The Brewers have hired Andy Haines as the team’s hitting coach, reports Jon Heyman of Fancred on Twitter. Haines, 41, will replace Darnell Coles, who stepped down from the post late last week.
Formerly of the Cubs organization, where he served as the team’s assistant hitting coach in 2018 after two seasons spent as the club’s coordinator of minor league hitting, Haines has a wide and varied in the background in the game. He’s previously managed at multiple stops in the Miami system, where from 2010-2012 his posts overlapped with the low-level development of current Brewer Christian Yelich. In all, Haines skippered at five spots across the Marlins’ farm, culminating with his 2014-15 post at the helm of the AAA New Orleans affiliate. Baseball America has twice named Haines as a top managerial prospect, per his bio at mlb.com.
Haines will work to stabilize an uneven Brewers offense last season, whose massive breakouts – Yelich, to an MVP-caliber .326/.402/.598 (166 wRC+), and Jesus Aguilar (35 HR, 134 wRC+) – were offset by cataclysmic decline (Orlando Arcia’s NL-worst 54 wRC+, Jonathan Schoop’s .202/.246/.331 crater after joining the team, major regression from Eric Thames and Domingo Santana). With Steamer forecasting a 27 percent drop in Yelich’s production in the upcoming season and pegging Aguilar to return to near league-average (104 wRC+), the 2019 Brewers will almost certainly need rebounds from ’18 underperformers to stay afloat in a difficult NL Central.
In all, Milwaukee posted a respectable .252/.323/.424 as a team last season, numbers slightly inflated by the generous dimensions of the team’s home park. Still, in addition to the aforementioned regulars, the Brewers return veteran performers Ryan Braun, Lorenzo Cain, and Travis Shaw, and figure to benefit from the sizzling bat of top prospect Keston Hiura, should the club sputter in the season’s first half.
So “Steamer” forecasts a Yelich 27% regression? Well, they are appropriately named!
Projection systems are inherently conservative. They target median outcomes, so they never project anyone to be historically great or terrible. Even with the regression, it still thinks Yelich is the seventh-best hitter in baseball (and pretty much within shouting distance of everyone except for Trout).
I’m more surprised by how much Steamer hates Aguilar, though. I’d easily take the over on a 104 wRC+.
The cubs asst hitting coach? They were terrible on offense last year.
You have to remember that you have to have good players to work with.
Exactly….the Cubs have HORRIBLE hitters on their team
They Cubs dont have horrible hitters. Perhaps they had horrible hitting coaches … oh wait … Brewers just hired one of them!
Please, let’s not turn this into a Cubs thread. We know that they led the league in batting average last season, were second in on base percentage, and needed to score another run or two in, take your pick, any of three games in the last week of the season. We know, we know, we know. This is a story about the Brewers. Let’s stop the Cubs stuff now and keep it a Brewers story. Please.
Well I think this could be a good impact on the Brewers if he can get this team to make more contact and strike out less will help them tremendously and he helped Yellich too awesome
Lol he won’t help.
Why are the Brewers letting their hitting coaches leave??? More money?? It might not be a good idea to let them walk. The Cardinals let Mark McGwire walk and they haven’t hit well since.