PEORIA, Ariz. — When Trent Blank was named the Mariners’ acting bullpen coach in 2020, he was so tickled with the opportunity he didn’t think to ask about a particular uniform number.
“So they gave me No. 79,” Blank said recently, smiling. “Numbers that I have had in the past have always had meaning … like my dad’s number or the number I had in college.”
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Given the opportunity to be in the big leagues, he wasn’t going to complain.
Now the team’s director of pitching strategy and coach, Blank has traded in that No. 79, and not just because it was better suited for an offensive tackle. Blank will wear No. 40 to honor the memory of former Mariners coach and pitching strategist Brian DeLunas, who left a lasting legacy with the organization in three short years from 2018-20.
On Jan. 16, 2022, DeLunas died after a long battle with kidney disease. He was 46 and left behind his wife, Johannah, and children, Rory and Maren.
“His vision was always to turn Mariners’ pitching into a household name,” Blank said. “He was one of the orchestrators of that for our group, and he had a vision of getting us to where we were a playoff contender.”
DeLunas passed away before the Mariners made their postseason march, ending a two-decade-long playoff drought last October. But his fingerprints were evident during that run and still remain today.
“Wearing his number is a subtle reminder of his vision, and wearing it is a small way to keep carrying that out while also honoring him,” Blank said.
Blank with his No. 40 jersey. (Corey Brock / The Athletic)Blank’s history with DeLunas ran deep. They were both from St. Louis. When Blank was 15, his pitching coach that summer was DeLunas. The two hit it off right away.
“I spent a whole season with him. I got to learn from him and hang out with him. That was my first dose of Brian,” Blank said.
To that point, only Blank’s father had really helped him with pitching. But DeLunas had an impact right away — and in different ways. It was an enlightening experience for Blank, and not just in terms of pitching.
“I never really had a true pitching coach. Brian offered a lot of new ideas. A lot of it was being more aggressive with my pitches, and a lot of it was the same philosophies we have today,” Blank said. “He had me switch to a splitter and that was a pitch that helped me for a long time.
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“But I think a lot of it was learning how to carry myself and how to get the best version of myself at that point in time.”
Years later, Blank was the director of pitching development for Dallas Baptist University while also working at TMI Sports Medicine as a baseball performance specialist. One day in 2018, Blank’s phone rang. It was DeLunas, who had been hired by the Mariners before the 2018 season. He wanted Blank to work for the Mariners as a pitching strategist. Blank jumped at the chance to get his foot in the door with a major-league team, and the opportunity to work with DeLunas again.
“I had just been hired and we were meeting for dinner. I remember being so nervous about it. I had all of these notes and ideas, things that I wanted to bring to the table … expecting the conversation to be about technical stuff,” Blank said.
Only it wasn’t.
“We just ended up having a good time,” Blank said. “We talked baseball … but we mostly talked about people we knew, things like that. We never did get to (Blank’s notes). He cared more about the person. He knew that the baseball stuff would come along.
“That was just Brian.”
DeLunas’ official title when he joined the Mariners in 2018 was bullpen coach, though his duties and his impact on the organization extended far beyond that.
“He was as integral in the early stages of building our pitching department as anyone,” Seattle’s president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said. “He changed the way we viewed pitching.”
DeLunas came to the Mariners with a background in biomechanics and he came with high praise from former Mariners pitcher David Phelps, who had worked out in the offseason at P3 Premier Pitching and Performance in St. Louis, which DeLunas co-founded.
The Mariners, like a lot of teams, were beginning to dip their toes into the world of high-performance training. Jeff Kingston, who was the assistant general manager in Seattle at the time, more or less cold-called DeLunas to ask a few questions.
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DeLunas began by talking about how the body works, realizing everyone’s body moves differently, how every body functions differently and how a delivery has to work around how the body functions.
“Five minutes into the conversation, I could tell this guy was different,” said Kingston, now the assistant general manager of the Dodgers.
The Big Chill. That’s what everyone called DeLunas. He had such an easy way with people, and that certainly served him well as he patiently worked to help those who had been in the game a long time to understand why the biomechanical side was so important to pitching.
“When Brian was talking about pitch strategy … he was about as in-tune as anyone could be,” Dipoto said. “He could look at a pitcher and he could tell you that’s the way he’s supposed to move.
“It’s tough to credit one person with the development of anything … but it’s hard to say we would have developed in the way that we did without Brian.”
Unbeknownst to many people, including some in the Mariners organization, DeLunas’ own body was in a constant state of crisis.
In 2007, DeLunas received a new kidney, transplanted from his brother, Adam. But by the time he joined the Mariners, he needed another one. Kidney disease never really abates altogether, as it essentially begins attacking the new kidney once it’s in place.
Adam DeLunas (left) and his brother, Brian. (Courtesy Adam DeLunas)When DeLunas joined the Mariners, his kidney was operating at about 20 percent. By 2019, the Mariners transitioned him from the bullpen coach to director of pitching development to lessen the burden of travel. He had to work remotely during the 2020 season because he was deemed high-risk for COVID-19.
“You couldn’t tell. He still showed up with the same attitude every day. He showed up as the same person he always was,” Blank said. “I don’t feel that it changed him. He still had the level of care for every person in the room that he always did.
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“I mean, that’s hard to do in good health.”
DeLunas was hired by the Mets ahead of the 2021 season as their special projects coordinator and to work at the team’s spring facility in Florida. By June, DeLunas had become the pitching coach at the University of Missouri, where he had previously served as a volunteer assistant and pitching coach from 2007-09.
The assumption by many was DeLunas would eventually find a donor match. But that day never came, and by January of 2022, he was gone.
“I knew it was a struggle to find a donor, but I never expected it to lead to where it did and where he is now,” Blank said.
This offseason, Blank called Adam DeLunas to get his permission to wear No. 40, the number Brian wore with the Mariners. It wasn’t something he necessarily had to do, but felt it was the right thing to do.
“When he told me that … it was fantastic, I told him I’d love for him to do it,” Adam DeLunas said. “I think (his time in Seattle) meant a lot to Brian. Just to put on that major-league jersey, which is something he wanted to do as a kid. He loved every minute of it. He loved everyone there.”
Blank will wear No. 40 every day this spring and into the regular season. Each time he buttons his jersey, he’ll think of his friend and how he’s better off for having known DeLunas.
“Brian was part of the original movement of this more advanced style of pitching and looking at pitch design and using technology. He was at the forefront of that,” Blank said. “But he also touched so many people and it was through his style and his personality. He was just a really good person.”
This is something Blank has tried to carry with him each day to the ballpark, and something he wants to convey in his conversations with staff and players.
“I’ve tried to, especially in my interactions with people,” Blank said. “He was the guy who did the right thing when no one was looking, leaving a note in your locker but not putting a name on it.
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“He did those things out of the kindness of his heart. He hired me when he didn’t have to. We had a small connection, but it changed my life. I think he has done that for a lot of people in baseball.”
Joel Firman, the Mariners’ director of analytics, was another member of the organization who counts himself as fortunate for having known and worked with DeLunas. Like Blank, he was moved by everything DeLunas brought to the organization.
“It was his ability to sort of be unapologetically himself and lean into who he was and lean into the things that he believed in,” Firman said. “That opened the door for a lot of people in this organization.
“I think that Trent is a really good example of Brian’s legacy kind of living on (with the Mariners).”
(Top photo courtesy of the DeLunas family)
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