Former Knight and MLBer Mike Maroth Hired as UCF’s Pitching Coach

UCF Knights Head Baseball Coach Greg Lovelady may have lost his pitching coach to MLB, but that is exactly where he found his new one, and he is a blast from the past.

UCF announced the hiring of former Knight and MLB veteran Mike Maroth as its next pitching coach Thursday morning. The move was first reported by Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball the night before.

Maroth pitched for the Knights from 1996-1998 and helped the team make back-to-back NCAA Regionals in 1996 and 1997. After being selected in the 3rd Round of the 1998 MLB Draft by the Boston Red Sox, he spent five years in the majors with the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals from 2002-2007.

Since 2015, Maroth has been coaching in the Atlanta Braves organization, his second stop as a professional pitching coach after four years with the Detroit Tigers.

For the past three seasons, Maroth was the pitching coach for the Braves’ Triple-A affiliate, the Gwinnett Stripers. He was also the pitching coach at the Braves’ alternate training site in Gwinnett during the 2020 COVID season. Some of the notable pitchers he worked with there include 2022 MLB wins leader Kyle Wright, Bryce Elder, Bryse Wilson, Huascar Ynoa, Kyle Muller, Ian Anderson, and Joey Wentz.

Before his time in Gwinnett, Maroth spent one season as the pitching coach of the Braves’ A-Advanced affiliate, the Florida Fire Frogs, in 2018. It was then that he first worked with Anderson, Ynoa, Muller, Wilson, and Wentz.

He also spent two seasons as the Braves’ minor-league rehab pitching coordinator from 2016-17. That job, per the Society for American Baseball Research, was the last time Maroth was based in Orlando, his hometown.

That is, until today.

Back when Maroth was the pitching coach for the Florida Fire Frogs, he spoke with the Banneret’s Eric Lopez on the Black and Gold Banneret Podcast. Listen to that episode below:

UCF Baseball season begins on February 17th.