The Rockies announced the final two members of their coaching staff, with Hensley Meulens coming to Colorado as the new hitting coach and Warren Schaeffer hired as the new third base/infield coach.
Meulens is a newcomer to the somewhat infamously insular Rockies organization, though his season as a player with the 1998 Diamondbacks and his long stint on the Giants’ coaching staff makes him a familiar face in the NL West. After a lengthy playing career in the majors, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and independent ball, Meulens worked in the minor leagues as a coach with the Orioles, Pirates, and Giants before being promoted to San Francisco’s MLB staff prior to the 2010 season. Meulens worked as a hitting coach and bench coach over his decade on the Giants’ staff, earning three World Series rings along the way.
Since leaving the Giants, Meulens was the Mets’ bench coach in 2020 and then the Yankees’ assistant hitting coach in 2022. The 55-year-old Meulens will now be tasked with replacing Dave Magadan as the Rockies’ hitting coach, and reinvigorating a Colorado lineup that (despite the thin air of Coors Field) has been average at best over the last few seasons. In particular, Meulens will be the latest coach to challenge the problem of how to stabilize the wide home/away splits that many Rockies players have, as they adjust to playing in and out of the thin air.
The Rockies re-assigned former third base/infield coach Stu Cole to a new role in the organization, opening the door for Schaeffer’s first job on a big league staff. Schaeffer was a 38th-round pick for the Rockies in the 2007 draft, and after six seasons as a minor league player, he became a coach and manager in Colorado’s farm system. Over the last three seasons, Schaeffer has managed the Rockies’ Triple-A affiliate, and also worked as a third base coach and infield instructor in the same job.
Triple A skip and now a 3B coach in the Show? Good for him…He’ll get a shot someday..
Wow. Very un-Rockies-like to go get a well known coach from outside the organization and bring them in. Maybe they’re opening up a little.
I wonder if it has anything to do with a possible effort to sign Nimmo. He was his bench coach in 2020. The biggest attraction for Nimmo, though, outside of $, is that his parents live about an hour or two away in Wyoming.
And they made a trade today! What is the world coming to?
gonna teach them to BAM BAM the ball !!
Bam Bam should be interviewing for manager positions, he’s great!
I just don’t see a way to fix the wide splits. Human eyesight and reactions have limits.
A hitter can’t see a slider on the road and have time to think “better swing a couple inches lower today than I did yesterday.” Ball is by him by then.
Yep. Better see good everywhere!
With Meulens in Colorado , Rockies should sign Aaron Judge.
Love seeing Bam Bam on board. He can tell the players that he hit .600 in 1992. Okay, he was 3-for-5. But it’s still .600.
Watched Bam Bam at Prince William in the Carolina League back in 1987 I think. Never saw him as a future MLB coach, just seems weird to me. But super great for him!
Grooming Warren for our next manager, I like it.
Thames to LA of Anaheim, Bam Bam to Rockies, Long doing well with the Phillies….. this is when NY Front office (the Cash-man and company) looks in the mirror and sees its not them its you…..