After the Dodgers’ disappointing end to their season, many fans started to call for some change within the coaching staff. Now their wishes might be coming true.
A recent rumor, per Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic, states that the Marlins are in search of a hitting coach and have begun to target the Dodgers’ hitting coach, Brant Brown.
Brown has a long history with baseball both as a former player and a coach. He played DI Baseball for Fresno State University before going on to play Major League Baseball as an outfielder from 1996 through 2000 for the Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Florida Marlins.
Across his MLB career, he posted a .247 AVG with a .301 on-base percentage. Not all that impressive, but he has used his experience to coach up some of the best hitters in the game today including Trea Turner, Freddie Freeman, and Mookie Betts.
With the conclusion of the 2022 regular season, the Dodgers had the fourth-best batting AVG in the league (.257), second most hits in the National League (1418), and finished as the second-best team in slugging in the league (.442).
The Marlins, on the other hand, finished their season in the bottom 5 of each of those stats so it makes sense why they would look elsewhere for some batting help. Brown has 15 years of experience as a coach for Major League Baseball.
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Brown has spent the past 15 years as a Major League Baseball coach Following the end of his playing career, he spent six seasons as a hitting coach in the Texas Rangers organization (2007-12) and five seasons as a coach in the Seattle Mariners organization . From 2013-2015 he served as Seattle’s minor league outfield coordinator then from 2016-17 as the team’s offensive coordinator.
He joined the Dodgers in the winter of 2019 to share the dual role of Assistant Hitting Coach / Minor League Hitting Coordinator with Luis Ortiz. The following season, he was promoted to the new position of Hitting Strategist where he shares the role with Robert Van Scoyoc.
If the Marlins are able to bring Brown to Miami, Aaron Bates would be next in line to fill the position for the Dodgers.
Bates is a retired Major League first baseman and has been a part of the Dodgers organization since 2015.
He retired from playing to become an assistant coach for the Dodgers rookie class Arizona League Dodgers team in 2015. Then in 2017, he was named hitting coach of the single-A Great Lakes Loons. He spent 2018 as a minor league coordinator before being named as the Dodgers Major League assistant hitting coach for the 2019 season where he has been since then.
So maybe it’s time Bates moved up into a more assertive role as hitting coach and keep the Dodgers on track for another 100+ game-winning season.
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