Phillies hire Bob McClure as pitching coach
The Phillies have officially hired Bob McClure as the team's pitching coach, Ryne Sandberg announced Thursday.
UPDATE: The Phillies have officially hired Bob McClure as the team's pitching coach, Ryne Sandberg announced Thursday.
Additionally, Rod Nichols has been retained as the bullpen coach and Jesus Tiamo will return as the bullpen catcher.
From earlier: The Phillies have moved swiftly filling holes in their roster this offseason, but the search for a pitching coach has dragged on. Candidates have come and gone, finding work elsewhere, or not hearing back after volunteering for the position via Twitter.
Now, though, it seems as though the pack of reportedly 12 possible replacements for Rich Dubee could have a standout: Bob McClure, reports CSNPhilly.com's Jim Salisbury.
McClure pitched in the Majors from 1975 to 1993, spending time with the Royals, Expos, Mets, Angels, Cardinals, and Marlins, but the majority of his career, from 1977-86, was spent with the Milwaukee Brewers. Sadly, he may be best known for his unsuccessful appearances in the Brewers' only World Series in 1982, when he was acting as a closer in lieu of an injured Rollie Fingers, in which he gave up two earned runs, three walks, and five hits in 4.1 innings of work and blowing the lead in Game Seven, which ended in a loss to the Cardinals.
He left the Brewers in 1985, and bounced around before winding up on the Marlins' inaugural roster in 1993 and being released in May.
McClure re-entered baseball as a coach in 1999 for the Rockies' triple A team until 2005, when he was asked by Royals' new manager Buddy Bell to take over as pitching coach. He was fired in 2011 and brought on by the Red Sox as a traveling pitching instructor/scout, before being promoted to the big club as the pitching coach in December 2011 - a position from which he was also fired in August of the following year due to a prickly dynamic with Bobby Valentine.





















