He's Baaaack! Graber at home coaching, teaching at Phillips

ANDOVER – Sure the Double-A championship, the Arizona spring training weather and instructing future major leaguers were great perks of being a professional baseball coach.

After nearly two years, though, he realized something:

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The Kevin Graber File

Born and raised in Albany, New York, Kevin Graber originally played college baseball at Division 1 Winthrop University before transferring to The College of Saint Rose, twice earning first team all-conference honors and captained the Golden Knights to an NCAA Division II Regional berth. He went on and played professionally in Australia, as well for the Prairie League’s Southern Minnesota Stars, batting .311 as a middle infielder.

After hanging it up as a player, he started a managing career in pro ball with Southern Minnesota before going to the Adirondack Lumberjacks in the Northeast League. He then went to four different collegiate programs, including Amherst, and spent the summers coaching in the Cape Cod League, as well as time in the New York and the Mountain Collegiate Baseball League.

He has been inducted into four Hall of Fames: New York Baseball Club in 1994; The College of Saint Rose in 2014; The Amsterdam Mohawks in 2016; New York State Baseball Hall of Fame (2024).

Since coaching at Phillips in 2008, he has coached over 70 players who have gone onto play Division 1 collegiate baseball and a handful who have been drafted, most notably Jake Nelson (Detroit Tigers), Curtiss Pomeroy (Atlanta Braves),Thomas Lane (Cincinnati Reds), Jonathan Santucci (New York Mets), Jack Penney (Tigers) and Thomas White, the first-round pick of the Miami Marlins, who was recently ranked the No. 14 overall prospect by MLB Network.

Graber was asked about two of the players he worked with during his two years with the Tennessee Smokies, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Matt Shaw, two of the top younger players in all of MLB.

“Armstrong is like a Marvel DC Hero – like he has superpowers,” said Graber with a laugh. “He is as talented as a human being can be. I’ve been telling people that he’s going to go off this year. And Matt Shaw just wakes up and smashes line drives into the gap. He just needs to settle in defensively.”