Rock Falls native Noah Junis hired by Boston Red Sox Triple-A affiliate

Rock Falls native Noah Junis dreamed of coaching professional baseball for years. After landing a job as the bullpen coach for the Worcester Red Sox, the Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, that dream now is a reality.

The 2016 Rock Falls High School graduate is excited to take the next step in his career, and he’s ready to make the most of the opportunity.

“I’m really excited. I’m thrilled to be a part of an organization with such a rich tradition and history,” Junis said. “I’m really fired up to push the envelope and push the pitching department forward in the next couple of years.”

Noah Junis, the younger brother of MLB free agent pitcher Jakob Junis, has risen quickly through the coaching ranks. His journey as a coach began as an assistant with the sophomore team at Rock Falls High School.

Later, after he dropped out of Arizona State and moved with his parents to Morton, Illinois, he got an opportunity to coach with the Illinois Central College baseball team in East Peoria under head coach Brett Kelley.

After that, he worked at Push Performance, a private facility in Tempe, Arizona. Then, he worked for Premier Pitching Performance, a national baseball academy in St. Louis, Missouri.

Now, he’ll coach minor league baseball with a world-class organization.

Jakob has been impressed by his younger brother’s meteoric rise, and he’s proud of him for earning an opportunity with the Boston Red Sox organization.

“It wasn’t a huge surprise to me because I knew that he was fielding some different interviews and offers from teams, and I knew that was something he had been pursuing in the last year. When he finally took it and got the job and accepted the offer, I was super proud,” Jakob Junis said. “He’s only been doing this for a few years now – it hasn’t been very long – and he’s proven himself to be very good at what he does. And, obviously, that shows with a Major League Baseball team hiring him and at such a young age as well, so it’s pretty cool to see how fast he’s moved in the last few years.

“He’s very dedicated and very meticulous in what he does, and he’s very smart, too, and his work speaks for itself.”

Noah is grateful to Rock Falls varsity baseball coach Donnie Chappell for giving him his first real coaching opportunity with the sophomore team. He also said he owes much of his career to Kelley for a taking a chance on him at ICC.

The reason Noah got into coaching is because he wanted to support his older brother in his professional baseball career. That process began during his time at ICC, when Jakob started trusting Noah to write some of his offseason training programs.

“The whole reason I wanted to get into all of this was so I could provide some value to Jake’s career and be able to help him out in the offseason and during the season,” Noah Junis said. “This job at the private facility in Tempe, I got a lot more experience with other minor leaguers, major leaguers, kind of sharpened my coaching toolbox, so to speak. You get experience with a lot of different guys and getting feedback on how high-level players like to be communicated to and coached. I ended up taking a job here at Premier Pitching in St. Louis to get more into the biomechanics side of things.”

In his last two jobs, Noah has worked with a number of MLB players, including his brother. In Arizona, he worked with Logan Webb, Shelby Miller and Sean Doolittle. In St. Louis, he worked with Sam Coonrod, John Means and Jackson Rutledge.

Those experiences springboarded him to his minor-league coaching gig.

Noah said Jakob has been helpful throughout the whole process, giving him a better idea of what to expect by talking about his own experiences in the minor and major leagues.

“I’ve kind of always picked his brain on it ever since he’s been in the minor leagues, and we’ve been pretty close throughout his entire time, so seeing how things have evolved from then to what it is now,” Noah Junis said. “He’s always dropping little tidbits and filling me in on the process and how some things have operated over the years. He’s always willing to answer questions that I might have. He’s been a great resource throughout all of this.”

Jakob credits Noah with helping him keep his pitches sharp in and out of season, and he expects him to do the same for the Triple-A Red Sox.

“I think what he does really well is he is a younger kid, so he can connect with players. I think translating what you want a player to do or what you want a player to change and actually getting the result is pretty hard, and I think that’s something that Noah is pretty good at,” Jakob Junis said. “He’s good at connecting with the player and making adjustments that they can understand and they can put towards their game, and then they actually see the result of it. It’s easier said than done, to find the issue and tell the player about it, and then actually getting it done. ... He’s helped me a ton with the shapes of my pitches or different little mechanical things that I’m fighting.

“I know guys that work with him every day are going to see the real benefits from having him.”