The Marlins plan to hire Luis Urueta as their bench coach, as first reported by Enrique Rojas of ESPN (Twitter link). He’ll join the staff of first-year manager Skip Schumaker. It isn’t clear whether previous bench coach James Rowson will remain on the staff or in the organization.
Urueta, 41, has spent the past decade and a half in the Diamondbacks organization. After a lengthy run coaching and managing in the minors, he was bumped up to Torey Lovullo’s big league staff heading into 2018. He was promoted to bench coach in 2020, a year that also saw him attract some attention from the Red Sox during their managerial search. After two years as bench coach, he was reassigned to a minor league instructional role last offseason.
The Colombia native now gets back to the highest level, joining Schumaker’s first MLB coaching staff. That’s beginning to take shape. Miami retained Mel Stottlemyre Jr. as pitching coach and agreed to hire Jon Jay as first base coach this week. Meanwhile, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported yesterday (Twitter links) that former big leaguers Jody Reed and Rod Barajas are joining the staff. Reed will be the new third base coach, reports Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald (on Twitter), while Heyman adds that Barajas is taking on a quality assurance role.
Hitting coach is now the biggest remaining vacancy, as Marcus Thames departed to take the same position with the Angels this week. Heyman reports that Dave Hansen, a former MLB infielder and now a minor league hitting instructor in the Reds system, is under consideration.
Baseball before the analytical nerds took over:
We have one hitting coach.
Baseball in 2022:
We are hiring a hitting coach, an asst. hitting coach, a swing coach, and an offense coordinator.
Meanwhile, strikeouts are through the roof, guys hitting .235 are All-Stars, the league average slash line looks something like .240/.307/.398, and hitting coaches last about 1 year in each organization before they are recycled to another team.
Pitchers have the same technology.
Good for him and well deserved! Welcome paisano!
Wow!…………. Skip, Reed, Jay and maybe Hansen …..thats possibly a better lineup than the active roster.
Someone who will sit and take orders from Kim Ng and is tasked with undoing her destructive roster decisions without complaint.
@ NF13 How Cloughie of you
lol @ Marcus Thames departing as Hitting Coach to take the job with the Angels. I guess he beat the Marlins to firing him…and went to the Angels feeling that there’s no way he can screw up over there with him starting with Trout and Shohei. He’ll probably try to take credit for whatever season they have, unless they fizzle while he’s there.