Leo Mazzone

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Leo Mazzone (born October 16, 1948 in Keyser, West Virginia) is a former pitcher in minor league baseball and coach in Major League Baseball. He began working with the Atlanta Braves' organization in 1979.

Although Mazzone was born in West Virginia, his family lived on the other side of the Potomac River's north branch in Westernport, Maryland. Growing up there, one of his friends was Sam Perlozzo and Phyllis and Perry Rymer of nearby Cumberland. Mazzone was even the best man at Perlozzo's wedding. Later, as manager of the Orioles, Perlozzo would help convince Mazzone to leave his longtime position as Atlanta pitching coach and come to Baltimore.

Mazzone has earned a reputation as one of the best pitching coaches in the modern era, having developed and coached perennial all-star pitchers such as Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz. Over the years, pitchers who have joined the Atlanta Braves under Mazzone have often undergone marked improvement over previous years with other organizations, and show a marked decrease in performance upon moving to other systems with Russ Ortiz, Denny Neagle, and Jaret Wright being notable examples.

Mazzone's "accidental trademark" is his rocking back and forth while sitting in the dugout. On television broadcasts of Braves games, the camera would often show him rocking back and forth during the games, stopping only when his pitchers began to have difficulties.

Mazzone's pitching philosophies state that pitchers should throw more between starts (two sessions instead of one), utilize the outside corner of the strike zone and utilize a fastball to set up breaking balls. After the 2005 season Leo Mazzone took the Baltimore Orioles pitching coach job. On October 12, 2007 the Orioles fired Mazzone with one year left on his contract.^[1]

He was inducted in the Kinston Professional Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993. Mazzone was the hot tempered manager for the Carolina League Kinston Eagles in 1978. It was the recommendation and contacts of Eagles owner Ray Kuhlman that proved instrumental in Atlanta deciding to take a chance on Mazzone in 1979.

In his book The Baseball Economist, J.C. Bradbury titles a chapter, "How Good is Leo Mazzone?" Using statistical analysis, he analyzes whether Mazzone had a significant impact upon the pitchers that he coached. The sample is all pitchers who have pitched at least one year under Mazzone and one year under a different pitching coach. Bradbury found that Mazzone lowered the ERA of pitchers by an average of .64 points, and that after leaving Mazzone, pitchers' ERA increased by an average of .78 points. Bradbury believes that such an impact is deserving of Hall of Fame consideration. ^[2]

Currently, Mazzone works as a color commentator for FOX. ESPN.com lists him number one on the list of "Top 10 Assistant Coaches of All-Time".^[3]