After 14 seasons as pitching coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers that included 10 trips to the postseason, Rick Honeycutt has decided to step aside.
The former Lakeview High and University of Tennessee standout will remain in the organization in a special assistant role. Honeycutt is the only big-league pitching coach that Clayton Kershaw, arguably the greatest pitcher of this generation, has worked with.
“I told them at the end of last year that this was going be my last year and that I would still like to be associated and work in the system and do whatever I could to help, and that’s what I’m doing,” Honeycutt said Tuesday before attending his grandson’s soccer match. “Hopefully I can spend a little more time at home and go from there. I had back surgery in February, so this year was a trying year for me physically.
“The travel when you get older is tough enough as it is, and having back surgery made the travel in April and May quite a challenge for me. I’ve loved what I’ve been able to do, but there is the other side of the coin. You want to be physically able to do it, and there were times I felt where I wasn’t able to do everything I normally do.”
Mark Prior, the former Chicago Cubs star whose career was derailed by injury, will take Honeycutt’s place.
Honeycutt worked under four Dodgers managers: Grady Little (2006-07 seasons), Joe Torre (2008-10), Don Mattingly (2011-15) and Dave Roberts (2016-19). Los Angeles reached the National League Championship Series six times with Honeycutt and also made two World Series trips, losing in seven games to Houston in 2017 and losing a five-game series to Boston last year.
This year’s Dodgers set a franchise standard with a 106-56 record during the regular season, but they lost their best-of-five NL Division Series to Washington after winning two of the first three games.
“Obviously we had an extremely talented team, and the goal as a player and a coach is to get to the World Series,” Honeycutt said. “We were able to go two years in a row, but any time you lose your last game, no matter when it is, it’s never good. I’m obviously disappointed with the way this season ended.
“Only one team can win it in the end, and we didn’t do that in my time, but I can look back at a lot of positives. This team remains very close in bringing a championship back to Los Angeles.”
The Los Angeles pitching trio of Kershaw, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Walker Buehler combined to win 44 games against just 14 losses during the regular season, with Kershaw’s 16-5 record extending his career mark to 169-74 with a 2.44 earned run average. Yet after a quality start by Buehler last Wednesday in the fifth and deciding game against the Nationals, Kershaw entered and lost a 3-1 lead by allowing back-to-back home runs to Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto.
Honeycutt said Tuesday that the eventual 7-3 loss to Washington in 10 innings may be the most painful of his career.
“Nobody anticipates anybody giving up back-to-back home runs,” he said. “You get within six outs with a two-run lead, and that’s usually something you finish off. We had to go through Rendon and Soto, their two best hitters, and we felt comfortable that Clayton was ready. It was on his regular rest day, so it wasn’t like we were putting him in early and without sufficient rest.
“You don’t even think it will come out the scenario that it did.”
Honeycutt was a big-league pitcher from 1977 to 1997 and made three World Series trips with the Oakland A’s from 1988 to 1990. The A’s lost to the Dodgers in 1988 and lost to the Cincinnati Reds in 1990 but defeated the San Francisco Giants in between.
In Oakland’s championship year, Honeycutt appeared in 64 games and went 2-2 with a 2.35 ERA.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.