Sam Coonrod

BIOGRAPHY

Sam Coonrod was born on September 22, 1992, in St. Louis, MO. He is a pitcher in the MLB.

Samuel Timothy Coonrod graduated Carrollton High School. In 2011, his senior year, he went 12-0 with a 1.34 ERA along with batting .435. He was not drafted in the 2011 MLB draft and thus enrolled at Southern Illinois University Carbondale where he played college baseball. In 2014, as a junior, he pitched to a 2-6 record with a 2.87 ERA in 15 starts. He was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the fifth round of the 2014 MLB draft.

Coonrod made his professional debut that year with the Arizona League Giants and spent the whole season there, posting a 1-0 record and 3.90 ERA in 27.2 innings pitched. Coonrod played for the Augusta GreenJackets in 2015 where he pitched to a 7-5 record and 3.14 ERA in 23 games (22 starts). In 2016, he pitched for both the San Jose Giants and the Richmond Flying Squirrels, posting a combined 9-6 record and 2.55 ERA with a 1.17 WHIP in a total of 24 games started between both teams. Coonrod returned to Richmond in 2017, spending the whole season there, going 4-11 with a 4.69 ERA in 24 games (18 starts). He pitched in only ten games in 2018 due to injury.

The Giants added Coonrod to their 40-man roster after the season. He began 2019 with the Sacramento River Cats. On May 26, 2019, he was called up to the major leagues for the first time and made his debut that day in the eighth inning against the Arizona Diamondbacks. He retired the side in order, getting a flyout to left field, a groundout to first base and a strikeout.

Coonrod pitched two scoreless innings in his Phillies debut, a 5–3 win against the New York Mets on April 6, 2021. On April 28, after Cardinals reliever Génesis Cabrera struck both Bryce Harper and Didi Gregorius with pitches, Coonrod began to scream at the Cardinals' dugout and had to be escorted off the field by catcher Andrew Knapp. He said later, "It's just like, once you hit somebody in the face, you kind of need to make sure you don't hit the next guy." On April 30, Coonrod pitched a scoreless ninth inning to earn his first save with the Phillies in a 2–1 win over the Mets. An elbow injury sent Coonrod to the injured list on June 25; a month later, he blamed the injury on a new slider that he had been trying out, inspired by Trevor Bauer. Coonrod was activated off of the injured list on August 25.