'It's all about care and love': Brewers coach Chris Hook pushes his pitchers to reach elite standard

There were many who were upset when Derek Johnson tendered his resignation as Milwaukee Brewers pitching coach after the 2018 season.

And that was probably to be expected, as Johnson did an outstanding job over three years to help lay the groundwork for a staff that had developed from a liability into a strength.

But internally, the Brewers knew full well their blossoming staff would remain in good hands.

That was because of the presence of Chris Hook, an organizational success story who’d coached at several levels in Milwaukee’s minor-league system and was just coming off his first year as pitching coordinator.

“Anytime there's a change there's probably some level of discomfort,” recalled Brewers general manager Matt Arnold, who was serving as right-hand man to David Stearns during the changeover. “But honestly, you couldn't find a more seamless transition than by going with Chris Hook.”

Hook was officially hired to replace Johnson on Nov. 19, 2018, not long after the Brewers had been eliminated by the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.

Several of the young arms that played roles in helping get Milwaukee to the precipice of its second World Series appearance – notably Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Freddy Peralta – had been tutored by Hook during their ascent up the minor-league ladder.

In 2019 they would form the heart of the opening-day starting rotation. And while there certainly have been bumps along the way, that trio is now widely considered among the best in the major leagues, with a bullpen to match.

All throughout, the constant has been Hook – coach, evaluator, motivator, numbers cruncher, father figure and anything else his guys need.

“Chris was a guy that had been here and was part of the foundation for a lot of these players,” Arnold said. “He got to know these guys when they were minor-leaguers and now they've come up and he's continued to have success with them.

“He's been wonderful to work with, and I think he's just an incredible asset for our franchise."

Hook pitched in the major leagues

Hook, 55, was born in San Diego, the son of a Navy man, but moved to the greater Cincinnati area as a youngster.

He went on to pitch at Lloyd Memorial High School in Erlanger, Kentucky, and then Northern Kentucky University. Hook went undrafted but signed as a free agent with the Cincinnati Reds in June 1989.

In five years at four levels topping out at Class AA, Hook compiled a 44-24 record and 3.27 earned run average in 143 appearances (78 starts).

"Stuff-wise, it wasn't great," Hook recalled. "I could pitch a little bit. I just think I was very fortunate, is what I think. I just competed enough, I guess, to stick around. I was a decent minor-league pitcher. Just a middle reliever, long reliever talent-wise, just looking at it."

At the end of spring training in 1994, the Reds traded Hook to the San Francisco Giants.

"What I heard when I got traded was Bob Quinn, the GM, had seen over the course of my career that I was a winner. I won everywhere I went and those stats don't lie. There is something to that. And that was one of the reasons they got me."

Hook pitched all of 1994 at Class AAA Phoenix and then early in the 1995 season made his major-league debut. He went on to post a 5-1 record, 5.50 ERA and WHIP of 1.61 in 45 appearances that year.

"Dusty (Baker) put me in every extra-inning game we had," Hook said. "I'd give up a line drive, we'd make a great play, I'd win the game."

Hook's second stint with San Francisco in 1996 didn't go as well: 0-1, 7.43 ERA, WHIP of 2.25 in 10 outings.

He moved on to the San Diego Padres organization in 1997, then bounced to the Angels, and back and forth again between the Giants and Astros – stints that Hook recalled as "terrible."

After one final season in the independent leagues in 1999, and then with a young son (Christian, followed later by Brennan), Hook called it quits.

"I look back at it and I just really believed in myself," Hook said. "That's where I think I can empathize with some of these guys. There were times where it was like, 'Man, I don't know what I'm doing here.'

"It was difficult. I just really wasn't that talented. Your will only takes you so far. And it was that era, too, where guys were getting some help and doing things that probably helped them. I probably needed to do that to stick around a little bit longer.

"But I scrapped and clawed, and learned a lot along the way. I'm proud of the fact that I fought my way there."

Following his playing days, Hook reinvents himself

In 1997, Hook and his wife, Toni – both computer lovers – created a website called "At The Yard" with the idea to have one player from every organization write about their experiences as ballplayers.

Hook jumped into the venture fully once he was finished pitching. It lasted a few years and eventually morphed into another venture producing minor-league baseball content and selling hats.

Hook was also running a baseball workout facility he'd opened and was on the staff of his former coach at Northern Kentucky, Bill Aker, as pitching coach.

It was a role Hook served in unofficially when he was still pitching himself.

"I would come back to Northern Kentucky in the offseason and work out with the guys," Hook said. "I don't know, man. I don't know why. But it just would get me juiced up.

"Oh my god. Even when I was still playing, it really made me very excited to be involved. Help a guy's delivery, whatever it was.

"That's the kind of feeling I had even back then."

Then as luck would have it, a Frontier League team, the Florence Freedom, moved into Hook's backyard. He served as the Freedom's pitching coach from 2003-07.

"The thought wasn't like, 'Hey, I'm going to go back to affiliated ball.' I thought this was my next progression, learning and coaching," Hook said. "This was professional, it was minutes from my home and I'm like, 'This fits.'"

It was in 2007, with some experience now under his belt, that Hook reached an inflection point.

"I kind of decided like, 'You know what? I'm doing all of these things, still involved with the magazine, I have my own training facility, coaching. But I think I'm best at (coaching).' So, I kind of went all in," he said. "I sent résumés out to everybody. I just kind of casted out and hoped.

"Nothing really happened at first."

Hook joins the Brewers organization

Then, in a weird stroke of luck, Hook received two job offers in the same day, one from the Houston Astros and the other from the Brewers.

"I chose the Brewers because it was a Double-A assignment," said Hook, who then took over the pitching at the Brewers' then-affiliate, Huntsville. The most notable hurler there at the time? Jeremy Jeffress.

"What a challenge. A lot of work back then," Hook said. "Our internal system was a lot of manual inputting. I'd spend 45 minutes on the game review, then I did all the video. It was challenging because it was my first time in affiliated baseball, but then with all the other stuff, too.

"At the end of that year, man, I was like, 'Whoa, this was a lot.' But it was really good for me. I was like, 'This is it.'"

Hook was sent to then-Class A Wisconsin from 2009-11 before returning to the Class AA level, first at Huntsville and then in 2015 when Biloxi became a Brewers affiliate.

It was in 2015 that Hook's path crossed with the first of the next wave of Milwaukee pitching in Josh Hader and Adrian Houser, both of whom had been acquired in the deadline deal that sent Carlos Gomez to the Houston Astros.

Woodruff was next to Biloxi in 2016, followed by Burnes in 2017.

In 2018, Hook was promoted to minor-league pitching coordinator, a title he shared with Mark Dewey. It was a role that enabled him to work with Woodruff, Burnes and Peralta (all of whom spent time at Class AAA Colorado Springs that year), Houser (back at Biloxi after returning from Tommy John surgery) and Devin Williams (pitching at Class A Carolina after returning from Tommy John surgery).

And it was around that time the feeling was that the tide was finally beginning to turn in what had for decades been a pitching-poor organization with only occasional positive breakthroughs.

"I was there for a lot of that," Hook said. "The (Kyle) Heckathorns, the (Eric) Arnetts. (Jake) Odorizzi, Wily Peralta – I had all these guys, and it was a little bit sparse. I thought when we got Woodruff, Burnes, Houser, Hader, Freddy, that started to backload some of that a little bit. That pipe is getting full, right? And then those guys were all together and kind of came up together.

"I thought that's when we kind of started shoving it in there with Hader and Houser, and then we had Freddy coming and then Woody was there when he was starting to get his feet on the ground and understand what he was. And then Burnes added on. And it's like, "OK, there's some momentum building here.' And you can kind of see that. Then they went to Triple-A together at Colorado Springs.

"So yeah, that's when we started feeling it."

And following the 2018 season, Hook found himself back in the majors, this time leading a staff that, in time, would end up forming the foundation of a Brewers team that had completely flipped the script from trying to out-hit opponents to trying to shut them down instead.

"I guess my focus was trying to help develop as many big-leaguers as I could," Hook said. "That was the goal. I had my particular way of doing things and the vision of what I thought a big-leaguer was, and I was just going to try to do that as best as I could and create as many big-league pitching prospects as I could.

"Nowadays, I think coaches or people come into an organization and they want to move quickly. Would I have loved to move quickly through the organization? Sure. But that wasn't the goal. It was just do the best job I can, and, 'Hopefully someone will recognize it along the way,' kind of thing."

Hook settles in with the Brewers, excels

The familiarity between Hook and his charges made the transition seamless.

Sure, there were ups and downs. Burnes hit rock bottom in 2019 before rebounding and winning the Cy Young Award in the National League in 2021. Woodruff has alternated between lengthy injury absences and dominance. It took a long time for Peralta to consistently tap into his immense talent. Houser has, for the most part, been a grinder.

This season, the foursome helped set the tone for a Milwaukee staff that led the majors in ERA (3.71) and opponents' batting average (.226) and finished second in WHIP behind only the Tampa Bay Rays at 1.19.

And since Hook took over in 2019, Milwaukee's pitchers lead the majors in strikeouts with 6,684.

"I think that he's a huge part of this," Peralta said.

Having the type of physical talent that Hook has at his disposal can make his job appear somewhat easy. But clearly he is quite adept at more than just offering the occasional pointer or noting a slight mechanical flaw.

"Chris was a major-league pitcher that has almost, like, the mind of an engineer, if that makes sense," Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. "He likes to figure out the 'whys' of things. He asks great questions. He's a very good listener. And he's just got this humility, I think, that lets him be a great listener.

"And so, that gets him to answers and to where he's truly in a place to just help our pitchers. Every pitching coach has his own style. And everybody's a little different from that perspective. But I think the way Chris approaches it, he kind of just lets the pitchers have a voice."

Woodruff agreed.

"What makes him special is he's able to blend the eye test with the numbers," said Woodruff, who is now dealing with injury again as Counsell announced Monday the right-hander would miss at least the wild-card series with a shoulder injury. "And it's hard to do that and get the message across. The biggest thing is he's a good communicator, easy to talk to. He's been there the whole way (with us).

"The biggest thing is like, you look at him and it's not like your boss in a way where you don't want to step on toes, it's an honest conversation."

Burnes, meanwhile, shies away from analytics and numbers in-season, instead preferring to pitch by feel. Accordingly, Hook works with him in that manner.

"Obviously, when you're around someone that long you learn how to connect with them and you learn how to talk to them," Burnes said. "So I think that's why he's been good with a lot of us that have been around him for a while.

"And then he just does a good job of learning about guys, and whether it's acquiring or calling them up now, he just does his due diligence and he really has an understanding of what they're trying to do on the mound."

The longtime relationship between Hook and his charges means Hook also knows how best to motivate each individual.

"He knows you so well," Peralta said. "If you do something wrong, if you are not having your best day, he knows right away. If you get a little tighter he's going to know because he sees you and know you. He yells at me. I know that probably he wouldn't yell at Woody because he's different.

"So, I like when he comes to the mound like, 'Hey, you can do this! You know who you are!' I like that."

So, how would Hook describe his coaching style?

No question, Hook is beloved for who he is and all he's done within the organization.

But how would he describe his coaching style to those who only see his occasional slow walks to the mound, during which he keeps his mouth covered with his hand and rarely changes expression?

"The best way to say it is player-centric. It's all about them, right?" Hook said. "And knowing that I deeply care about them and I want them to have success. I hope that I bring some positive energy while I'm doing that – player-centric with some energy – and knowing that this game is so hard, I press on them when I need to press on them.

"But it's all about care and love. And pushing them and nudging them to be a little bit better every day. I guess that's the best way to put it."

Day to day, in addition to working alongside bullpen coach Jim Henderson and associate pitching, catching and strategy coach Walker McKinven on the nuts and bolts like game planning, Hook is also watching video and eyeing the analytics.

And while not quantifiable but just as important, Hook is trying to continue the culture of excellence that has been established and will be expected to carry on when the next generation arrives in Milwaukee.

"I guess the best way to put it is maintaining the standard that we've set," he said. "The way we go about it is set up in spring training and it's kept throughout the season. If it's the throwing program, if it's controlling counts during the game, if it's you staying behind your four-seamer to make it the best – it's a standard. This is what the expectation is, and it's up to me to set the standard for everybody that works in our system.

"It's a culture that has a really elite standard that everybody's trying to reach every day. I want to bring energy to that. I want to make sure that I can tell you, 'Hey, that's not good enough.' It's all the small things that stack up, but it's the standard of excellence.

"And if we create that elite behavior, then we get the elite results, right? That's kind of what we're looking for."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook sets a high standard