Brad Mills

James Bradley “Brad” Mills was born on January 19, 1957, in Exeter, California, in the state’s Central Valley. As a young boy, he and his three brothers took frequent trips with their father, a cattle rancher and orange farmer, to San Francisco or Oakland to see the Giants or Athletics. The car rides were often filled with discussions about baseball, which Mills credits with developing his love for the game.1

Being a baseball-obsessed kid during his youth led Mills to idolize Giants superstar Willie Mays during his Little League years. However, his father encouraged him to play infield rather than outfield, and young Brad acquiesced.

He played baseball at Exeter Union High School, which also produced baseball players Satoshi Hirayama, Adam Pettyjohn, and Jeriome Robertson. Mills played third base, and as a big leaguer measured 6-feet and 196 pounds. He batted left-handed. In 2010 his number 7 was retired at Exeter Union.

After high school, Mills went to the College of the Sequoias (COS), a junior college in nearby Visalia. While playing for the COS Giants for two seasons, Mills was named First Team All-Conference and the team’s Most Valuable Player in 1976. The following season, he was named team captain.

This recognition propelled Mills to continue his college career at the Division I level at the University of Arizona, even though he was drafted in 1977 in the 16th round by the Minnesota Twins. In 1978, his first year at Arizona as a junior, Mills batted .435 with 51 RBIs and only 9 strikeouts in 54 games. His senior year, he batted .361 with 8 home runs and 58 RBIs. Exposure as a significant prospect wasn’t the only thing Mills experienced at Arizona. A teammate helped him immensely in his career and became one of his best friends in baseball. The teammate was Terry Francona, son of former big-leaguer Tito Francona and a blue-collar corner infielder and outfielder with a sky-high ceiling.2

Terry Francona led Arizona to the 1980 College World Series championship. He was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player and won the Golden Spikes Award as the best amateur player in the United States. Mills had moved on to pro ball by that time; the two saved their moments of fame together for the big leagues.

After college ball, Mills was taken 426th overall in the 17th round of the 1979 draft by the Montréal Expos, 14 picks ahead of Orel Hershiser and 67 ahead of Don Mattingly. All three ended up coaching after their careers.

Mills made his professional debut in the summer of 1979 for the West Palm Beach Expos, the Expos’ advanced Class-A affiliate. In 78 games he batted .271 with 5 home runs and a .402 on-base percentage. His high OBP was aided primarily by the 58 walks he received. Plate discipline and the ability to get on base remained one of Mills’ best assets throughout his minor-league career.

The next season, 1980, Mills made the jump to Double-A Memphis, where in 55 games he batted .295 with 44 RBIs. That performance earned him a promotion to Triple-A Denver. For the Bears, Mills had 201 at-bats as an everyday player in 52 games. During his time with Denver he batted .289 and earned the most coveted call-up of them all.

On June 8, 1980, Mills made his major league debut with Montréal during a doubleheader against the St. Louis Cardinals at Olympic Stadium. In game two of the twin bill, Mills got the start at third base and went 1-for-3 with a single and a walk. However, his time with the Expos in 1980 was short-lived, and he finished the season with 18 hits in 21 games.

In 1981 Mills returned to Denver and had arguably his best minor-league season yet at Triple A. He played in 118 games, the first time in his career that he exceeded 300 at-bats in a season with a single club. (He ended his time in Denver with 477 plate appearances.) He hit .314 with 12 home runs and 66 RBIs, and while his walks were down, he finished with an .850 OPS. This performance earned him a late-season call-up in August to Montréal, where he had another “cup of coffee,” going 5-for-21 in 17 games.

Mills spent 1982 as a bench player for the Expos, with a brief spell at Wichita, Montréal’s new Triple-A affiliate. With the Expos he had only 73 plate appearances, batting .224, the first time he hit less than .250 for his primary team. Mills was teammates that season with Andre Dawson, a 2010 inductee in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and Bill Lee, a member of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame.

In 1983 Mills played mostly with Wichita, with two stints with the Expos, in the spring and in September. In 81 games at Wichita, he batted .317 with 46 RBIs. One of his three strikeouts with Montréal was at the hands of Nolan Ryan on April 27, and it was Ryan’s 3,509th, exceeding Walter Johnson’s then current record of 3,508. As it turned out, it was Mills’ last year with an appearance in a major-league game; his at-bat against Ryan etched him in history as part of a baseball trivia question.3

Injuries began to plague Mills’ career in the final three seasons of his professional tenure. And while he still produced modestly when healthy, his quest to return to the major leagues ran dry by 1986 as a result. He batted a healthy .315 for Indianapolis in 1984 but was traded in July to Houston, which sent him to its Tucson affiliate. After reaching free agency in the Fall of 1985, Mills joined the Triple-A Iowa Cubs in 1986 but unfortunately experienced a devastating knee injury while baserunning that season all but ended his playing career. He suffered a torn ACL, MCL, and cartilage after his cleat was caught in second base.4 Though as his playing days closed, the next rewarding chapter of his baseball life opened.

Following his playing career, Mills was named the manager of the Rookie-level Wytheville Cubs (Appalachian League). The team finished out of the postseason but the Cubs were impressed by Mills’ performance, and for the next five seasons he moved up the organization’s managerial ladder. His best seasons came with Peoria of the Midwest League in 1989 and Winston-Salem of the Carolina League in 1990-91: 80 or more victories in each season. In 1992 the Cubs rewarded Mills with a promotion to the Triple-A Iowa Cubs. In 5½ years, Mills had gone from an injured player looking for his next big-league call-up to a seasoned minor-league skipper just one step away from coaching in the majors.

Mills had an underperforming 1992 season at Iowa: a 51-92 slate. And in 1993 he found himself in a new organization, managing the Colorado Rockies’ Triple-A affiliate in Colorado Springs. Mills’ team struggled and finished 16 games behind in their division, missing the playoffs. In his second season, 1994, the Sky Sox made it to the postseason where they lost in the semifinals. (This was also the season of the player strike in the major leagues.)

In 1995, the major-league season resumed and the Pacific Coast League carried on as usual too. Despite a modest 77-66 regular-season record, Colorado Springs qualified for the postseason and went on to win the league championship, beating Salt Lake three games to two. It was Mills’ first championship as a skipper.

The 1996 season was Mills’ last with the Rockies organization. Colorado Springs plunged to 10th place in the PCL and failed to repeat as champions. However, that season Mills still had the opportunity to manage future major-league skipper Craig Counsell and future Hall of Famer Larry Walker. Around the same time, his old college teammate Terry Francona was named manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. Francona hired Mills to be his first-base coach, marking their reunification and starting a new chapter of their friendship in the dugout. Mills later reflected fondly on his journey through the minor leagues and its impact on his career during a 2004 interview with SABR’s Bill Nowlin.

“There’s things that you learn in the minor leagues, either as a coach or a manager in the minor leagues,” Mills recalled. “You learn how to teach. You learn how to talk to people. You just kind of mature and grow in your profession, which is a professional baseball coach. That’s kind of like your developing ground or whatever. There’s things that you can learn, but it’s just so much different at the major league level. It’s so much different but that can help season you and get you ready for the major leagues.”5

But despite reaching the major leagues, working with Francona, and having future World Series champions in Scott Rolen and Curt Schilling as part of the roster, the Phillies never finished above .500 during the four years that Mills and Francona spent in Philadelphia.

At the end of the 2000 season, 20 years since their days in  Arizona, Francona was fired by the Phillies and Mills left with him, as was customary for positional coaches when a manager was fired. They went separate ways for a few years. Francona moved on to Cleveland as a scout, then to Texas and Oakland as a bench coach. Mills went back to the minors in 2002 to manage the Las Vegas 51s, the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Knowing he was managing in one of the most distracting cities in America, Mills told his players early in the season that he would only “get them out of jail” if it happened during the first few days of the season.6 His tough love worked, as the 51s qualified for the postseason with Mills’ leadership, but lost to the eventual champions, the Edmonton Trappers, in the semifinals.

Mills left Las Vegas after one season to return to the Expos organization, spending the next to last year of the club’s existence in Canada as their bench coach. This was a post that Mills spent a lot of time in throughout his career, most notably under Francona.

After only one season back in Montréal, Mills was invited into the Red Sox coaching staff to serve as Francona’s bench coach starting in 2004. This tenure was arguably the most successful in Mills’ career in the dugout. The 2004 Red Sox team, led by Francona and Mills, became one of the most storied teams in the history of the sport. Boston had gone 86 years without winning a World Series title, and even went to Game Seven of the American League Championship Series the year before, losing to the New York Yankees. But despite the lofty expectations, the team performed exceptionally well at the beginning of the 2004 season, and even better during the months of August and September, ultimately finishing with a 98-64 record. In October, they completed a three-game sweep of the Anaheim Angels, setting up a rematch with New York. And when the team went down three games to none in the series, they were practically left for dead, only to complete the greatest postseason series comeback in major-league history, punching their ticket to the World Series, in which they dispatched St. Louis in a sweep. It was Boston’s first championship since 1918 and the first of Mills’ career as well.

After disappointing finishes in 2005 and 2006, the Red Sox once again flourished in 2007 under the leadership of Mills and Francona. From start to finish, Boston played like the best team in the league, led not only by returning champs Curt Schilling, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, and Manny Ramírez, but also by a new young core of players that included Dustin Pedroia, Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, and Jacoby Ellsbury. The Red Sox won their first division crown since 1995 and entered the postseason as a favorite to win another World Series championship. After disposing once more of the Angels, they rallied from another deficit in the ALCS to top the Cleveland Indians, boosted by masterful pitching from Josh Beckett and timely hitting from the offense. In the World Series, Mills coached against his former team, the Rockies, who had just won 21 of 22 games to reach the fall classic. However, Colorado was no match for the ruthless Red Sox, who completed their second four-game sweep in four years to win their second title of the decade. At that point, it seemed that Mills and Francona belonged in Boston together forever. Tony Massarotti, a longtime Boston baseball commentator and writer, told a story in his book This Is Our City of a time shortly after this season when the two of them were applauded by guests at a Boston restaurant.7

But of course, not all baseball dynasties last forever. At the end of the 2009 season, Mills was given the opportunity to interview for the Houston Astros vacant managerial position. Mills won the job and Astros general manager Ed Wade rewarded him with a two-year deal and a one-year club option for 2012. Wade had worked with Francona in Philadelphia and respected his endorsement of Mills.

“This organization and this city, as I have said many times in this process, has a very good name in major league baseball,” said Mills at his opening press conference. “I’m thrilled and excited to be involved in it and get on board and help keeping us going in the right direction. The experience [he had] is going to aid mightily in helping this organization move forward and become winners as well.”8

Wade added, “The big separator in this thing is the chair he’s sat in in Boston for the last several years. He’s coached in 45 postseason games and two World Series and has more World Series rings than anybody in this room.”9 It was clear that Mills’ success with Boston as the number two man and his close relationship with Francona were factors in his landing the Houston job; Wade also lauded Mills’ experience as a communicator and his ability to properly organize a team.10

The Astros though, were nearing their lowest point from a competitive standpoint, four long years past their 2005 World Series berth. Unfortunately for Mills, he caught the franchise development curve just before Houston became a perennial powerhouse in the late 2010s after moving to the American League.

In 2010, Houston had some well-known names in Mills’ first season as a big-league skipper, including Roy Oswalt, Carlos Lee, and Lance Berkman as well as younger players like Jason Castro and Hunter Pence. Mills also managed catcher Kevin Cash, who went on to manage a big-league team of his own, just as Counsell did. But despite the talented names, Houston underperformed, going 76-86 and missing the playoffs. Faces-of-the-franchise Berkman and Oswalt were eventually dealt in midseason.

By 2011, largely the same squad remained, but the results regressed to a point where the Astros lost over 100 games. The franchise was clearly in a rebuild. Mills had his 2012 option picked up for the following season, but he was fired on August 18, 2012.

Mills took his talents to the Cleveland Indians in 2013, reuniting again with Francona, who had been named manager after his dismissal from Boston, and serving as his third-base coach. That iteration of the Indians included a number of talented players, but the team had disappointing finishes in 2014 and 2015, finishing over .500 in both seasons but failing to make the postseason. The Indians stuck with Francona and his staff. By this point, Mills had been promoted to bench coach.

As in Boston, this was a recipe for success in Cleveland for the next two seasons. In 2016 the Indians marched toward an American League pennant and marched through October, sweeping Mills’ former club the Red Sox. However, in the World Series, Cleveland fell in a dramatic Game Seven to the Chicago Cubs, a team of destiny put together by general manager Theo Epstein, the man who hired Mills and Francona in Boston. Chicago, as Boston did in 2004, broke a “curse” of massive proportions, winning their first title in 108 years.

Even with the letdown of losing the World Series, the Indians stayed resilient in 2017 and put together their best regular season since 1954. Led by basically the same core of players, Cleveland scorched through the second half of the season, winning 22 games in a row at one point to set an American League record. But a few weeks before that happened, bench coach Mills was forced to take over the Indians on an interim basis while Francona underwent a heart procedure. The situation lasted five games, but with Cleveland being the defending league champion, Francona was to manage the American League team in the 2017 All-Star Game. He ended up not participating due to the operation, allowing Mills to manage the All-Star squad along with the rest of the Indians staff. Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash, who played under Mills in Boston and Houston, was the bench coach. The American League team won 2-1 on a go-ahead home run by Robinson Canó in the 10th inning.

Cleveland failed to win a postseason round in both 2017 and 2018, losing to the Yankees and Astros respectively. By 2019, much of the Indians’ young core had aged. Mills and Francona spent their last year together in the dugout in 2019; however even with an impressive 93-69 record, the Indians missed the playoffs.

When the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in early 2020, the major-league season was in jeopardy as spring training was stopped. Just before that time, Brad Mills suffered the loss by drowning of his grandson, Beau.11 Beau was also the name of Mills’ only son, who was drafted in 2007 by the Indians but retired in 2012 from professional baseball. Mills and his wife of 45 years, Rhonda, also have two daughters, Taylor and Rochelle.12 His grandson was just 18 months old at the time of his death. Mills did not coach in 2020 or beyond, opting out of that season in order to spend more time with his family in the wake of the tragedy and the ongoing pandemic.13

The support Mills received at the end of his career and during that horrible time was a testament to the strong relationships he had built over four decades in baseball. Cleveland pitcher Mike Clevinger once commented of Mills, “You trust what he’s saying because you know there’s a lot of time and effort and there’s real love and want in what he’s doing with his work.”14 There may not be a better compliment of a coach, leader, or mentor than that. Brad Mills is a steadfast disciple of the game and a devoted family man. His adoration for baseball began in the shadows of Candlestick Park, and his time in the game spanned generations, taking his career from coast to coast.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted numerous websites including Baseball-Reference.com, MiLB.com, and TheBaseballCube.com.

Notes

1 Pat McManamon, “Brad Mills: A Baseball Life That Forged an Unshakeable Friendship with Terry Francona,” The Athletic, February 5, 2020. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://theathletic.com/1583141/2020/02/05/brad-mills-a-baseball-life-that-forged-an-unshakeable-friendship-with-terry-francona-cleveland-indians.

2 McManamon.

3 McManamon.

4 McManamon.

5 Bill Nowlin interview with Brad Mills, June 9, 2004.

6 McManamon.

7 Tony Massarotti, This Is Our City: Four Teams, Twelve Championships, and How Boston Became the Most Dominant Sports City in the World (New York: Abrams Press, 2022), 176.

8 Brian McTaggart, “Mills Named Astros Manager.” MLB.com, October 27, 2009. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20121003064545/http://houston.astros.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20091027&content_id=7558016.

9 McTaggart.

10 McTaggart.

11 Paul Hoynes, “Cleveland Indians’ Coaching Staff, Front Office Attend Funeral of Brad Mills’ Grandson,” Cleveland.com, February 22, 2020. Accessed March 7, 2023. https://www.cleveland.com/tribe/2020/02/cleveland-indians-coaching-staff-front-office-attend-funeral-of-brad-mills-grandson.html.

12 McManamon.

13 Mandy Bell, “Mills Won’t Return as Tribe’s Bench Coach.” MLB.Com, October 31, 2020. Accessed April 8, 2023. https://www.mlb.com/guardians/news/brad-mills-will-not-return-as-indians-bench-coach.

14 McManamon.