The Giants are set to hire Astr0s assistant hitting coach Alonzo Powell as their new hitting coach, reports Evan Drellich of CSN New England (via Twitter). Powell will step into the role that was vacated amid last week’s shuffle of the coaching staff in San Francisco. He’ll take over for Hensley Meulens, who shifted to the team’s bench coach role. Longtime bench coach Ron Wotus was moved to the role of third base coach.
Powell will join the Giants organization after helping guide the Astros offense that was far and away the most potent in Major League Baseball. Houston led all of baseball with 896 runs scored, was tied for an MLB-best .282 batting average, and also paced the Majors with a .346 on-base percentage and a .478 slugging percentage. Their 238 home runs trailed only the Yankees for the MLB lead.
The 52-year-old Powell has been Houston’s assistant hitting coach since the 2015 season and previously held that same role with the Padres from 2012-15. He served as the Mariners’ hitting coach on an interim basis for part of the 2010 season as well and has been coaching and managing at the minor league level dating back to 2002.
The job with the Giants will serve as a homecoming for Powell — a San Francisco native whose professional playing career began in the Giants organization back in 1983. He reached the Majors in both the 1987 and 1991 seasons, but Powell’s greatest success as a player came in 1992-97, when he starred for the Chunichi Dragons of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. In parts of seven NPB seasons, Powell raked at a .313/.371/.510 clip.
Stupid Bobby Evans
So hiring the assistant hitting coach from the World Series winning team that BTW, Lead the ML’s in Hitting, OBP, SLG, OPS. Second in ML’s in HR’s, Least amount of K’s in ML’s also.
Is stupid??
Regretting that Bobby Evans tattoo, maybe.
Flipping soft toss doesn’t make him qualified to be the hitting coach or mean he should get the credit for the teams offense
Brian Wilson, is that you?
Mark Carreon wasn’t available?
Why? He isn’t good at it
Well he was also hitting coach other the Padres and Marlins, soooo unless he learned how NOT to do it during those years I wouldn’t give him much credit for the Astros success.
Hitting “coach” that is
All the hitters took steps forward except Altuve, who’s established, and Beltran, who’s old.
The truth is that how a team hits is not a good yardstick on how good the hitting coach is. Neither are his hitting stats as a player. As fans it’s impossible to gauge whether a hitting coach is good or bad. Only the players, manager, FO, and others that are with the team on a daily basis and watching how the coach helps or hurts, and how he prepares the hitters has any idea. Any assumption that one does know is pure fantasy But of course the hitting coach is the perfect whipping boy for the fans uninitiated in the finer points of baseball.
No more Meulens as hitting coach….finally!