SAN FRANCISCO — Almost always shading his stoic expression behind a pair of dark-lensed aviators, Brian Bannister often looked as much like a secret agent as a pitching coach. But his role with the San Francisco Giants would be more aptly represented by a lab coat.
Reliever John Brebbia described him as a "miracle worker," a term other pitchers surveyed by this news organization agreed with unanimously.
"I look to him as like a scientist with a baseball," reliever Scott Alexander said.
"He's the think tank behind it all," said starter Alex Cobb, who counts himself as one of the Giants' many reclamation projects who benefitted from Bannister's input.
All things considered, then, the news of Bannister's departure last week sent ripples through the Giants' pitching staff. After operating the past four seasons as the Giants' director of pitching, Bannister accepted a new position in the White Sox's front office. He will be the senior advisor to pitching in Chicago, where he will reunite with former Giants assistant pitching coach Ethan Katz and a former teammate of his, Chris Getz, their newly minted general manager, who made Bannister one of his first hires.
"I can't believe he left. I don't know why they let him go," Alexander said. "They should've offered him a better role."
"It's a huge loss for us," Cobb said.
In comments to The Athletic, Giants president Farhan Zaidi said Bannister's contract was expiring and, "I told him we wanted to keep him, but we weren't going to stand in the way if there was an opportunity he preferred for whatever reason."
Bannister's title was created for him when he was hired away from the Red Sox before the 2020 season. That said, the Giants will look to fill the position, manager Gabe Kapler said. There is no shortage of capable minds in house between pitching coach Andrew Bailey and assistant pitching coach J.P. Martinez.
"Maybe it'll come in the form of backfilling that exact title or somebody that combines multiple skills sets," Kapler said. "We'll look at giving somebody on our staff more responsibility."
Since 2020, Giants pitchers have a 3.81 ERA, the sixth-best mark in the majors, in the same company as other clubs with strong reputations for developing pitching: the Dodgers (3.25), Rays (3.64), Astros (3.65), Yankees (3.74), Brewers (3.75), Guardians (3.85) and Braves (3.88).
Due in no small part to Bannister's work, that success has made San Francisco an attractive destination for pitchers looking to rehabilitate their careers on short-term deals. Consider Cobb and Kevin Gausman the biggest success stories in a group that also includes Anthony DeSclafani, Alex Wood, Sean Manaea and Ross Stripling.
"I think that a lot of the success that you guys have seen, all the reclamation projects that have happened, myself included," Cobb said, "he's seen diamonds in the rough and understood how to incorporate what he saw into the product that we turned into on the field."
Bannister's biggest advancements were made in the area of seam-shifted wake, essentially how the baseball can be manipulated by aerodynamics. And while that knowledge built over the past four years remains, Bannister's singular expertise — a former player who could relay scientific information in terminology pitchers would understand — will be difficult to replace.
"He just talked about pitching in ways that I've never heard," Cobb said. "He really taught me about seam shift. Why my two-seam really bites. And how the ball takes on the body's identity in its movement. So if the body's moving, the ball will move with it. Some real deep stuff. … It's very rare to have a guy that analytically inclined and able to explain that and also relate to pitching. That's very rare."
In their own words, a few Giants pitchers describe the impact Bannister had on them:
LHP Kyle Harrison: "He definitely helped me out in my minor-league career, just in terms of guys he came up with and who he saw. He started out with (Chris) Sale, and Sale's one of my favorite pitchers. … He was just a good guy to lean on. If you had any questions about mechanics, analytics, anything, he was the guy."
RHP Ryan Walker: "My slider, a couple months ago, it was kind of just spinning. I wasn't getting a lot of movement on it. I was leaving it arm-side. Almost as soon as I told him, he knew what was happening, what it was and what I could do to change that with just a simple movement of (my arm slot) being here instead of being here. Just that small change, a little arm slot difference, it brought me right back to where I was. … It's things like that, and he's super quick with it. It's not like you have to sit there and he has to analyze it. He already knows."
LHP Scott Alexander: "For me, my sinker, a lot of it has to do with aerodynamics that allow you to do that. So being able to communicate with him when I get off track a little bit, to be able to get back on and know what you're dealing with. I never had a pitching coach that talked to me about seam shifting or things of that nature. … August was tough for me in particular. I just got away mechanically a little bit. So I worked with him for about four or five days, just talking about it and doing some reps, feeling it out and figuring out what part of my mechanics was off that wasn't allowing my sinker to do what it wants to do. That was it. His understanding of how the body has to move to create what we're trying to create spin-wise. He just knows how the body has to move and what you have to do to make pitches."
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