A former City College head baseball coach is on the move after accepting a front-office position with a Major League Baseball team.
Andy McKay, Panthers head coach from 1999 to 2012, was hired Oct. 21 as the Seattle Mariners director of player development, the team announced.
McKay, 44, spent the past three seasons with the Colorado Rockies organization working as the peak performance director. It was a role that allowed him to focus on the mental aspects of the game with players, a concept, he said, stems from his time as a student-athlete at City College.
“It all started at Sacramento City College in 1989 when I was a student reading the book ‘The Mental Game of Baseball’,” McKay said. “It gave me a new perspective on how I wanted to play and how I wanted to coach.”
Before joining the Rockies organization in 2012, McKay was the head coach for the City College baseball team for 14 seasons. He held a 427-205-2 record as the Panthers head coach and won one state championship and seven league championships.
His successor, current Panthers head coach Derek Sullivan, played for McKay from 2000 to 2002. Sullivan, who also served as an assistant coach for McKay from 2005 to the time he left for the Rockies, said McKay should excel in his new position because of his ideas about how to help players improve.
It is cheap among al kinds of other specific drugs. pdxcommercial.com purchase viagra online These pharmacies are extremely discrete while disseminating information of any kind and hence, avoid writing anything on the shipment description. free viagra 100mg https://pdxcommercial.com/slides-category/home-slider-3/ Another symptom lowest prices for cialis is the need to empty the bladder often during the day. For instance, a buy levitra in canada http://pdxcommercial.com/wp-content/uploads/1970/01/4835-Willamette-Falls-Dr.-Flyer.pdf pill is blue in color and packing from their branded counterparts.
“In the vast majority of the game, you have a bunch of players that are fairly equal physically, tools-wise,” Sullivan said. “Their ability to be consistent is what separates them, and it’s a small margin. [McKay] looks at what really affects that consistency and desire in the great ones, hall of famers and elite performers, and the vast majority of the time, it’s not physical.”
Since taking over as head coach of the Panthers in 2012, Sullivan said he has used McKay’s philosophy to help guide Sullivan on his path as a coach.
“He really believes [that] the highest level of the game is separated by players who know how to get after it every day,” Sullivan said. “And [a player’s] mental state is far more impactful than how much they squat or bench.”
From a Major League Baseball standpoint, the move is the first major hire in Jerry Dipoto’s early tenure as the new general manager for the Mariners. McKay was given the position just 13 days after former director Chris Gwynn resigned, and will oversee the organization’s six Minor League teams and Dominican Republic Academy, according to McKay.
Despite having to be in charge of more within the Mariners organization, McKay said there’s no difference in the culture he wants to build in Seattle and the one he built with the Panthers.
“Just like at Sacramento City College, the goal is to be the best in baseball — the best in the game,” McKay said. “Good coaching and good teaching is good no matter where it is.”
