West Haven Native Tapped To Be Nationals Next Pitching Coach
- Dominic Konareski
- 48 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Mid November featured a new career opportunity for West Haven native Simon Mathews in Major League Baseball. Mathews, a former minor league player himself, was hired by the Washington Nationals to be the team’s next pitching coach.
Mathews had his 30th birthday in September and joined Washington as part of the front office push for a youth movement after spending time with the Cincinnati Reds as an assistant pitching coach.
Mathews grew up in West Haven, Connecticut, but attended Hopkins School in neighboring New Haven where he was the team captain and pitching star for the Hilltoppers. While in high school, the 6-foot-1 standing right-hander had All-Fairchester League honors in his junior and senior years, along with being named as a member of the New Haven Register All-Area Team.
When not playing high school ball, Mathews pitched in the West Haven Twilight League, which saw him grab Pitcher of the Year honors.
Signing with the Los Angeles Angels as an undrafted free agent in 2017 out of college, he would appear in 71 total games and made it as high as Triple-AAA. Overall, Mathews would pitch to a 4.51 ERA in 237.2 innings pitched throughout his minor league career in which he started 31 out-of the 71 games he appeared in and posted a 13-12 record.
Overall, Mathews was just the sixth West Haven native to be playing professional baseball in the minors. When signed in 2017, Mathews joined the likes of Ken Strong, Harry Conlan and Tommy Lawrence to be in the minors. So far only one Westie has made it to the bigs as a player, and that was Art Ceccarelli, who made his major league debut in 1948 and was in the league for over a decade.
Since leaving the baseball scene as a player, Mathews has coached various pitching positions which has led him to D.C. In a span of five years the Westie went from being a released minor league player to a big league pitching coach.
“I wasn’t a very good pitcher, certainly at the end of my professional career,” said Mathews, who also stated how being at the end of his career as a player helped him sprout as a coach and made his love for the game grow.
The Washington Nationals are coming off of a 66-96 season, where the team finished 30 games behind the first place Phillies. The Nationals team ERA of 5.35 ranked 29th out of the 30 teams across the league. Mathews will be taking over a starting rotation and bullpen in need of a lot of work to get back on top in both the NL East and the National League as a whole.