Podcast: Former MIT coach Todd Carroll to host pitching clinic

Former MIT pitching coach Todd Carroll will host the Boston Pitching Congress on Dec. 2 in Watertown, Mass. (Seattle Mariners)

The latest guest on The Base Path Podcast is well known in baseball circles throughout New England, a former 20-year college coach and more recently a pitching coordinator for a minor league affiliate for the Seattle Mariners.

Todd Carroll served as the MIT pitching coach from 2012 through 2022 – a stretch in which the Engineers won three NEWMAC championships and advanced to five NCAA Regionals. He has organized a pitching clinic — the Boston Pitching Congress — which will be held Dec. 2 in Watertown, Mass.

“There’s never been a pitching only clinic in New England,” Carroll said. “There was a form of it called Pitch-A-Palooza down in Tennessee for years, and that kind of ran its course. It was a lot on the biomechanic side and the nerdy side of pitching, for lack of a better phrase.

“I wanted to do something that helped high school coaches and travel coaches because pitching has changed so much just in my career. In the 20 years I’ve been a pitching coach, it doesn’t resemble what it was when I came into it. That can be intimidating. When you have high school coaches that are working their butts off for $4,000 a year, to be able to give back to that is exciting.”

The Boston Pitching Congress will be on Dec. 2 (8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.) at Donohue’s Bar and Grill in Watertown. The list of speakers will include four coaches from the Seattle Mariners organization, Red Sox director of pitching Shawn Haviland, and several college coaches including longtime Tufts coach John Casey and current Harvard pitching coach Nate Cole. An informal discussion period will follow. Carroll’s goal is to share ways in which high school coaches can use technology without becoming overwhelmed by the growing number of options.

“When I first started coaching, the only measuring device we had was a radar gun,” Carroll said. “Now you see Hawk-Eye in major league stadiums, Trackman devices, and Rapsodo. We can measure a lot more. Therefore, you measure what you prioritize. It’s going to look a lot different to a JV high school coach than it is at the Triple-A level. But there’s some commonality there, and I think the more that we can pull back the curtain on that, I think it’s going to help them.”

For more information on the Boston Pitching Congress, email Carroll at [email protected].

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