Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski Curve pitching Matt Ford walks to the dugout before Tuesday's game with Richmond.

When Matt Ford stepped off the rubber at PNC Park as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers organization on July 20, 2003, little did he know it would be the final Major League appearance of his career.

Nor did he realize the importance the Brewers had in the start of his next career.

Now, Ford is the pitching coach in Altoona where the Curve earned an important 8-7 Eastern League win over the Richmond Flying Squirrels Wednesday night at PNG Field in front of 3,958 fans.

Ford missed the rest of the 2003 season with a sprained elbow and subsequent elbow surgery to remove bone spurs. He bounced around affiliated ball after his release from the Brewers, but never made it back to the Majors. He played on the independent circuit before his journey took him to college baseball and the University of Akron.

“A lot of us baseball guys kind of go through when they know their career is done,” Ford said. “I knew somehow, some way, I wanted to stay in baseball. After I played winter ball in Venezuela, I started kind of just doing some lessons with some kids, and started getting a decent amount and low and behold, I started enjoying helping the younger kids, and found out I was okay at it. From there, I wanted to stay in the game. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go into scouting or coaching and I ended up getting an opportunity at the University of Akron, which was great because in college you get to scout, which is recruiting, and then you coach as well.”

Coaching at Akron was good for Ford, but it wasn’t where he wanted to be.

“I wanted to get back to my roots of pro baseball,” Ford said. “Because I got drafted out of high school, I never had the college baseball experience, as a player, so for me, I wanted to get to the pro side.”

Fast forward 12 years and he’s been on the pro side of it ever since and a mainstay within the Pirates’ organization.

“The game has completely evolved from when I joined in 2014,” Ford said. “We weren’t very heavily into the analytics yet. We were kind of putting our toe in the water with it. I’m glad I came up when I did as a coach, because I got to at least coach trusting my eyes and feel for it, versus looking at an iPad all the time.”

Within the Pirates’ ecosystem Ford has held a multitude of different roles including rehab coordinator which is where he found himself working to blend biomechanics and analytics, something that’s helped him tremendously on his journey.

“In that role, I got to learn a lot about the body,” Ford said. “I was getting to see stuff on the biomechanical side, just why the body does certain things and how that applies to getting guys healthy, how it applies to delivery, you name it. Being like a lifelong learner in this game has been the big thing.”

Those efforts at continuously learning have helped him reach new heights with pitchers such as Cam Sanders who is now with the Pirates after going 2-0 with a 1.90 ERA in Altoona and 2-2 with a 2.59 ERA in Indianapolis prior to his promotions.

It’s also includes his work with Justin Meis who has seen his ERA drop from 6.44 in 2024 to 2.97 entering Wednesday night’s game against Richmond.

His approach with his staff is simplistic and revolves around throwing the fastball for strikes.

“The big thing will always be strikes, being in zone with your stuff,” Ford said. “My last several years at the lower levels were, ‘Hey, man, I can’t move on to the next thing until we’re in zone. We’re throwing strikes specifically with the fastball, we’ve got to be able to move the fastball around. At this level, obviously you got to have your secondary pitches that you can land early, middle, late, behind in the count and that’s the thing. The jump here is being able to do that in any count.”

Having that type of impact is what makes coaching a positive experience, something that’s not lost on Ford.

“It’s been longer than my playing career, way longer now,” Ford said. “It’s been a journey, but also pretty awesome to evolve with the game, too.”

Tagging up

Termarr Johnson’s aggressive tag up with one out in the bottom of the ninth on a shallow fly ball by P.J. Hilson pushed across the eighth and most important run of the game, the winning one.

“Getting two-out hits is tough in this league and we’ve got to be aggressive,” Curve manager Andy Fox said. “We’ve been aggressive all year. And we’re not going to stop now. We got to push the envelope and force some things.”

It paid off in a back-and-forth affair that saw Richmond tie it up at seven in the top of the eighth before Hilson’s sacrifice fly ball.

“This group has been resilient all year,” Fox said. “It’s been fun to watch them here in the last couple months in the second half. They get after it like they should, and they enjoy it, and execute when they need to.”

Plunked again

For the second night in a row, Pirates’ top prospect Konnor Griffin was hit with a pitch.

Griffin, subsequently, stole second base on the next pitch after getting to first so it seems as though he’s no worse for the wear despite getting hit.

“That’s part of his game,” Fox said. “You don’t want him to get hit, but also I understand they’re trying to pitch in a little bit and all that.”

Up Next

Emmanuel Chapman pitches for Altoona tonight. He is 6-2 with a 3.86 ERA on the season.