Durin O’Linger: Rancho Pitching Coach

Leaving the field while being given a standing ovation as a result of an event full of great competition is an experience that players never forget. A standing ovation is the ultimate symbol of approval, it’s a show of total respect, and it always signals achievement and success, no matter what the scoreboard might say. 

Getting a standing ovation from your home crowd and your own fans is one thing, but Rancho Pitching Coach, Durin O’ Linger, got one from the Texas A&M fans as he walked off the field for the final time as a Collegiate. It’s a rare moment in sports when the other team’s crowd acknowledges an opposing team’s player like that, so you can bet it was earned, largely through a heaping full of guts, during a month that had equal amounts of glory. 

O’Linger had spent the last several weekends of his Senior year helping his underdog Wildcats win the A10 Tournament, a Regional at Chapel Hill against powerhouse North Carolina, and came just inches away from leading them to Omaha, an achievement that would have been nothing short of miraculous. 

He beat the Tar Heels by pitching 6 innings in the first game, then just 48 hours later came in to get the save to clinch the Regional and help his Wildcat team advance to the next weekend’s Super Regionals at Texas A&M. 

That’s where he got his standing ovation.

It was in response to a final month of the 2017 season where he threw somewhere around 500 pitches, threw in 5 of 11 of Davidson’s games, 30 Innings in total, and recorded 3 wins and a save during that period. 

His efforts got him noticed by Gus Quattlebaum who was part of 4 different scouting departments within the Boston Red Sox system for over a decade, and, coincidentally, had also played at Davidson and for the same coach that O’Linger did. Quattlebaum reached out to the Tampa native, and, after a great phone conversation, presented him with an offer that changed the path in life O’Linger had set out.

O’Linger was set on going to pharmacy school at the University of Florida, but chose, instead, to pursue his career with the Red Sox.

The change in course was an appropriate ending to a period in his life that seems more like a blur than it does reality.  

You know, the stars kind of aligned. I wasn’t really a draft prospect but I got hot at the right time and so did the team, so getting drafted was kind of a byproduct of the run we made in the Regionals and Super Regionals.

O’Linger went on to explain how he ended up with the Red Sox.

I actually got a call when they signed me from Gus Quattlebaum who is pretty high up in the Red Sox scouting system, and he was a Davidson alum and played for the same coach at Davidson that I did. So, it was a pretty cool phone call to get, and it was one of those things that was surreal. I was ready to go to Pharmacy school at the University of Florida and ended up turning that down and basically packed up and I was in Lowell, Massachusetts the next day. 

After a career that reached as high as AA, O’Linger eventually stopped playing in 2019 and moved back home to Tampa where he worked at an Independent baseball facility run by Mark Newman. Newman had been the executive V.P. for baseball operations in the Yankees organization for over 25 years and was mentoring O’Linger toward a coaching career in the professional ranks. 

While working with Newman at his facility, O’Linger got a message on Linkedin from Tyler Duncan who is part of the Dodgers performance Science team. That message led to phone interviews, and when O’Linger attended the Winter meetings in San Diego he got to meet several of the Dodgers personnel and realized the Dodgers organization was where he wanted to be. Here’s what he had to say about becoming a Dodger.

It was really cool to get to meet the entire team and I felt instantly connected, and the rest is history. I went in and started on the Covid year and I wasn’t in Arizona very long before everything got shut down, but I was very fortunate to have that experience and then transition into this pitching coach role. 

O’Linger is the pitching coach at Rancho, which is the A Ball affiliate of the Dodgers. The Manager of the Quakes is John Shoemaker who has been with the organization since 1981 and is a legend within the organization. Shoemaker has over 1600 wins during his managerial tenure within the Dodgers system and O’Linger feels as if he is lucky to have such a great mentor like him to work under at Rancho.

I can’t say enough things about John Shoemaker. With the way that he conducts himself, and the way he prepares himself every day, there’s not a better mentor to be around. I know he made me better every single day and the rest of the staff as well, and, on top of that, he inspired and touched every single player that was there. 

I have talked to several players in the system about playing for Shoe, and I can tell you, the words O’Linger spoke are not lip service, they are real. 

Here are some more thoughts O’Linger gave on Shoe.

I will say this, Shoemaker instilled in every guy what it means to show up every day ready to play. The Culture that he created every day led to guys getting after their early work, and their bullpens and in the practice setting we tried to push the guys as hard as we could. When nighttime came around, the goal was to make the guys feel like they were always prepared for whatever they were going to see. Whether what they were going to see is good or bad, there are always going to be ups and downs, but the one thing that will stick with me is how hard every guy worked every day. I know it’s really cool for the fans to come in and see the games, but what no one sees or appreciates from the outside is how hard these guys work. 

Rancho saw over 40 players come and go last Summer, so it would have been impossible for O’Linger to talk about every prospect he got to work with, but, I did ask him to specifically talk about two rising stars at the catcher position Diego Cartaya and Dalton Rushing. As the pitching coach, O’Linger got to work with those 2 quite a bit on the game-planning side, and here’s what he had to say about them. 

Those 2 are special talents, I think that’s probably the best way to put it. But, not only that, they are also great dudes both on and off the field. They both push themselves on the game-planning side, and with both of them being catchers, I got to work with them quite a bit. We really pushed the game-planning side with both of them, and they both had different perspectives with very different backgrounds, but they both came prepared for the other team’s lineup. They knew all of our pitchers, they wanted to catch all the bullpens so they could make sure they knew the arsenal of each pitcher. They would rank each pitcher’s arsenal and knew how it would play based on the count and they came to know the other team’s lineups better than I think those guys knew themselves. 

The catcher is the only player on the field that has every position in front of them and works with both the pitchers and the position players, so they have to know about all aspects of the team. They also call the game and are widely known as the Field General, so having leadership skills is a must for that position. Here’s what O’Linger had to say about Cartaya and Rushing’s leadership skills. 

Both of them are obviously very talented and have the potential to play this game for a long time at a very high level, which is exciting for Dodgers fans. But, their leadership skills are really what separates them. They were able to get both the positional side and pitching side behind them, so it’s a pretty cool spot for them to be in because the catching side is the only position that mingles with both. So, they have to do their position player work, then they also have to do all of the game-planning with the pitchers, and the way they handled that and how they balanced themselves speaks volumes as to who they are as a person and as a player. 

One of the most exciting periods of last Summer, in the entire system, was watching the 2022 Draft Class infuse with the Quakes roster after the Draft. They brought a ton of energy, a bunch of talent and electricity that was fun to watch. O’Linger was very impressed with that group and enjoyed the fact that they basically had a whole new team after they arrived. 

Losing the short-season affiliate was tough on everyone because that was usually where guys straight out of college got their feet wet. But, now, with them showing up to a full-season affiliate where pretty much 100 games have already been played, that energy is special. It’s hard to recreate when you’ve had guys there for 100 games already, so it was definitely something that was needed. 

O’Linger went on to talk about how most of the 2022 Draft class that came to Rancho were position players.

It was cool for me because most of the 2022 Draft class that showed up for us was on the position side. So I got to really sit back and watch them take BP and have them ask questions. 

Final Thoughts

Durin is going to be a great coach for as long as he wants to stay in the game and here are several reasons why.

Every player is trying to make the Major Leagues and, in many ways, is competing against their teammates who are people that have become like brothers to them. So, it can be a tricky situation sometimes and one that requires leadership that communicates very well and can make each player understand their situation.

It takes great care towards relationships to make a player feel fully valued when they are not the ones being promoted.

This is an area of the game that is kind of like hitting in the sense that it’s a virtually impossible task, but, the way O’Linger cares for his players and is able to communicate will give him a leg up in these types of situations.

He is the type that will always see value in players well beyond their physical talents and that goes a long way in the Dodgers system and with the players themselves.

Also, one of the biggest responsibilities that Minor League coaches have, especially at the A-ball level, is to teach the culture. The Quakes coaching staff is tasked with teaching all of the young and new guys how to be a Dodger, both on and off the field. This is another area of the game that O’Linger will continue to shine.

Another major responsibilty of Minor League coaches is to communicate and coordinate between levels. To do so you have to be a team player, an aspect that comes naturally to O’Linger. Minor League coaches can’t have egos and want a player’s success to be because of them. Instead, they always have to put the players first and put their egos to the side to make the transition from one level to the next seamless. This part of the Dodgers process is spotless, and O’Linger, on the pitching side, is a big part of it. 

In closing, I would like to thank Durin for joining Dodgers Daily for an interview. When I started my research I actually didn’t realize he was the pitcher at Davidson that made the last out in 2017 at UNC, so I was excited to find out he was the guy I was getting ready to talk to. He is very impressive and Dodgers Daily will continue to be very excited to watch his ascent through the coaching ranks. 

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