Westmont College Athletics

By Ron Smith
March 28, 2020
 
(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) After a decade as the pitching coach at Westmont, Tony Cougoule is finding a new home in Mesa, Arizona with the Chicago Cubs' minor league system and is finding an opportunity to use his talents in the professional ranks. The Cubs sought out Cougoule as part of an effort to focus on improving their player development system.
 
Theo Epstein, the Cubs' President of Baseball Operations, held a news conference at the end of September, after the Cubs' season ended without making a postseason appearance. Regarding player development, Epstein announced that several changes would be made in the organization including the creation of two new positions – "a director of hitting and a director of pitching."
 
Two and one-half weeks later on Oct. 17, Epstein announced that Justin Stone had been named the director of hitting and Craig Breslow named the director of pitching.
 
"In October, Craig Breslow, reached out to me via social media and inquired about having a conversation," reported Cougoule about his initial contact with the Cubs. "It speaks to how small the baseball community is. It can seem really big, but there is just one or two degrees of separation. The longer you are involved in the game, the more people you come across.
 
"Craig is a Yale graduate and he inquired of some coaches at Yale about someone that would be a good fit for what the Cubs are trying to accomplish in player development. I had a relationship with some of those guys and I think that my name came up in that conversation.
 
"Then, another person in the player development side of the Cubs was speaking with Alan Jaeger who runs a baseball company related to arm care. He was inquiring about people who would be good in player development. My name came up in two different places, so they reached out."
 
By the middle of November, Cougoule had accepted an offer to work in the newly-formed player development group for the Cubs as a minor league pitching coach.
 
"One thing that I appreciated the whole time was the professionalism of everybody that I spoke to in the organization," said Cougoule. "It wasn't presented as if I was making a mistake if I didn't chose the Cubs. Rather, they understood that it was a difficult decision and that I had a family to consider. They offered me as close to a normal family life in professional baseball as is possible.
 
"They presented me an opportunity to stay in Arizona and focus on the lower levels, a demographic I was used to working with of 18-22 year olds. If I was going to make a move, then this was the right organization because they were putting a premium on developing people, having good people in the organization and being community driven.
 
"That aligned with what we were doing at Westmont," noted Cougoule. "While there is definitely, a business side and tough decisions to be made at the professional level, I felt like the Cubs were investing in people and that stood out to me. There were a couple other teams that had also reached out and I didn't get that same feel in the initial conversations that I had with them.
 
"It seemed like I was getting in on the ground floor of something that was talked about in a long press conference by Theo Epstein at the end of the regular season. He talked about needing to get back to player development and get guys better from within, especially from the pitching side.
 
"Rather than trying to be a high-dollar, free-agent spending organization, we are trying to focus on drafting well, developing from within and having homegrown big league talent."
 
Player development is not only near and dear to Cougoule's heart, but he has produced demonstrable results as a developer of pitchers. Over the past 10 years, nine pitchers from Westmont have signed minor league contracts with major league teams.
 
"From our perspective, Tony has a lot to offer the Cubs," said Westmont head coach Robert Ruiz. "Tony is uniquely equipped as he has a brilliant baseball mind and is also a really smart person. He is articulate and can work with a variety of people. He can work with higher-level player development personnel and people who are higher up in the organization. He has the mind for that.
 
"He also has the ability to connect with players. His pitching knowledge is his craft and his specific skill is working with pitchers. He will have an opportunity to work with some great prospects in the Cubs' organization. I think he will have an impact in that and I think, programmatically, that whatever the Cubs decide to do in their player development system, he will have input and insight into ways in which that will work well.
 
"Tony has run the pitcher development in our program for the past 10 years. He never got stagnant with it. He was always trying to evolve, always learning and always pushing himself to make sure that he was thinking about the game the way that it is approached at the highest level. I think he has a lot to bring to the Cubs."
 
"Something that has aligned with how Robert and I ran the program at Westmont is that we felt like we were teachers first and foremost and could come alongside our guys," said Congoule of the consistency between the two organizations. "That has made it an easy transition for me.
 
"Rather than just imposing knowledge upon someone and telling them how to do it, we are coming at it from a support side. We offer things that we think will help them and then work together to figure out how to roll those things out in a collaborative effort. At the end of the day, we are trying to make everyone a big-leaguer.
 
"There has to be buy-in on the player's side that this is actually going to help them. If you just tell someone to do something, you are not teaching anything. If you help them understand what is behind a different idea or approach and how it is going to help them and have a game plan for how to implement it, that is actually teaching.
 
"If we are going to do something with a player that is a step away from the big leagues, we better be able to teach it and tell the pros and cons and work alongside them and not have a cookie-cutter approach to how we are going to develop players.
 
"The atmosphere and attention to player development at Westmont, I am seeing played out on a large scale," continued Cougoule. "It speaks to the type of vision Robert has as a coach. Obviously, the budgets and the accessibility to the technology we have is on a different scale with the Cubs. However, the thing that makes Westmont so special as a baseball program is the forward thinking and the premium placed on developing players on the field and off the field and using any resource we can come up with to make them better."
 
Asked to speak about Cougoule's contributions to Westmont over the last decade, Ruiz found it difficult to distill into just a few thoughts.
 
"It is hard to put into words how much a part of everything Westmont Baseball related Tony has been in ten years with the program," admitted Ruiz. "When I took the job in the summer of 2009, I felt convinced that the most important thing I could do was to find the right person to come on board with me to pursue the vision we set for building this program. I knew in my heart that Tony was the guy. I had worked with him before and had known him my whole life.
 
"I don't think I realized at the time how much he would be able to not only help implement the vision we had for the program, but to expand it. I've said at multiple places and to multiple people how much his fingerprints are on every brick of the foundation that we built and his hand has been in every bit of success that we have had. It is hard to put a value on that, but certainly he has meant so much to the program and has been such a part of what we have been able to accomplish in the last ten years."
 
Of no small consequence, Congoule's contributions have included leaving a legacy at Westmont for continued success.
 
"This spring, it has been really good to see that the culture Tony and I created within our program has sustained itself," expressed Ruiz. "Dan Yokubaitis stepped in as our pitching coach and he has been able to help our pitchers continue their development.
 
"To see our guys continue to develop and to know that we have a system in place that will continue for years and help aspiring young pitchers come through our program and develop and get better, I feel very good about the future of the program.
 
"I think Tony set that foundation. I think it will be fun for him to be able to come back and see how that continues to evolve as a reflection of what he did in the early stages to get it where it is today. We are grateful for his time here and excited to follow what he does moving forward.
 
"As a friend and as a colleague, it is certainly difficult to see Tony leave, but it is also exciting. I had the unique opportunity to work with one of my closest friends for the last decade. That was a gift to have him be a part of everything we accomplished in those 10 years."
 
Though the COVID-19 pandemic has suspended spring training, Cougoule has been excited over what he has already been able to do with the Cubs.
 
"The first six weeks or so have been a collaborative effort of our pitching infrastructure – working with guys of every level," said Cougoule. "I have worked with players that are in their first spring training, all the way up to guys that are in Triple-A that have had some minor league time, and everything in-between.
 
"I've been getting to know all the players and rolling out some of the new concepts that the organization is developing. There has been a lot of hands-on movement of learning things the Cubs are doing and helping with some of the concepts that I have developed at Westmont and working those into how we are going to develop players for the Cubs."
 
Once the coronavirus crisis has run its course, Cougoule anticipates there will be an abbreviated spring training for all levels. When the major league and affiliated minor league teams depart Mesa, Cougoule will continue to work with players who remain in extended spring training.
 
"After the draft happens, we build out the three rookie ball league teams. I will be one of the rookie ball league pitching coaches. So, I will have a mixture of players from the Dominican for their first time in the States playing pro ball, I'll have some draft picks and I'll have some guys in their first or second years out of high school."
 
Cougoule has been assigned as the pitching coach for the Arizona League Cubs Red team that will play its home games at Sloan Park.
 
In the meantime, Cougoule, his wife Heidi and their two children Madison and Sadie are making a home for themselves in a new community.
 
"Within a six-week period, I signed a contract to be a professional coach, we sold a house, we bought a house and we moved in," said Cougoule. "It was quite a whirlwind to say the least.
 
"It is obviously hard to have left the community we had in Santa Barbara and Westmont. Heidi and I were married in Santa Barbara and our family as we know it has never known anything different. Both our kids were born in Santa Barbara and it is home for them.
 
"However, we have moved into a great community. The neighborhood is family-friendly and there are young families within the Cubs' organization that we have connected with. We feel like we are moving within the direction of having good community here as well.
 
"We have taken advantage of technology and have done a lot of 'facetiming' with friends back home, staying connected the best we can.
 
"One blessing of being a professional coach is that you truly do get an offseason," noted Cougoule. "I'm looking forward to coming back to Santa Barbara in the fall and hopefully giving back a little bit to the baseball program and seeing some familiar faces. That is something I am planning on doing."