What the Cleveland Guardians will lose and the San Diego Padres will gain with Ruben Niebla
Cleveland Indians starting pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez, left, talks with pitching coach Ruben Niebla, right, in the third inning of a baseball game against the Texas Rangers Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
By Zack Meisel Nov 2, 2021 31
CLEVELAND — Ruben Niebla doesn’t remember the encounter, but Shane Bieber can replay it vividly in his mind. A 21-year-old Bieber, pitching for Class-A Lake County in April 2017, was hanging out in the training room for far longer than Niebla preferred.
Niebla, who oversaw Cleveland’s minor-league pitching development at the time, busted into the room and told Bieber to leave and do something more productive.
“I was there,” Aaron Civale chimed in as Bieber retold the tale. “I was scared of you.”
The trio laugh about it now. After all, Niebla is an unimposing figure, a soft-spoken, 5-foot-10 coach with salt-and-pepper hair who maintains deep bonds with seemingly every pitcher who occupies a locker in Cleveland’s clubhouse.
Ask any Cleveland pitcher to name an instructor who helped spur their development. They’ll choose Niebla, who is bound for San Diego to become the Padres’ new pitching coach.
There’s a reason, as Niebla leaned against the dugout railing during batting practice one sunny afternoon in September 2019, about six weeks before he joined Cleveland’s big-league coaching staff, every pitcher who walked by stopped and shook his hand.
“I have a really good relationship with Ruben,” Civale said.
“He’s the best mentor I’ve ever had,” Zach Plesac said.
“He is a godsend,” Logan Allen said.
Those relationships often involve early-stage squabbles. Niebla tussled with first-round pick Triston McKenzie about routines after the lanky right-hander made the jump from high school to pro ball. He debated with James Karinchak about his delivery before the reliever soared through Cleveland’s farm system.
After Anthony Gose signed with Cleveland, his fastball registered 88 to 89 mph in one of his first minor-league outings. Niebla summoned the converted outfielder to his office and told him: “We have 20 other left-handers who throw 88-89. That’s not what we signed you for. If you can throw 98, I want to see 98.” Gose’s former organizations had pleaded with him to throw strikes. He just wasn’t sure how to accomplish that unless he carefully guided the baseball into the strike zone at an unassuming velocity.
“At that point,” Niebla said, “it was a realization of, ‘OK, these guys are going to care for me. They’re going to give me the tools and give me a different message.”
Niebla and Cleveland’s pitchers understand those conflicts were necessary. They allowed both sides to learn about each other. The pitchers eventually appreciated the candor and transparency. Niebla’s goal was to lead them to some discovery without simply demanding, “Do this because I said so.” What makes him such a well-regarded coach is his ability to connect with a player, to communicate information in a way that isn’t overwhelming or convoluted, no matter the pitcher’s grasp of numbers and analytics.
When Niebla has a suggestion based on something he pinpointed in the data or noticed on video or during a bullpen session, the player is on the same page. When the player has a question about why his fastball isn’t achieving the desired results or whether he should tweak his slider usage, he knows how to present his quandary to Niebla.
Or when Niebla calls a week after the 2020 season and suggests Civale should completely overhaul how he throws, Civale doesn’t even hesitate before he accepts the grueling assignment.
There are mountains of data available in baseball, especially on the pitching side. Niebla excels at examining it to determine what’s pertinent and then translating the information to players in a digestible form. Niebla’s bond with each player offers him insight into how much data they can handle and the best way for that pitcher to grasp what he’s explaining. Being bilingual helps, too.
“Data is only relevant if you use it to make you better,” Cal Quantrill said. “Otherwise, it’s just pages and pages. Ruben does a really good job sifting through and finding valuable information so we can focus on that instead of this overwhelming barrage of meaningless data. You can take it as far as you want. You can get the Trackman 100-gigabyte folder every single game. You can see how fast you walked to pick up the ball after your strikeout, how fast you got back to the mound. It can get to the point where it is too much. Ruben has done a fantastic job of providing a filter between that and us.”
Said Plesac: “He’s really good at laying out plans and structuring a program for us and getting us on some routines that help us to get to certain place.”
“He’s the best mentor I’ve ever had,” Zach Plesac said of Ruben Niebla. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
Niebla served as an important cog in Cleveland’s pitching factory. He spent more than two decades in the organization. He was a minor-league pitching coach. He was the pitching coordinator, bouncing from affiliate to affiliate, managing the developmental plans for each prospect. He worked the past two years as the major-league assistant pitching coach alongside Carl Willis.
“For him,” McKenzie said, “the biggest thing is giving guys the tools to make the decisions and to understand themselves so that when he’s not around, guys are able to go through their learning process and go through their database mentally, and they’re able to figure stuff out for themselves instead of always relying on him.”
Niebla would be the first to say the organization’s envied pitching pipeline will continue to churn out capable contributors even when he’s residing 2,350 miles west. He’d be the first to say there are plenty of sharp people in the organization, and that the collaborative efforts between the scouting and development departments and between coaches and front office analysts are what have made the factory so fruitful in the first place.
Niebla would also be the first to brush aside praise, to instead heap it upon the pitchers who modify the grip on their curveball and alter their arm action.
“He shows how much he cares about the things he’s trying to help us with and help our careers,” Allen said. “I can get emotional talking about Ruben.”
Niebla now heads to San Diego, where he’ll reunite with Mike Clevinger. He helped Clevinger revamp his delivery after the long-haired hurler joined the Cleveland organization in a 2014 trade. A few years later, Clevinger morphed from nondescript prospect into front-line starter. Niebla also worked to tap into the potential of Corey Kluber, whose name was absent from every prospect list when Cleveland acquired him from San Diego in a 2010 deal. Kluber’s emergence as a two-time Cy Young Award winner even surprised Niebla.
“He helped me unlock the confidence within myself,” Plesac said. “Even when I didn’t believe in myself at times, he believed in me. He’s really good at relaying what he sees.”
Niebla deemed the decision to switch organizations “bittersweet,” as the Calexico, Calif., native lives about 90 minutes outside of San Diego.
Cleveland’s brass has long felt it was a matter of time before Niebla landed a job as a primary pitching coach, which prompted his promotion to the big-league staff after the 2019 season. He’ll now attempt to recreate in San Diego some of the pitching magic he produced in Cleveland.
“Ruben is fantastic at taking data and putting it into a digestible format,” Quantrill said. “Can you take information and make it palatable to someone else? That is how good of a coach you are.”
(Top photo of Ruben Niebla and Ubaldo Jiménez in 2012: Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press)
