The Brewers won’t renew the contract of hitting coach Andy Haines for the 2022 season, according to multiple reporters (including MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy). Assistant hitting coach Jacob Cruz may also be on the way out, as the Brewers have informed him that he is free to look into other job opportunities.
Haines was initially hired in November 2018, while Cruz joined the Brew Crew following the 2019 campaign. While Milwaukee has reached the playoffs in each of the last three seasons, the Brew Crew has often relied on pitching, defense, and a deep bullpen to bail out a lackluster offense. Since the start of the 2019 season, the Brewers rank 18th of 30 teams in runs, 21st in wRC+ (93), 28th in batting average (.238), 13th in on-base percentage (.322), and 20th in slugging percentage (.413). Milwaukee’s 24.7% strikeout rate is also the fifth-worst of any team over that three-year period.
Things seemed to come to a head in the Brewers’ NLDS loss to the Braves this October, as Milwaukee managed only 24 hits and six runs over the four-game series, with four of those runs coming in Game 4. The Brewers also scored two runs in their two-game loss to the Dodgers in the 2020 Wild Card series, so all told, the Brewers have been shut out in three of their last six postseason games.
Haines and Cruz aren’t solely responsible for this lack of production, of course, as downturns from the Brewers’ two highest-paid players (Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain) have hampered the team’s ability to generate offense. As well, Willy Adames exploded at the plate after being dealt to the Brewers in May, Luis Urias enjoyed some measure of a breakout season, and Avisail Garcia hit well this season after struggling in 2020. However, the overall lack of consistency throughout the lineup didn’t leave much margin for error in putting runs on the board.
Prior to his three seasons in Milwaukee, Haines was the Cubs’ assistant hitting coach in 2017-18 and Chicago’s minor league hitting instructor in 2016. Haines also has eight years of experience as a hitting coach and manager in the Marlins’ farm system, giving him a longstanding relationship with Yelich dating back to the former NL MVP’s prospect days.
They needed to get rid of him. The Brewers were terrible offensively. They couldn’t hit the Braves a lick in the NLDS. Someone else needs to fix Yelich. Haines can’t seem to figure it out.
Thoughts and prayers for a speedy lobotomy.
Thoughts and prayers for a speedy Gonzalez combo at my favorite Mexican restaurant. Who cares about recovery when you can have an enchilada, a taco AND rice?
Hopefully you left a very large tip to cover your indiscretion.
Can’t fix Yelich. What, tell him to go back to using PEDs? I have seen downturns before but not to this level except for injury or roids. I know I have zero proof, so it’s reckless to say this, but a guy going from being a good to a GREAT player and then to sucking doesn’t happen for no reason.
I mean since 19 when he fractured his knee cap he hasn’t been the same… and that is a huge injury I highly doubt he used roofs smfh ♂️
Roids
Rufeys.
I was saying the same thing @Donovan. It seems weird to me people keep talking about his back or roids. I remember very specifically Yelich fracturing his knee cap on a foul ball and went from MVP to bum as soon as that happened. He never came back. The sad thing is the low budget Brewers gave him that $200+M contract AFTER the injury even though he looked bad. They said they were sure he could come back from it. Clearly they were wrong. The timing of Yelich’s decline points very specifically at the fractured kneecap causing the problem.
If I’m not mistaken, he was already having recurring back issues too, that they were aware of.
Waiting 1 more year to extend him would have been the smart thing to do. They jumped the gun attempting to reward him for 2 mvp caliber seasons.
I expected after the Braun, Suppan, Garza, and Lohse deals they’d have been more cautious handing out big contracts.
Good ole hindsight is always 20/20
It’s not hindsight. I thought, and said, as much when the deal was announced.
Yeah, the problem with that though is that in 2020 he hit the ball harder than any other point of his career. Career high exit velocity at 94.1, higher than the previous two years. His BABIP was down about 100-120 points from the previous two years.
So, 2020, bad luck. Still crushed the ball, launch angle was still up from his time in Florida.
Seems pretty obvious it wasn’t the knee
THIS year his back issues came back and his exit velocity dropped from 94.0 to 91.0…but the MAIN issue was his launch angle. Went from 11.5 in 2019 to 2.8 in 2021. An EXTREME drop.
Also…where are you getting that he looked terrible before the contract extension? That’s just objectively false. They signed him before anything shut down due to Covid. So that’s just wrong.
You think your offense sucks now, just wait till Andy gets his Haines on you. Ahahahaha!
Yelich needs to fix Yelich. He is not a HR hitter. In his MVP year he used the whole field and hit a lot of his HR to LF. This season he hit a lot of ground balls to the right side and popups to the infield.
This is also not true. Yelich hit the ball up the middle and to the opposite field more in 2021 than he did since his 2nd year in the big leagues.
His issue is that his launch angle plummeted from 11.5 in 2019 to 2.8 last year.
He’s not lifting the ball. That’s the issue. Why he’s not doing it, I don’t know…but it’s not because he’s “not a HR hitter,” which is…exactly what he was at his best. You hit 44 HRs and then follow it up with 36 in a partial season(130 games)…then you’re a HR hitter.
What happened to deleting your account?
Which one? That Steve Nebraska clown has multiple accounts. I thought this was obvious to everyone.
Hopefully someone who can help Yeli adjust to the new reality of his weak back
Back injuries are unmerciful. They don’t swell, or bleed, or turn red. If it is his back Yelich has a long climb back. Back injuries affect your self confidence, & give you a different perspective on life. Hopefully he comes back.
Thing is…he’s had back injuries for years now. He first had his back issues when he was in the minor leagues. In fact…Andy Haines was his minor league manager when they started.
It’s nothing structural…but it’s the back, like you said, it doesn’t swell, bleed…
Wrestled for 15 years. I’ve had 14 surgeries so far, shoulder, knees, hip…
ONE time I pulled a muscle in my back and it cost me half of my Jr year of College. A strained muscle. Not structural damage, nothing. No problem since then…thank god, but it gave me an appreciation for people with REAL back issues and how awful that must be.
He’s come back from it before and based on advanced metrics like exit velocity, launch angle and all that stuff, he was fine in 2020, just hit into bad luck.
This past year was a different story. His back issues flared back up and he just hit the ball poorly the rest of the year.
Right now this deal looks AWFUL. Hopefully he can get back next year to getting the ball in the air a bit more and while I think hoping or expecting him to return to his 2018-19 form is unrealistic, if we can just get back to the version of him from Florida, the guy who put up 10 WAR the two years prior to the trade, then the deal will be fine. That’s a big if though.
These teams need to hire real hitting coaches not analytic people,they need to be former MLB players that actually hit for a good average.Not minor league guys who hit 125 for 1yr
Major League guys will only listen to guys who played at MLB level and knew how to hit.Anybody can teach them techniques.
Yes experience is necessary but it doesn’t need to be pure success. Look at Caleb Cotham for instance. Was he a good major leaguer? No he did not pan out at all. He knows the game though. Pitchers love working with him. Knowledge and the personal ability to execute are not mutually exclusive. You just need good baseball guys – personal success or not.
He has not done squat with the Phillies pitchers he needs to go.
I remember having Rod Carew, a fairly decent hitter, as a hitting coach- with terrible results.
Yeah, I don’t care what a guy hit in the big leagues. Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of all time(at least IMO) and he was a terrible coach/manager.
I don’t think there’s any correlation between big league success as a player and as a coach. Paul Molitor, another great pure hitter…did not have a successful run as a manager. Then once he left, the Twins went from 12th in the league in HRs to hitting a major league record 307 and they won 101 games.
You’re going to be able to find probably more examples of a great hitting coach with a poor professional career as a player than a great career themselves who become great hitting coaches.
It’s also virtually impossible for fans to have any clue if a Hitting Coach is any good. All you can look at are the results. Andy Haines has coached Yelich since he was in the minors…he went from being an MVP to being…who he was this year.
I’ll entrust Craig Counsell and company to find someone the players respect who can also get more out of these players. Analytics are an enormous part of this game and you’re not going to find a competent coach who doesn’t use them. Even former big league hitters. They all understand the importance. Beyond Dusty Baker and his issue with guys getting on base “clogging the bases,” I think they are just part of baseball. Empirical data’s always…kinda useful.
If there is one thing I’d love to see, it’d be hitters…such as Yelich, who have the back control to just punch the ball into left field against the shift. I know it’s easier said than done, but…when you’re playing without a 3rd basemen and your SS is shaded up the middle, you need to stop beating your head into the wall and try and force them to play you a bit more straight up.
Not really a surprise. The pitching was incredible, but they need a bunch more out of that lineup. New coach’s prime directive ought to be: fix Yelich.
Sometimes…you just need a new voice. I don’t know if Haines is good coach or not, but we had to do something.
Hire a hitting coach and then find the best chiropractor in the country or…whatever. But we need to fix Yelich and we need to fix Hiura. That’s 1.100 OPS and a .940 OPS from 2019. Put THOSE two players into THIS years lineup…and we’re likely playing Houston right now.
Instead we got a slap hitting LFer and Hiura couldn’t hit AAA hitting by the end of the year. Maybe that’s the result of a change in his approach since he was crushing it when he’d gone down previously, but whatever the issue is, we need those two to produce at least a LITTLE bit more.
In the meantime, if we could add Bryan Reynolds, that’d be nice also!
Haines was Yelich’s hitting coach since his early days in the Marlins system, so the two have a bond — but he was clearly unable to fix whatever was wrong with Yelich this year (or the rest of the team offense) so somebody needed to go.
Marcus Thames submits resume.
“Well you can close the book on Kellner.
….Thank God!”
-Harry Doyle
The quotes from that movie will live forever, and will never get old. Juuuuust a bit outside. Who doesn’t say that when a pitcher lets one get away? Dynamite Drop-In Monty is another good one. Bob Uecker is one of the top baseball personalities in the history of this game.
Ball four….Ball eight …. Low, and he walks the bases loaded on 12 straight pitches. How can these guys lay off pitches that close?
You are so right! Bob Uecker is truly a baseball treasure. I could listen to his stories all day. I recall when he shagged fly balls during World Series batting practice using a tuba. He actually caught a few of them.
A ,more appropriate quote from the movie. since we are discussing the departure of yet another hitting coach:
“One hit,that’s all we got, one goddamn hit?” — Harry Doyle
You can’t say goddamn on the radio!
Don’t worry. Nobody’s listening anyway.
LOL…and he ad-libbed almost all of that.
JUUUUST a bit outside was all Uecker. Love that guy. Not great if you want to know what’s going on in the game as I’ve literally driven 30 minutes on the way home and not heard him say the score! But, I’ll happily take him any day!
Some people also claim that if we “took baseball more seriously” we “would be the Tim Kurkjian of analysis in MLB” because he “has a great laugh.” He literally laughed. He’s just a kid though. His brain isn’t fully formed yet. His parents should really limit his internet time though because he is stating some very stupid opinions and some D-bags might actually hold them against him when he becomes an adult. I guess it won’t matter if he never admits his real name but still. What you say on the internet never goes away and if someone finds out who he is I could see people making fun of him for the rest of his life for some of the stuff he says. I pray to God my kid is never as dumb as him and if they are I certainly hope they never post idiotic opinions on the internet over and over again. I used to live in a sandlot and I had no friends, so I invented all these imaginary personalities, and they still live with me to this day.. They aren’t that stupid. It really is just him/me/you/us/them. Someone should take the keyboard away from their child before he embarrasses himself even further.
Whoa…….I need another beer
Are you ok?
I’m a six pack over a 12 pack, but I’m a 12 pack over a case. I guess that makes me ahead case???
I wouldn’t worry about it.
When you don’t sign or make trades for good hitters, what do you expect? I agree The GM should have made this move after seeing the Brewers struggle with curve balls and off speed pitches while often being on their front foot in an 0-2 count, but that’s why these guys come cheap. If the Brewers are serious about a World Series they need big offensive improvements at 1st, 3rd, and probably RF. Until that happens Stearns is just as much to blame for their offensive struggles as these hitting coaches.
And left field.
Unfortunately this doesn’t help a one dimensional offense. Stearns is not good at putting together an offense. He never has.
Time to trade a pitcher. Hate to say it as a Brewer fan but too much money tied up in Yelich. Fitting he didn’t swing on the final pitch of their season. Bradley over 10 million next year and the same for Cain. They’re just not going to win without offense. Plus the Cardinals aren’t going anywhere and will only be better next year
There seem to be an awful lot of ways that are parting around here lately.
I’d like to see some usage of the British slang term “sacked” worked in from time to time.
Barry Bonds
Fall guy for Counsell, terrible manager as soon as the playoffs start.
This ^^
….is a RIDICULOUSLY terrible take?
Yes…I agree.