The Brewers announced this afternoon that they’ve hired Ozzie Timmons and Connor Dawson as co-hitting coaches. They’re also planning to hire an assistant hitting coach to work underneath Timmons and Dawson, tweets Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. They’ll replace Andy Haines, whose contract was not renewed last month.
Timmons has spent the past four seasons on the Rays’ coaching staff. He’d split his time between base coaching and serving as Tampa Bay’s assistant hitting coach before getting a bump to full-time assistant hitting coach last month. Just a few weeks later, he’ll land a more significant role in Milwaukee. An outfielder in his playing days, the 51-year-old Timmons appeared in parts of five big league seasons from 1995-2000.
Dawson comes over from the Mariners, where he’d been Seattle’s minor league hitting coordinator. The 28-year-old had previously spent a couple seasons coaching in the M’s system and now gets his first job on a big league staff.
Push-ups inbound
Being as the Rays scored almost a run more a game than the Brewers….Ozzie should welcome this change.
Ozzie is a good guy. Always signed cards at Atlantic City Surf games. He even once walked me over to the bullpen to finish signing because the game was starting. Nice to see Ozzie and Tom Goodwin (another Surf legend) back in the majors (for awhile now, I know)..
RIP AC Surf
AC surf legend for me! He was the guy we always wanted to see hit as kids lol
RIP AC Surf
The “co- coaches” (+ an assistant) is notable.
That brings a lot of input, resources, & experience onboard. Co-coordinators hasn’t worked in the NFL. & perhaps dissolute power corrupts dissolutely. However, the volume approach works with all kinds of things. Perhaps batting coaches too.
This does make me wonder if Cash’ll do something similar with the Yanks opening(s) there. Interesting attempt at a finding an answer.
The Giants had 3 hitting coaches last year.
(Astros had 2 pitching coaches.)
Noted.
Thanks for the correction, @Samuel. Makes me feel that it’s now almost inevitable Copycat Cashman will do the same.
He’s definitely in a “can’t beat ’em join ’em” phase in his career.
It’s been going on around MLB for years now. It’s just that people being brought in to work with hitters and pitchers were never given official status.
With the 4-5 times a week roster changes, teams today go though somewhere around 30 pitchers on their roster each year. I’d have to count up the number of position players most teams use. There is simply no way one pitching coach or hitting coach or defensive coach or running coach can handle all those players. (And it’s why being a ML Catcher is so taxing mentally.)
If you know someone that works for the Yankees that’ll tell you that the team in already employing multiple people that the public is not aware of. As for the players – naturally they’ll gravitate to the coach that’s helping them the most……and that’s usually fine with the manager and FO…..they want results.
Well, assistant batting & pitching coaches have been around for…what?, 5 years or so. & not every team has them yet, either.
However, I was more reacting to the “co- coach” concept. Which is – obviously – fairly new. Remember though, you are still only allowed your manager & 6 coaches in uniform during the game. That hasn’t changed. Perhaps it should.
But, yeah. Nobody can effectively communicate with everyone, or whatever. In the end, it’s just another example of playing a type of numbers game.
Anyway: I am giving 5-4 that this is precisely what Cash’ll do.
Giants hitting coaches breathed life into some veterans!
Assistant to the hitting coach.
Frisco had a lot of success last year with a bench full of extra coaches. It can be more cost effective than adding talent on the field.
I expect this trend will continue growing.
B I N G O !
This is why the Rays, Brewers, Guardians, and other small market teams can stay competitive.
“It not the money you spend, it’s HOW you spend it”.
One high FA signing can buy a team multiple coaches, scouts, FO analysts and equipment to evaluate talent that is underperforming and turn the coaches loose to work with them in making adjustments.
Even the large market Dodgers and now Giants (Farhan Zaidi is the link) have been doing it.
P.S. It’s also why the large market franchises want a “spending floor” for payroll – most can’t keep up with the ever changing way of maximizing their players production that a team putting money into people and new processes continue to improve. In short, the lazy large market FO’s that simply throw money at players want to hold down those that take in a fraction of their revenue.
If any or all can fix Yelich, then well worth it.
If they can get Yelish and Huira back to what they were that would be like signing 2 all stars.
Yelich, Hiura, JBJ…that’s collectively about .900 OPS points we didn’t get out of 3 important players…and it’s nearly impossible for them to be as bad as they were last year.
If different approaches can get those three to anywhere NEAR where they should be, with this staff, they should be serious WS contenders again…even before any moves…and I’m anticipating at least one big move for an impact bat at some point from Stearns.
Doubt we’ll see another 1.110 OPS season for Yelly or .940 for Hiura, but ~.900 and .800 should be pretty reasonable expectations for the two.
And JBJ just needs to NOT be historically bad with his defense. He came to the Brewers with a .732 career OPS. .700 would be fine from him.
It’s just hard for me to understand how 3 players could look SO lost relative to what we expected…
Like when Michael and Jim were co managers?
No…not like that. Dwight was still doing most of the work as the Assistant to the Manager…
How come teams need two hitting coaches now but still only one pitching coach?
Teams do have a bullpen coach. Good point though. An extra guy on the bench might not be a bad idea.
Ozzie is awesome. Had some beers with him and Ron Santo late at night at the ‘95 or ‘96 Cubs Convention before it became the shitshow it is today. Ozzie was so cool and was giving Santo the business.