pro scouts and told him to figure out whose word carried the most weight. The rest was work ethic and in-person evaluation of athletes who could run, because speed does not go into a slump.

No Cookie-Cutter Approach

Kemnitz is known as a mental-side coach and takes pride in it, but he is quick to say mechanics matter just as much. The physical non-negotiables were simple: be under control, get to a good balance position, throw downhill, finish online. How a pitcher got there was his own business, and he would pull up footage of big leaguers who looked nothing alike to prove it. On the mental side, parents would ask what his style was, and the answer never changed.

"My style is what's going to make your son work."

Some pitchers needed what he calls the hug-you-and-love-you approach; others had to be pushed hard. Running an individualized program was harder than making everyone conform, and he considered that the job.

Evaluating a Pitcher

Velocity mattered for a coach with nine first-rounders, but it was rarely where he started. He wanted to know how the arm worked, whether there was capacity for command and pitchability, and what the makeup looked like. A power arm that could not throw strikes was a red flag, because that is hard to correct at 21 or 22.

Often his mind was made up before the first pitch. When somebody recommended a player he asked two questions — how is he as a student, and is he a good teammate — then showed up early to see who was firing the team up and who was dragging in late. He preferred game settings to showcases, and found pitchers easier to read than hitters, who might walk three times and leave you guessing.

Play Catch the Proper Way

Ask Kemnitz what matters most and he starts with catch play, the same way he starts his speeches. Thumb underneath, two fingers on top, cross-seam grip so the ball comes out true and clean with no slider or screwball spin. Stay behind it, get it out on the fingertips, and it carries better and is easier to command. Step toward your partner instead of jumping, keep hips, shoulders, and eyes level, get a good front side, and finish.

"If I was speaking to a big league team, it'd be the exact same speech."

He sees lazy catch at every level, including the highest one, and considers it the fastest way to build bad habits. He also wants it to be fun: put the glove up and make each other hit a spot. And it is not a pitcher's drill — catchers, shortstops, and outfielders all live or die by the same fundamental.

Advice for the Next Generation

His message for a room full of middle school and high school players is that the fundamentals have to be taught, but that a game nobody enjoys will bleed people out of the sport.

For coaches and parents: the goal is a player who cannot wait to get to the park on a 102-degree July day. Kemnitz calls it little league mentality: the bike, the glove on the handlebars, a baseball card in the spokes, and no awareness that a bad hop is a bad hop because you have never seen a good one. Analytics have their place, he says, and it is possible to go too far with them; the instruction he keeps returning to is not to lose the simple. He is equally firm about multi-sport athletes, and says he and Stephenson told recruits to keep playing football and basketball, because learning to compete under Friday night pressure carries over.

Sixties Radio and Giving Back

Kemnitz has a standing Tuesday morning radio segment in Wichita, and the host picks walk-up music for it. The day of this recording it was the Doobie Brothers' "The Doctor," released the same year the Shockers won the national championship. His first concert was Three Dog Night, and his tastes still run to the 60s and 70s with detours into Charley Pride, Alan Jackson, and George Strait. The music has a practical use, too: it gets him through three minutes in a cryotherapy chamber every Sunday.

Given the last word, he lands on the people who gave him a start: his Legion pitching coach in Stillwater, the college coach who wrote his recommendation, and his little league coach in Perry, Oklahoma. Almost everyone smiles when asked to name their little league coach, he points out, and that is the whole point. He still returns calls from young people trying to get into sports, and still picks up the phone instead of emailing, which tends to surprise them.

Episode Timestamps

Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.

• 0:00 — Introduction
• 0:36 — Where the winningest-pitching-coach title came from
• 3:12 — The 1989 title and the 1991 play at the plate
• 5:13 — Forty-six complete games in 1982
• 6:30 — A 25-year-old pitching coach with three All-Americans
• 9:53 — Three complete games in the New Orleans regional
• 12:04 — The Bluma brothers, and letting a free spirit be himself
• 15:19 — Gene Stephenson and the Mount Rushmore of college baseball
• 18:51 — A pitching coach at 21, and a head coach who empowered him
• 21:10 — Enjoy the journey
• 24:22 — Why Wichita State was good for so long
• 25:46 — The handwritten letter that pointed him to Wichita
• 29:27 — No cookie-cutter approach, and what makes each guy work
• 33:46 — Two questions before he ever watches a kid play
• 36:05 — Playing catch the proper way
• 38:46 — Advice for the next generation
• 41:03 — Little league mentality and playing every sport
• 43:22 — Music from the 60s and 70s
• 47:10 — Give back, build relationships, and pick up the phone

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Brent Kemnitz is the assistant athletic director for outreach and staff development at Wichita State University, where he spent nearly four decades as pitching coach and is the winningest pitching coach in NCAA Division I history. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.