Dedicated learner, teacher Nasiatka rising through Dodgers' ranks

Jun. 22—Brandon Boren and Dylan Nasiatka, former Stockdale baseball teammates, like to spend time golfing together, at least when Nasiatka isn't trekking across the country as a minor league hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Boren said, however, that Nasiatka's work is never truly done. One day on the course, he noticed his friend watching videos of Dominican hitters between holes. And as every good coach should, Nasiatka wanted to offer points of advice. Apparently as quickly as possible.

"He'd be filming himself giving feedback between shots," Boren said.

It's this round-the-clock work ethic, and an encyclopedic knowledge of hitting mechanics, that colleagues say has allowed Nasiatka to reach the minor leagues and move up in the ranks.

"He's just engulfed in it," said Boren, now the baseball coach at Frontier.

The signs of a coach-in-the-making were apparent from Nasiatka's days as a catcher at Stockdale, when he got a job at Taco Bell as soon as he was able to drive, then used the money to fund hitting lessons, Boren said.

"Very intelligent, really mechanically inclined," former Stockdale coach Dan Lemon said. "He could sequence things, and he got some great insight from Brant Brown."

A Porterville native and eventual hitting coach for the dearly departed Bakersfield Blaze, Brown gave Nasiatka lessons when he was a teenager, and remained a key connection when Nasiatka's coaching career began.

But Nasiatka was no slouch as a player. He became an all-state catcher coming off a shoulder injury in 2010, setting a Bakersfield College record with a .473 batting average and picking up 48 RBIs by season's end.

After one solid season each at Hofstra and South Carolina-Beaufort, though, he found himself back at BC as an assistant in 2012.

"I had a lot of responsibility on my plate really early in my time coaching," Nasiatka said, "and was really fortunate for that."

He stayed in Bakersfield through the 2019 season, learning the ropes from longtime Renegades head coach Tim Painton — as Lemon puts it, "Nobody's done it better."

"He taught me a lot about consistency," Nasiatka said, "showing up to the field prepared, and giving a consistent effort for the players."

Nasiatka was content in Bakersfield when Brown came into town for a BC baseball fundraising dinner in the fall of 2019. Brown pitched him on a gig with the Dodgers organization; Nasiatka said he wasn't interested, which, looking back, was "kind of funny." But Brown put on the full-court press, using the dinner to float the idea to Nasiatka's wife, father and father-in-law. With loved ones on board, Nasiatka reached back out to Brown and, by 2020, was set for a hitting coach role with the rookie-league Ogden Raptors.

Then came the pandemic, a "shocking" derailment of Nasiatka's new career plans.

"It was scary when it happened," he said. "I definitely worried a bit about my future in baseball at that point. But I was really fortunate."

The Dodgers, he said, set him up with a Spanish teacher to help him connect with his future charges. He got to hit with a colleague down in Valencia. And even after the Raptors got cut from the Dodgers' system due to the 2020 minor league reorganization, Nasiatka was able to jump up a level to the Single-A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes.

As much promise as Brown and the Dodgers saw in him, Nasiatka had plenty of work ahead when he jumped from JUCO to the minor leagues. Namely, he had to adapt to the increased role of analytics, and contend with the sheer size of the organization, learning to collaborate not just in Rancho Cucamonga but up and down the ranks.

Whatever they did to get in sync clearly worked, as the Dodgers led all farm systems in runs scored, home runs and extra-base hits in 2021.

"All of the departments work together in player development: medical, performance and the actual field staff," Nasiatka said. "... I think there's pretty good communication about the players, and we try to give as clear of a message to these guys as we can."

And success on the farm leads to more of "what it's all about" for Nasiatka: moving players up through the minors. Nasiatka himself got promoted this year to the High-A Great Lakes Loons of Midland, Mich., and was reunited with basically the entirety of last year's Quakes.

During his second full year with the Dodgers, Nasiatka is honing in on key adjustments to help his hitters approach each at-bat. In particular, he notes that High-A pitchers have excellent stuff — in a recent series against Dayton, the Cincinnati Reds' affiliate, all but three pitchers reached 97 miles per hour, with high-level breaking balls and more than 50 percent off-speed pitches — but don't necessarily have the control to hit their spots.

His work doesn't stop in the offseason, when he returns to the valley to work with local kids. Lemon said this exemplifies a Bakersfield mindset: "We know how difficult it is to get out of this town. And once you get out, you want to come back, because of the people."

"It's a huge impact for them," Nasiatka added, "when you take a kid who maybe somewhat enjoys baseball, then he learns to hit better and now he really likes baseball because he's hitting doubles and homers."

Even working with kids, though, helps Nasiatka identify "new issues in the swing" that sometimes provide perspective on the pro players he coaches.

"Every time I talk to him, he's sharing something new that he's gotten into," Boren said. "He's always looking for resources to learn... He knows that he knows a lot about hitting, but he knows that he doesn't know everything."

Reporter Henry Greenstein can be reached at 661-395-7374. Follow him on Twitter: @HenryGreenstein.