Cooper OK with Johnson going for help; takes blame for Shark

NASHVILLE — Don Cooper says he wasn’t offended that Erik Johnson went to a personal pitching coach to change his mechanics, which, Johnson says, got him back on a successful path after he went into a hard-to-explain slump.

Johnson, a second-round draft pick who flopped with the Sox in 2014 after being given a spot in the starting rotation during spring training, continued to struggle at AAA Charlotte that year. The following offseason, under the watch of an unidentified coach, he made adjustments that paid off to the tune of an 11-8 record, 2.37 ERA and International League Pitcher of the Year honors. Called up to the Sox in September, he went 3-1 with a 3.34 ERA and 30 strikeouts and 17 walks over 35 innings and is being pegged as starter again next season.

“I’m comfortable in my own skin,” Cooper said at the Winter Meetings Tuesday. “I have no problem with that at all. All I give a crap about is when Erik Johnson comes and starts, if he’s on the team, which he’s going to get a good opportunity to be on the team, that Erik Johnson goes out and throws the ball well enough for us to win games.

“My ego’s not hurt by that.”

Johnson, whose velocity as well as his effectiveness dipped in 2014, recently told SI.com’s Tom Verducci that his arm action in 2014 was putting strain on his shoulder.

“For me, I couldn’t pinpoint what I was feeling, although I was feeling different,” Johnson said. “My arm action became longer and I had an earlier release point that year. The consistency as far as repeating pitches and being on time with my body and arm, it just wasn’t there for me. You could see that in the velocity, the balls and strikes ratio, the hits per inning, almost every imaginable category.”

Even though Cooper lives in Nashville, he came to the winter meetings for the first time. He has a reputation for “fixing” pitchers who come into the organization and is generally regarded as one of the top pitching coaches in the game. He has been the Sox pitching coach for 13 consecutive seasons.

“I do know this, two years ago [Johnson] had a rough go,” Cooper said. “Last year he came up and made a huge jump from where he was and there’s more work to be done.

“I don’t care. Doesn’t matter to me. My ego’s not hurt by that. I just want to win and I want guys who are going to put us in a position to win. I know that Erik Johnson feels good about himself and from a pitching coach perspective, I’m not going to do anything to destroy that. Just go out and do the things we need you to do and he knows the things we need him to do. It really comes down to throwing all of your pitches aggressively and he certainly was aggressive. He did a nice job in his return and now the term, ‘let’s pick up where we left off,’ comes to mind.”

Cooper also repeated what he said during a radio interview last weekend that he failed Jeff Samardzija during the right-hander’s only season with the Sox. Samardzija had an up and down year and needed two strong starts at the end to bring his ERA below 5.00.

“I know ones I consider failures, and that’s one that I look at, ‘Man, I failed,’ ” Cooper said. “It didn’t work out the way any of us would have wanted. That’s not to say anything negative about Jeff. He’s a quality pitcher and has many great assets, and I wish him the best. I never wish poorly on anybody because I feel if you do that, something’s going to come back and bite you in the ass.”

The Cooper-Samardzija relationship, which never clicked despite Samardzija saying publicly that everything was good between them, may not have been all roses but it wasn’t all bad, general manager Rick Hahn said.

“There was no breakdown,” Hahn said. “There was communication on a daily basis, and an open and honest communication on a regular basis. There might not have been full agreement on what was going to be the remedy, but that’s not totally atypical, especially when you have a veteran guy who’s had success and sort of feels like he knows, and he does know more than anybody how he feels and what he’s doing and what he thinks are his keys to success.”

”It’s a credit to Coop and a class move by him [to accept blame]. I’m not sure the player would agree with Coop taking all the responsibility but it doesn’t surprise me at all that Don would say ‘That’s on me.’ Look, part of what makes him good is that he’s a perfectionist.”