Arizona Diamondbacks' Randy Johnson ready to help minor-league pitchers

Randy Johnson has more time on his hands this year and the Hall of Fame left-hander plans to use a lot of it helping young pitchers in the Diamondbacks’ minor-league system, which he sees as his best way to give back to the game.

He did a little of that last year but will be doing much more of it this season.

“For me, it was nothing more than just needing a little break from the game after 26 years of being in the game. I just needed a break from it,” Johnson told azcentral sports on Thursday at Salt River Fields after observing the Diamondbacks’ first official bullpen sessions between pitchers and catchers.

“Last year was my first year back and I enjoyed doing what I did, which was going to some of the minor-league cities and talking to them, watching them, and helping them any way I can. I intend to do that a lot more this year because my schedule is a little more free and a little less hectic.”

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Johnson, winner of 303 career games and five Cy Young Awards, including four straight while with the Diamondbacks from 1999-2002, will also be available to the team’s major-league pitchers during spring training and the Cactus League schedule. He made the rounds to say hello to a bunch of them on Thursday, offering any assistance he could.

“And I’ll continue to do that,” he said, “but what I’m really hopeful of doing is having an impact on the minor-league kids and going down there to put the names with the faces and doing whatever I can to help, whether it’s watching them and saying ‘nice job’ or offering tips and advice. Hopefully, wherever I’m at, they’ll come up and ask questions because I’m here to help.

“My time has come and gone now, but to be able to give back some knowledge is what I want to do.”

It’s easier to do that with younger pitchers than more established ones, but Johnson has no preconceived notions, either. He freely admits he doesn’t have all the answers, but he knows what worked for him and he can explain how he went about his business.

It’s no secret Johnson was aided by a certain ace himself early in his career.

“Oh, major-league players had a huge impact on me,” Johnson said. “The biggest, of course, was Nolan Ryan. I was three or four years into my career and with him, it was some mechanical things. I’m not big on mechanics, but what I would like to share with them is the mind-set, being prepared, how you work out, and knowing what you want to do before you do it.

“If you tell them those things are important then I think they’ll realize it. And if you have some credibility when you say it to them, hopefully that goes a long way. There’s a lot more to being successful than just throwing really hard in this game. Everybody throws really hard in this game now. In my era and prior to my era, there were a select few here and there. But now just about everybody does.”

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Diamondbacks manager Chip Hale said Johnson’s presence and the fact he may be more involved than ever is “a great thing” and it’s “one of our big advantages.”

“I told our pitchers today, ‘If you look out there we have a lot of instructors and Randy’s going to be out there with us, too, and it would be a shame when spring training ends if you haven’t gotten something from somebody in this camp that’s an instructor. We have guys who pitched, who played, who managed at the highest level of our game and in the biggest games, the World Series.

“He’s one of them. He’s going to touch some different people and 10 years down the road, I think one of these kids probably in our pitchers’ mini camps will say, ‘What Randy Johnson told me really kicked it in for me.’ So those are special things.”