Giants hitting coach Alonzo Powell has accepted a position as the new hitting coach of the Chunichi Dragons, the Dragons announced this week (hat tip: Jim Allen).
Powell’s status with the Giants was up in the air following the organization’s recent hiring of Gabe Kapler as the successor to iconic manager Bruce Bochy. It’s common for clubs to restructure their coaching ranks with the hiring of a new manager; the Giants already appear set to lose Hensley Meulens and already saw bullpen coach Matt Herges hired away by the division-rival Diamondbacks. Newly hired managers are frequently allowed to appoint their own staff, although Giants mainstay Ron Wotus will remain on hand as the team’s third-base coach.
It’s not exactly an unfamiliar jump for Powell, who played as an outfielder with the Dragons in six seasons from age 27 through 32 (1992-97). During an impressive run with the Chunichi club, Powell was a three-time batting champion who hit .300 or better and posted an OBP north of .350 in five of his six seasons. Powell maintained an OPS better than .900 in four consecutive years there, including an eye-catching .355/.405/.584 slash in 1995.
Powell has extensive experience as a minor league hitting coach and manager. He’s previously served as an assistant hitting coach with the Padres and Astros as well as interim hitting coach with the Mariners back in 2010.
I guess it is an out of country coming home party.
He could be given credit for Pillars transformation from a glove-first OF to a bat-first OF and Yastrzemski’s breakout season. At the same time, he could easily be the scapegoat of the overall terrible hitting the Giants had in 2018 and 2019z
Pillar is not at all a bat first OF and if he was, he wouldn’t be very good at it.
He wasn’t even league average at the plate.
what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Lol, yay Billy!
Makes sense he is a horrible hitting coach that messed up a ton of padres hitters. He only did well in general over seas
Coaches in the Big Leagues don’t have that much affect on players. Most of them don’t listen to instruction anyway. So, most coaches only help with the maintenance players tools. So, blaming one particular coach for team struggles is silly. How about blame the players. Just a thought.
Veterans is one thing. Young players will listen to whatever info they can get to stay and he did change young players swings
Nah, not really.
Or you could blame the players themselves for the terrible hitting.
That’s cool. Glad bambam it’s out too. Just glad they kept Wotus!
They gone be dope!
F yourself.
Does he speak Japanese?
Hai!
When players swing at 3-2 pitches that are clearly out of the zone, like so many giants did, that has NOTHING to do with coaching. “ here’s the 3-2 pitch, swing and a miss at a pitch in the dirt, strike 3”.
Damn coaches…they suck!
He was a coach on that 2017 Astros team. Probably not waiting around for a suspension from MLB so he left the country to coach.
Since virtually no one on the Giants hit league-average last season, this doesn’t seem to be much of a loss…