Brown's track record of baseball success has Spartans set up for the future

Geoff Brown has built in a short time an extremely competitive baseball program at Bainbridge High School as the Spartans’ coach, but that should not be considered unique.

Brown is used to being around solid baseball programs. He was a junior pitcher at Jackson High School at Mill Creek when it won the state 4A baseball championship in 2006, completing a very rare undefeated season (27-0) by defeating Auburn in the title contest, 7-1, and finish as the No. 2 ranked team in the United States as noted by Baseball America.

Brown went 10-0 with a 0.98 ERA with 78 strikeouts in 69 innings that season, and got the pitching win and also hit a two-run homerun in the state title game.

Nineteen of Jackson’s 27 wins in 2006 came by the mercy rule as the Timberwolves took out their frustration on opponents for not winning it all the previous season (they finished third). Led by Travis “Lunchbox” Snider, who was the 14th pick in the MLB draft by Toronto, the Timberwolves jumped all over their opponents, including South Kitsap in the state quarterfinals, 18-0.

“We didn’t like the taste in our mouth, finishing third,” says Brown. “We took it personally and took it out on everybody. A lot of teams didn’t want to see us. It was fun years. A lot of us grew up together. We pushed each other. It was like a brotherhood. We had our arguments and fights, but on the baseball field we came together. It was a special group.”

Many Jackson players, including Brown, played for Mill Creek Little League, the Seattle Stars summer select team and reached high school together (although Brown took a detour for two years and went to Kamiak High School in Mukilteo before transferring to Jackson). Six players on that 2006 Jackson team collected D-1 baseball scholarships, including schools like Texas, California and Washington.

Brown’s senior year the Timberwolves went 18-3 and were ousted from the playoffs at district.

“We were good,” Brown says. “Everybody brought their A-game against us, and we were not as offensive as the year before. We lost our best player to a football injury (bad back) and if we had him we would have won back-to-back titles.”

Brown was again excellent on the mound. He went 6-2 with a 0.93 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 45 innings, was named first team 4A All-State and was picked in the 23rd round of the MLB draft by Kansas City, which offered him $400,000 to sign. He didn’t sign, instead accepting a baseball scholarship to the University of Washington.

“I should have taken it,” says Brown, now 33 years old. “At the time I didn’t know. I think part of it was I had a set number in mind and it wasn’t met. Having a single parent my mom didn’t know how to deal with it.

“The big thing (Kansas City was saying) if you sign now you can always go back to college and get your degree. It comes down to a coin flip. You might get a higher draft pick if you do well in the Pac-10 you get more money and a better shot at making it. I still ended up getting into pro baseball, so it worked out.”

Brown pitched four years for the Washington Huskies, establishing the career appearance record (96) as a left-handed specialist.

During his three summers at UW Brown pitched for Newport (Rhode Island) Gulls. The summer of 2008 he went 4-2 with a 2.23 ERA and collected the win in a playoff game. In 2009 he led the Gulls to the New England Collegiate Baseball League championship with a 5-0 record, a 1.48 ERA and 38 strikeouts over 31 innings. He worked the final four innings in the championship game. The following summer he went 3-0 with a 1.96 ERA for the Gulls.

He wasn’t drafted out of Washington, but instead played in Australia with Perth Heat in the Australian Baseball League in 2011 during our winter.

"My pitching coach called me and said they needed a couple guys pitching in Australia,” Brown said. “All expenses and flight paid for. I was like, I’ll take a free trip to Australia.”

The Heat finished first out of six teams in the league, going 34-11. Brown made eight pitching starts and finished with a 5-0 record, with one complete game and an ERA of 1.88. He struck out 31 in 38.1 innings.

Brown then signed to pay with the Joliet Slammers of Illinois in the independent Frontier League, where he pitched in 44 games, and then in August of 2012 was signed by the L.A. Dodgers organization. They sent him to Great Lakes in the low-A Midwest League. He only pitched three games there in 2012 (all in relief) and pitched in the 2013 and 2014 seasons at Great Lakes and Rancho Cucamonga in the California League before being released. He had his greatest success with the Great Lakes Loons in 2013. He had a 12-1 record with a 2.08 ERA while appearing in 28 games as a reliever with one start.

“I ended up being an All-Star reliever,” says Brown. “I was in this role where I piggy-backed, coming in behind Julio Urias. He would pitch two or three innings and I would pitch five or six innings and get the win,” says Brown.

Urias is now in his seventh season with the Dodgers, and won 20 games last year with 195 strikeouts.

After being released, Brown went with City Baseball, a big select baseball program based in Seattle as pitching coach. He then took the head coaching job at Ingraham High School in the 2016-17 school season, turning around a program that had been in the doldrums. That first year the Rams went 11-9 in the 3A Metro League. His second (and last) year with the Rams, the team went 15-4.

How did he turn the program around?

“A lot of it was just mindset,” explains Brown. “You got to have a lot of push and will to win. I kind of am a firm believer if you believe in winning you have the possibility of winning. A lot of it is pitching. You got to throw strikes and eliminate free bases (walks). In high school baseball it doesn’t matter how much velocity you have if you pound (the strike) zone and make the routine plays. You play really good defense and have three pitchers you can win. You put the ball in play after play somebody is going to make a mistake.”

Brown says he knew some of the Bainbridge kids from working with City Baseball and that led him to believe a dynasty could be built on the island. Since taking the head job at Bainbridge the 2018-19 school year the Spartans have gone 51-12 (COVID-19 interrupted 2020 season) and won two Olympic League championships. This past season, the Spartans made the first round of the state 3A tournament, where they lost to eventual state champion Mercer Island, 8-0.

“We had three guys down with COVID,” Brown explains, “including JR Ritchie.”

Ritchie, the best Bainbridge pitcher, has a UCLA baseball scholarship in his back pocket if he doesn’t sign with a Major League team this summer. A senior, Ritchie is pegged by one MLB mock draft to be chosen by the Dodgers with the 40th pick in the draft that starts July 17. Ritchie may go higher, though, because at the recent MLB combine at Petco Park in San Diego he struck out five of the six hitters he faced in a two-inning outing,

Brown has started his own select baseball program — Island Baseball Company — and works with individuals on pitching.

He has a former Bainbridge coach, Jason Gore, helping out and other former players lending a hand. Brown says he has several teams – 10u, 12u, 13u, 14u and 18.

These select teams should stack a Bainbridge roster for years to come and make the Spartans a power to deal with in the state.

Terry Mosher is a longtime Kitsap County sportswriter who writes a regular column for the Sun about local sports personalities. Contact him at bigmosher@msn.com. 

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Coach Geoff Brown has Bainbridge Spartans set up for success