As expected, John DeRouin has been promoted to the position of pitching coach for Arizona.
The program announced the move Friday, 11 days after Kevin Vance left to become the head coach at San Diego State.
DeRouin had been Vance’s top aide the past two seasons, first serving as director of player development before his title was changed to director of pitching performance and strategy.
“Since joining our program, John has been a tremendous resource for our student-athletes and our staff and a major part of our improvement on the mound over the previous two seasons,” UA coach Chip Hale said in a news release. “Retaining and promoting John into a full-time coaching role overseeing our pitching is a great opportunity to continue our upward trajectory and sets us up for near-term and long-term success.”
Under Vance and DeRouin’s coaching — which places a heavy emphasis on data and technology to maximize performance and minimize injuries — Arizona improved its team ERA by 1.51 runs from 2023 to ‘24. The Wildcats also led the country that year in strikeout-to-walk ratio (3.46-1) and fewest walks allowed per nine innings (2.56).
John DeRouin, show before Game 2 of the Eugene Regional on May 31, 2025, in Eugene, Ore., has been promoted to pitching coach for Arizona baseball.
Arizona finished 11th (2.83-1) and eighth (3.27) nationally in those categories this past season en route to a berth in the College World Series.
The promotion of DeRouin should help the Wildcats retain most of their young, talented arms, including right-handers Owen Kramkowski and Smith Bailey. The two combined for 36 starts and 12 victories this past season. The transfer portal for baseball closes July 1.
“I would like to extend a sincere thank you to Coach Hale for his support and belief in my ability to take on this new role,” DeRouin said in the release. “In two years at Arizona we have built a world-class pitching development program, and I look forward to the opportunity to continue building on our success. We have championship-caliber facilities, staff and student-athletes in place at Arizona, putting us in the perfect position to achieve all our goals.”
Left-hander Eric Orloff, a senior on the ‘25 squad, dubbed DeRouin “the pitch-shape god.”
“It’s crazy,” Orloff said in May. “He just changes your grip a little bit, boom — another 4 inches horizontal, 2 inches vertical. Just minor changes that he makes to make your pitches move how they’re supposed to move.”
John DeRouin, shown before a game vs. New Mexico State on April 8, 2025, at Hi Corbett Field, has been promoted to pitching coach for Arizona baseball.
DeRouin, 25, never has been a pitching coach for a college program and has taken an unconventional route to his current post.
DeRouin came to Arizona from the Detroit Tigers, where he served as rehab pitching coordinator. Before that, he was a pitching coordinator and instructor at Hop’s Athletic Performance in Coventry, Rhode Island, and a pitching coach/instructor for two travel-ball clubs, North East Baseball and the New England Scorpions.
DeRouin pitched at Cranston West High School in Rhode Island and at the Community College of Rhode Island.
“That was where it ended,” DeRouin told the Star before the 2024 season. “I started doing lessons on the side to make money. Little did I know that it was going to turn into a career path.”
DeRouin met Vance, among others in the coaching/training world, while mastering and applying technological tools such as Trackman and Rapsodo. He quickly became a sought-after instructor in the Northeast.
John DeRouin, foreground, watches some of the Arizona pitchers throw from the mound with Kevin Vance during practice at Hi Corbett Field on Jan. 31, 2024. DeRouin has succeeded Vance as the Wildcats' pitching coach after serving as his assistant the past two seasons.
“I was fortunate to start off in the private sector, working with kids from high school all the way to professional,” DeRouin said. “It started there, trying to just figure out how to make each guy better. A 14-, 15-year-old is going to digest information differently than a big-leaguer. But there’s a lot that still applies.”
DeRouin said he learned a considerable amount from Matt Hopkins, the founder of Hop’s Athletic Performance.
“I was around a lot of really smart people who understood the body at a high level (and) were kind of on the cutting edge of different things in the pitching world,” DeRouin said.
Vance coached at Rhode Island and Boston College and would send pitchers to work with DeRouin. The two became friends, nerding out about pitching, and eventually worked together at Arizona.
“He’s one of the guys that I would talk to on the phone for hours about pitching,” Vance said before the ‘24 season. “We picked each other’s brains. When the job (at Arizona) opened up, it was like, yeah, I would love to have someone that I know that we’ve already bounced ideas off each other. We understand where we’re both coming from and what’s important.
“I want to be around people that are smarter than me. He’s a really smart dude.”
DeRouin described himself as a “lifelong learner.” The Tigers thought enough of him to bring them into their organization despite his youth. He did more than deal with pitchers who were recovering from injuries.
“The main responsibility was to rehab, but I was also a pitching coordinator where I was involved in all of our pitching decisions and initiatives,” DeRouin said. “I knew what was going on at all our affiliates. I talked to our major-league group. I was collaborating with a lot of different people. (I) was at the combine in Phoenix interviewing guys ahead of the amateur draft.
“There was a lot of work that was done outside of just rehab. That was kind of the beauty of it.”
