Padres To Hire Steven Souza Jr. As Hitting Coach
The Padres are hiring Steven Souza Jr. as hitting coach and Randy Knorr as bench coach, reports Kevin Acee of The San Diego Union-Tribune. They’re new additions to the staff under first-year skipper Craig Stammen.
Souza’s hiring comes as a surprise. The 36-year-old has never worked on an MLB staff. He retired as a player in 2022 and spent the ’25 season as a special assistant with the Rays. Souza played parts of eight big league campaigns. The righty-hitting outfielder did his best work in Tampa Bay between 2015-17, including a 30-homer showing in his final season at Tropicana Field. Souza hit 72 round-trippers overall, batting .229/.318/.411 in just under 1900 career plate appearances.
While Souza is best known as a Ray, he began his career in the Washington organization. The Nationals drafted him out of high school in the third round in 2007. Souza reached the big leagues briefly in 2014. Stammen was in the Nats’ bullpen at the time. The following offseason, Washington traded Souza to Tampa Bay as part of the three-team deal (coincidentally also involving San Diego) that sent Wil Myers to the Padres and then-prospect Trea Turner to the Nats.
Souza will team up with Stammen again, this time on the coaching side. He replaces Victor Rodriguez, who left to take the same position with the Astros earlier this month. Souza will lead an offense that ranked just 18th in scoring despite a star-studded lineup. They were top 10 in batting average and on-base percentage and had the sport’s third-lowest strikeout rate, but they finished above only the Pirates and Cardinals in home runs.
Petco Park remains relatively favorable for pitchers. That may have played a bit of a role in the team’s pedestrian offense, but they were 23rd in scoring and 28th in homers on the road. Ryan O’Hearn and Luis Arraez have hit free agency. Although the Padres have expressed some interest in bringing Arraez back, first base stands as the most obvious position where the team could try to add power.
Knorr, 57, also knows Stammen from their time in Washington. He was the bullpen coach when Stammen broke into the majors in 2009. He earned a promotion to bench coach three years later and held that role through the ’15 campaign. Knorr subsequently spent time as an advisor in the front office, on Dave Martinez’s staff as first base coach, as a minor league manager, and in their player development department. He remained in the organization until the end of this past season.
Brian Esposito has been San Diego’s bench coach this year. He interviewed for the managerial position after Mike Shildt stepped down. The Friars obviously went in another direction. Acee writes that Esposito is expected to remain in the organization in a yet to be revealed role. The Padres are expected to retain highly-regarded pitching coaches Ruben Niebla and Ben Fritz (bullpen coach), each of whom is reportedly on a multi-year contract. It’s not yet known if they’ll make further changes to the hitting side.
Nationals Make Two Coaching Changes
Nationals third base coach Bob Henley and first base coach Randy Knorr won’t be returning to the staff next season, as The Washington Post’s Jesse Dougherty reports that the club has reassigned the two coaches to player-development jobs. These could be the only changes made to manager Davey Martinez’s staff, as the other five coaches have been asked to return in their current roles.
Henley was a 26th-round draft pick for the Expos in 1991, and apart from one game with the Pirates A-ball affiliate in 2002, he has spent his entire baseball career in the Expos/Nationals organization. After working as a manager and field coordinator at the minor league level, Henley joined Washington’s coaching staff in 2013 and has worked as the third base coach for seven of the past eight seasons.
Knorr’s tenure with the club also dates back to the Nationals’ days in Montreal, as he played for the Expos in 2001 and then played three seasons for the team’s Triple-A affiliate before retiring from playing. Knorr has worked as a minor league manager and worked in player development in between three separate stints on Washington’s big league coaching staff, working as a bullpen coach and bench coach in the past before his 2021 assignment as the first base coach.
Beyond their official titles, Knorr and Henley were also baserunning coaches, and Henley worked as an outfield coach. It isn’t yet known if the replacements will take over those additional duties, or if the Nationals might expand their staff with a new position or two.
Of the other five members of the staff, Dougherty writes that hitting coach Kevin Long “becomes the biggest question mark” to be in D.C. in 2022, as Long “is open to returning again, though he will consider other opportunities.” Long will likely require a multi-year contract to come back for his fifth season as the Nationals’ hitting coach. His first deal with the team was a three-year contract (rather an unusually lengthy commitment for a coach), and he agreed to return on a one-year pact for 2021.