Iowa baseball changes pitching coach

The Iowa Baseball coaching staff is making some changes this off-season and it comes on the pitching side of things, as pitching coach Robin Lund is reportedly headed to the Detroit Tigers organization to become the new Assistant Pitching Coach.

With the loss of Lund, the Hawkeyes have brought in former Elon pitching coach and Double A Seattle Mariners pitching coach Sean McGrath. Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball first reported this on Twitter this morning.

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Robin Lund spent four seasons with the Iowa Baseball program and quickly became known as one of the best pitching coaches in college baseball. The Iowa pitching staff ranked amongst the best in the country in 2022 in a number of categories, including hits per nine innings (2nd), SO/9 (3rd), ERA (4th) and WHIP (11th). The staff racked up 609 strikeouts on the year and blew away the school record of 449, which was set by the 2018 team.

Lund coached a pitching staff that had the Big Ten Pitcher of the Year in 2021 (Trenton Wallace) and 2022 (Adam Mazur), while Ty Langenberg is set to be one of the top pitchers in the conference going into next season. Over the two seasons, seven Iowa pitchers have been drafted or signed to MLB organizations, including the second-round selection of Adam Mazur this past year.

As for Sean McGrath, he started his coaching career with Iona College as the pitching coach and helped develop Mariano Rivera into the 2015 MAAC Pitcher of the Year and a 4th Round pick in the 2015 draft. From there, he moved on to UMASS Lowell where he spent two seasons with the River Hawks. In 2017, a pair of River Hawks pitchers received all-conference honors in the America East.

McGrath took over the pitching coach job at Elon for the 2018 and 2019 season. In 2018, the Phoenix pitching staff broke a school record with 575 strikeouts and the team went 36-23. Most recently, McGrath has been with the Seattle Mariners organization as a pitching coach in the minor league system. In 2020, he was with the High-A Modesto Nuts before moving to the High-A Everett AquaSox in 2021. This past season, he took over the pitching coach job with the Double-A Arkansas Travelers.