Brady Wiederhold sees pitching from a different prospective.
Having been a college catcher at Kennesaw St., a Division II school in Georgia, Wiederhold has worked with pitchers as a teammate and as a coach.
Wiederhold replaces Dan Canevari, now the head coach at Southeastern Louisiana, as the new pitching coach for the LSU baseball team. Last season, Wiederhold was the team’s administrative assistant.
He said many pitching coaches including the St. Louis Cardinals’ pitching expert Dave Duncan were former catchers.
“It’s odd,” Wiederhold said, “You look at the pitching coaches now, and a bunch of them were ex-catchers. Coach Bertman was a catcher in his day. He handled pitchers pretty well; that was his forte.
“Maybe it’s because you see them all the time. Most of us pitched somewhere along the line, but started to catch when we were older. You deal with them every single day, maybe you just understand them better.”
Senior starting pitcher Jake Tompkins said he understands how former catchers understand pitching.
“I used to be a catcher, too, and it helps you out with pitching,” Tompkins said. “You learn more about the hitters. Being behind them [you can] see behind them and see what they’re about. It’s controlling the pitching staff — a lot of a catcher’s job is knowing when they need a break, when they need to be pulled or when they need to talk to [pitchers] to settle them down. He’ll be able to see that from the dugout.”
Wiederhold will call pitches from the Tiger dugout this spring, something he did in the same position under head coach Smoke Laval at University of Louisiana-Monroe.
Success is nothing new to Wiederhold. He spent two seasons as pitching coach at ULM, including the 2000 season under Laval. During that season, his staff set the school record for strikeouts in a season and was among the top 15 teams in the country in earned run average.
Wiederhold became the ULM pitching coach midway through the 2000 campaign after one of Laval’s assistants resigned to become a professional scout. He did not know Laval at the time, but the two had mutual friends.
“Through some mutual friends, I found out about the position,” Wiederhold said. “He found out about me, so I made the move midyear. It was tough leaving where I was at because we had so much success and going basically to an unknown.”
Laval said calling pitches is not nearly as important as the mental edge a good pitching coach can bring.
“That’s not the important part,” Laval said. “It’s not as important as getting the kids to believe. There’s a trust and bond there.”
Wiederhold also spent four years, from 1996-99, as pitching coach at his alma mater, Kennesaw St. During the 1997 and 1998 seasons, his staff led the nation in ERA. KSU won a national title in 1996.
Now Wiederhold will have big shoes to fill in place of Canevari.
“I’d like to thank Coach Canevari because I was around last year, and I was able to watch him work from standing on the side and seeing him interact with the guys,” Wiederhold said. “He really helped me out a lot last year. Being here last year allowed me to get my feet wet.”
In addition, he was an assistant coach from 1994-95 at Oglethorpe University In Atlanta, a Division III school, right after he graduated from KSU.
“He brings a new spirit to the pitching staff,” Tompkins said. “He takes a lot of pride. He’s looking for great things from us and we’re looking for great things from him. So far we’ve gotten that.”