‘I’m blessed’: After decades as a Miami player, assistant coach, J.D. Arteaga leads Hurricanes into new season
J.D. Arteaga is a Hurricanes lifer.
The Miami native pitched four seasons for UM, earned a spot in the UM Hall of Fame, returned to take over as the team’s pitching coach in 2003 and is getting ready to start his first season as his alma mater’s head coach after taking over for Gino DiMare.
As the season approaches, is that reality starting to sink in?
“It’s exciting,” Arteaga said. “It’s an honor, No. 1. It’s exciting. I’m blessed to get the opportunity to lead the program that I grew up watching, following and playing for, school that I went to and, most important, the community that I grew up in and made me who I am. More than anything, I’m blessed for this opportunity, and there’s nothing that I want more than to give back to the community and the school a championship for everything they’ve given me.”
But the long-time assistant coach did have some things he needed to get used to: including what office to work in.
“The first day, I stayed in my old office,” Arteaga said. “I did my first interview in my old office. It took a while. I tell people I walked in and turned right for 20 years. It took about a week, week and a half, to get used to going left when I walked in. But all in all, it’s the same program, it’s still baseball.”
Although Arteaga has been with the program for more than two decades, his tenure as head coach will be different than DiMare’s. Third-year infielder Dorian Gonzalez Jr. said Arteaga’s coaching style differs from DiMare’s in that the new head coach is more hands-off during practices, allowing assistant coaches to take more of the reigns with their position groups.
“It was great with Gino; it’s been great with J.D.,” Gonzalez said. “The biggest difference is that Gino was more hands-on, while J.D. is kind of lean back and lets his assistant coaches take over. In our practices, we’ll have Darren (Fenster), our new hitting coach, Laz (Gutierrez), they’ll kind of run the practice. J.D. kind of oversees everything.”
For the pitchers, having their former pitching coach take over the program is an extra bonus.
“I feel like it’s a special relationship,” pitcher Brian Walters said. “I had a cool connection with him as a pitcher. And now that he’s the head coach, it’s even cooler.”
Arteaga is also trying to change the way the program runs, introducing more analytics to UM. Miami did have coaches using analytics previously, but now the team has two employees, Peter Amalbert and Jack Olszewski, dedicated to analytics.
“We just haven’t had the department to run it,” Arteaga said. “I was in charge of running the pitching side of it. Like I said, it’s a totally different language. Now we’ve got two guys. One is really focused n our player development, and the other is focused on advanced scouting.”
Pitchers returning from injuries
The Hurricanes should be getting a boost with the return of three pitchers from injury.
Left-handed pitcher Ashton Crowther and Myles Caba and Walters are all expected back this season after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
Arteaga said Crowther and Caba are ready to go while Walters will likely return a couple of weeks into the season.
Walters, the brother of Miami All-American closer Andrew Walters, said his recovery was tough, but his brother and others helped get him through.
“My teammates picked me up,” Walters said. “There were a lot of days — obviously, it happened early in the season, so I didn’t get to play — but they still wanted me to show up at the field. My brother picked me up out of bed oftentimes when I just didn’t feel like it. I kind of rallied around them most of the season.”
