By GREGORY ZELLER //
As a star baseball player at Ward Melville High School and the University at Buffalo, Kyle Brennan found his best game. As a professional coach, he’s helping other players find theirs.
The South Setauket resident never intended to be a baseball coach – at least, not on a professional level. But after graduating Ward Melville in 2012 and playing five years for NCAA Division-I Buffalo, including three seasons as the Bulls’ starting catcher, Brennan realized that for him, the grass would always be greenest between the baselines.
A catcher by trade, Brennan had played and/or palled around with legitimate Major League talent throughout his young life. Toronto Blue Jays pitchers Anthony Kay and Steven Matz, the former New York Met, were both Ward Melville connections; Kay remains a close friend, while Matz, several years older than Brennan, is “an awesome guy” who to this day “would definitely stop and say hello.”
Unlike his Ward Melville mates, Brennan didn’t go pro. At Buffalo, the Long Islander set his sights on other things – mechanical engineering, his first chosen major, and later exercise science, with the intention of becoming a physical therapist.
A stint as a volunteer EMT altered his career trajectory again. After earning his bachelor’s degree in exercise science, now determined to become a physician assistant, Brennan was even accepted into the New York Institute of Technology’s post-graduate physician assistant program.
But through it all, there was baseball.
“Once I finished playing (at Buffalo), I decided to make an Instagram page, basically as a way to share what I’d learned,” Brennan said. “I’d amassed a ton of knowledge about training, strength conditioning and playing the catching position – the skills of catching and how they related to the rest of the game.”
All stars: Kyle Brennan (second from left) with buddies (left to right) Anthony Kay, Nick Nunziato and Steven Matz, circa 2015.
The now ex-catcher started that Instagram page basically to “fill the gap” between the end of his days at Buffalo and the start of his days at New York Tech. But it wasn’t long before he realized the so-called “tools of ignorance” were, in fact, his greatest inspiration.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be involved with baseball full-time, so I made the Instagram page basically to express my thoughts,” he told Innovate Long Island. “But I began picking up clients for private lessons and group lessons, and then I was helping out at some of the catcher’s clinics I’d participated in as a player.
“It snowballed,” Brennan added. “And I decided that my passion and purpose were much more aligned with baseball … then healthcare and physiology.”
So he made a tough call, backing out of his New York Tech acceptance and launching Long Island-based Catching Machine Performance, a 2019 startup that spring-boarded off his Catching Machine blog and combined “five or six different avenues of working with players in different regards,” focused primarily on training young players “both in the weight room and on the field.”
“I was already coaching a travel team and offering other lessons,” Brennan said. “So I began organizing larger groups for strength conditioning and doing online consulting with youths and college players, specifically catchers.
“I looked for any opportunity where I could experience coaching or training players,” he added. “Anything I could learn, picking up everything I could.
“The ultimate plan was to stay in baseball and training, though I didn’t line up any particular milestones along the way.”
The milestones, it turned out, would line up Brennan.
As jazzed as he was about carving out a baseball life, the ex-catcher didn’t harbor any delusions about coaching professionally. At best, he figured, that would require years of low-level toiling. “Guys run camps and clinics and work with players and eventually weave their way in,” he noted. “I assumed that would be years down the line, if at all, and I didn’t really see it as a viable option.”
Field of dreams: Coaching youngsters on the finer points of the game was always Brennan’s first love.
But once again, Brennan’s options were about to change. Jason Kanzler, a former Bulls teammate, had caught on with the Houston Astros organization, rising to become the organization’s hitting coordinator. Kanzler was a senior when Brennan was a freshman, but the two stayed in touch; Kanzler even consulted Brennan about conditioning and playing drills.
Recognizing that Brennan had the goods, Kanzler invited his buddy to apply to the Astros organization for a player-development role. Brennan’s coaching experience was limited – he’d coached the Long Island Titans, a top-tier youth traveling team, and logged one season as a Ward Melville varsity assistant – but his massive online library of catching drills and tips “put me over the edge.”
“They got to see how I thought and how I broke things down, and they got to see how I talked to the players,” Brennan noted. “That gave them a pretty good feel for what I was about.”
In early 2020, Brennan got the call: He was summoned to the Astros’ Spring Training facility in Florida for his first professional-level gig, and was assigned to the organization’s High-A affiliate in North Carolina (previously the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, now the Asheville Tourists).
His first season as a pro was “a bit of a whirlwind,” with the pandemic wreaking havoc across Minor League Baseball. Now in Year 2, Brennan has found his sea legs, working with all kinds of players. He coaches catchers on the arts of blocking low pitches and snagging would-be base-stealers; he helps outfielders sharpen their defense and runners master the basepaths; he even translates information gathered by organizational intelligence into “digestible” scouting reports for the Tourists.
Working it out: Kinesiology, his first educational choice, still paves Brennan’s professional road.
Now a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified FRC (for Functional Range Conditioning) mobility specialist, Brennan doesn’t work directly with Major Leaguers, though they do cross paths in Spring Training, “and it’s cool to be around those guys and see what the finished product looks like for the players you’re working with.”
He still maintains Catching Machine Performance, but only in the baseball offseason, since “it would be a disservice to the Astros and the players I work with to spend time on personal things.” In this way, he swings many bats, and his future in baseball is like a clean scorecard: The catcher-turned-possible-mechanical-engineer-turned-potential-physical-therapist-turned-EMT-turned-almost-physician-assistant-turned-entrepreneur-turned-amateur-coach-turned-professional-coach has definitely learned to keep his options open.
Does that mean he might manage in The Bigs one day?
“The managerial track is not one I’m currently on,” Brennan noted. “Although I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to it.”
For now, he’s happy to be doing what he loves – and “the thing I love most is working with players, especially catchers.”
“I love training them and preparing them for the opposing lineups and helping them learn to handle pitching staffs,” he said. “I throw batting practice, I hit ground halls, I get to coach first base during games.
“The season is long, and at times it can be a grind,” Brennan added. “But I really love what I’m doing.”
