D-backs part ways with pitching coach Brian Kaplan after two seasons

What happened

The Arizona Diamondbacks will not bring back pitching coach Brian Kaplan for the 2027 season, MLB.com's Steve Gilbert reported. Kaplan spent two years in the role before his contract expired, and the club chose not to renew it.

Why it matters

Pitching coach continuity is one of those organizational threads that rarely makes headlines until it snaps. Kaplan's departure opens a significant vacancy on a staff that finished 2026 at 86-76 — good enough to win more games than it lost, but not enough to stay alive in October. The D-backs were eliminated from both the NL West division race and the Wild Card race, finishing third in the division and sitting 2.0 games on the wrong side of the Wild Card cut line. Whoever fills Kaplan's seat will inherit a pitching staff that produced at least one genuinely interesting outcome this season.

That outcome belongs to Eduardo Rodriguez, who posted a 2.89 ERA in 2026 despite ERA estimators projecting something closer to 4.4, per a Posterior Wire item from earlier this week. The gap between those two numbers is not noise — it was driven by elite pitch location, with Rodriguez registering a 109 Location+ on the season. Whether Kaplan deserves credit for that kind of refinement, or whether Rodriguez arrived at it independently, is exactly the sort of question a new pitching coach will be asked to answer before he even unpacks his laptop. The next coach steps into a room where at least one pitcher just outperformed his peripherals by a wide margin, and the staff will want to know whether that approach gets reinforced or rerouted.

Is Torey Lovullo involved in the search?

The manager who will work alongside the next pitching coach is not going anywhere. Also reported this week, Torey Lovullo signed a new two-year contract to continue managing the Diamondbacks. That extension matters here because pitching coach searches rarely happen in a vacuum — the manager's relationship with his pitching staff is one of the more load-bearing partnerships in a clubhouse, and Lovullo now has the runway to shape who fills that role and how the staff is developed over the next two seasons. The new pitching coach, whenever he is identified, will be building something alongside a manager who has already committed to the project.

The timing of the two announcements — Lovullo's extension and Kaplan's departure reported the same day, per the Posterior Wire's earlier coverage — suggests the club moved deliberately on both fronts at once. Stability at the top of the dugout, change in the pitching room. That is a particular kind of organizational message, even if the club has not framed it that way publicly.

The numbers

Arizona finished 86-76 (.531) on the season, placing third in the NL West and 14 games behind the division leader. Their Wild Card standing ranked 4th, sitting 2.0 games relative to the cut line — close enough to feel the heat, not close enough to feel the October air. The club dropped its last two games of the regular season, closing on an L2 streak.

Those numbers frame the stakes of the pitching staff search without resolving them. An 86-win club that missed the Wild Card by two games is not a team in crisis; it is a team that needs to find a handful of runs — or prevent a handful — to flip the ledger. The pitching coach hire is one of the levers available to do that, and it costs considerably less than a free-agent starter.

The Rodriguez data point sharpens the picture further. A pitcher who outperformed his ERA estimators by more than a run on the strength of location is a proof of concept for something — the question is whether the organization knows exactly what that something is, and whether the next pitching coach is hired to replicate it, build on it, or simply stay out of its way.

Where the club stands

The Diamondbacks finished 86-76 (.531), third in the NL West, 14 games behind the division leader, and eliminated from both the division and Wild Card races. They closed the season on a two-game losing streak.

The offseason now begins in earnest, and the pitching coach vacancy is among the first items on the organizational to-do list. Lovullo's two-year extension provides a stable managerial foundation for whoever is brought in to run the pitching staff. The club is not rebuilding — it is retooling, and the pitching coach search is the most visible early signal of which direction that retooling takes.

Two games separated Arizona from the Wild Card. That is a margin that tends to concentrate an organization's attention in the offseason, particularly on the kinds of moves — coaching hires, developmental adjustments, philosophical shifts — that do not require clearing waivers or negotiating opt-outs.

What we don't know yet

There is no reported timeline for the search, no reported list of candidates, and no reported explanation for why the club chose not to retain Kaplan beyond the expiration of his two-year contract. Steve Gilbert's report for MLB.com establishes the departure; the reasoning behind it has not been attributed to any source.

It is also not yet known how the rest of the coaching staff will be affected, whether any internal candidates are under consideration, or what the club's specific priorities are for the role. The Rodriguez situation — a pitcher who dramatically outperformed his estimators on the strength of location — is the kind of data point that will almost certainly surface in any interview process, but how the club weighs it is not yet public.

What to watch

The pitching coach search is the obvious thread to follow. Given that Lovullo is locked in for two years, the next hire will be someone he can work with across a meaningful stretch of time — not a placeholder. Watch for any reporting on the candidate pool, the club's stated priorities for the role, and whether any connection to a location-first pitching philosophy surfaces in how the search is framed.

More broadly, the D-backs finished two games out of the Wild Card. That margin tends to focus an organization's offseason in specific ways. The pitching staff is one area where a single hire — the right coach, the right philosophy — can move the needle without requiring a major transaction. Whether Arizona approaches it that way, or pairs the coaching change with roster moves, will become clearer as the offseason develops.

The Arizona Fall League is also worth a peripheral glance: MLB is currently piloting experimental outfield positioning restrictions there, per a Posterior Wire item from this week, which signals that the league is actively testing rule changes at the developmental level. A new pitching coach arriving in Arizona will be stepping into an organization operating inside a sport that is still actively negotiating what the field looks like. That is either a complication or an opportunity, depending entirely on who they hire.