HarbourCats hire Adame as pitching coach

The HarbourCats have announced that they have hired Alec Adame as their pitching coach, exactly one week after introducing Graig Merritt as the team’s new head coach. Adame will look to improve a HarbourCats pitching staff that finished with a 4.50 team ERA, which was 8th best in the 12-team West Coast League.

Alec Adame

Adame has a very impressive baseball resumé, to say the least. On top of a master’s degree in Physical Education, Adame is a Health and Kinesiology Instructor at East LA College (ELAC), a community college with almost 35,000 students in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park. He is the head assistant baseball coach of the ELAC Huskies, a team that plays in the California Community College Athletic Association. Last year the Huskies posted a 15-6 record in conference play and earned a berth in the State playoffs, largely because of their strong pitching. With Adame in charge of ELAC’s pitching staff, the Huskies notched a miserly 2.02 team ERA in conference games.

After spending eight years as a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals, Tampa Bay Rays and San Diego Padres, Adame knows a thing or two about evaluating players. Prior to becoming a scout, he was the head baseball coach at Los Angeles City College for three years and he was also an assistant coach at California State University (CSU), Chico in 2000-2001.

There’s a very good reason that HarbourCats head coach Graig Merritt tapped Adame to be his right-hand man on the HarbourCats coaching staff. Adame was a pitcher and a teammate of Merritt’s at CSU Chico. The pair were battery mates on the 1999 team that won the Division II national championship, so I’m guessing that it won’t be difficult for them to be on the same page next summer. In their 1999 championship run, Adame went a perfect 5-0 in 23 relief appearances.

Adame and Merritt are already busy recruiting the next generation of HarbourCats for next summer’s squad. Adame brings a wealth of contacts in college baseball to his new job, so don’t be surprised to see more HarbourCats players from community colleges in California, Oregon and Washington state.

Although he is “just” the new pitching coach, it’s not a stretch to conclude that Adame also has the credentials to be a head coach in the WCL. With an embarrassment of riches in the coaching department, the HarbourCats’ future looks a heckuva lot brighter than it did just a few short weeks ago. It’s safe to say that Victoria’s team ERA should be well south of 4.50 in the summer of 2015.