The Red Sox have hired Dillon Lawson to a hitting coordinator role, with Lawson himself relaying the news to Brendan Kuty of The Athletic. Lawson will be working primarily with Boston’s upper-level minor leaguers.
Lawson was hired to work in the Yankees’ organization in 2018 and made the jump to that club’s major league hitting coach prior to the 2022 season. With the club later struggling in 2023, the Yanks made the surprising decision to fire Lawson in July, the first time they fired a coach mid-season since Brian Cashman became general manager in 1998.
Sean Casey took over for that job for the second half and didn’t really have much of an obvious impact. It’s always difficult to assign blame or credit when it comes to coaches and the players they work with, but the Yanks had a wRC+ of 96 before Lawson was fired this year and a 92 after. Casey decided not to come back for 2024, with the Yankees hiring James Rowson to take on the hitting coach job next year.
Per Kuty’s report, Lawson is already familiar with some employees of the Red Sox, including Jason Ochart, Peter Fatse, Ben Rosenthal and Luis Ortiz. “I’m excited to be joining a great team that’s already moving in the right direction,” Lawson said.
Not sure why…they dont have any hitters! Or pitchers!
They probably won’t either as John Henry won’t spend the money.
Kutter Crawford would literally be the Yankees’ #2…
Fletch – So you’re assuming Rodon & Cortes will both be hurt again and combine for just 26 GS, and you’re assuming the Yanks won’t acquire one of the many solid SP’s still available this offseason.
Cool assumptions bro. Mind if I bookmark this awesome group of predictions you are making? Of course you don’t mind.
I said that because Kutter is literally better than them. You are naught but a sad little clown man!
They have plenty hitters to get by, they don’t want to block prospects. They probably won’t have much money left if they have to sign baseball pitchers. You can’t spend your way out of situation red Sox are in, they have to rebuild. They can build a club that can compete in wild card but most likely won’t make it to playoffs, division is too strong.
Eric – Just wondering, if they don’t have to sign baseball pitchers then what other kind of pitchers would they have to sign?
I was using speaker on phone to type, .
They have no hitters?Yer nuts ,thier offense is fine..what team have you been watching ? They need pitching and defense
What a clown comment lol. You do know that power is about more than home runs right? Raffy’s slugging is fine. Just because you don’t understand big numbers doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.
26？ You really didn’t watch the game
Or you can’t understand
Red Sox are a rebuilding club they’re to far behind to catch up in the division. Most of their hitters coming up are a year or two away.They need to work on pitching and stop gap second basemen. Red Sox already spent on yoshida and Trevor story and both moves haven’t worked the past few years. Mets spent over 300 million and couldn’t even make the playoffs last year.
Yoshida is fine. The guy just hit a wall in the second half. Have him dh more and year 2 he’ll be used to the travel and longer season.
Eric – Carl is indeed a clown, in fact he responded to one of my posts a few days ago by taking a cheap shot at me and then when I politely proved his take was embarrassing he muted me. Some kids can dish it out but can’t take it.
As for power, you are 100% correct.. Devers, Casas and Duran all had slugging percentages above .480 and I’m not even including Duvall’s .531 SLG because he hasn’t re-signed with any team yet.
You do know that power is about more than home runs right?
===================
I believe that the order of importance is:
OPS
OBP
SLG
HRs
Of the four, HRs have the lowest correlation to scoring, in my various analyses.
Pitchers I might agree to some degree, but to say we have no hitters is inaccurate. We may not be as scary as that 2018 team but we still have guys who can hit.
LMAO. Terrible hiring by the Sox. This man is a bum
Who are you kidding? Yankee fans were furious when he got fired.
Spot on Yaz. Most Yankee fans were saying “scapegoat” or “fall guy” at NYPost and MLBTR when Lawson was fired by Yankees.
We were?
He’s all about launch angles and swinging hard in every count, even with 2 strikes.
It worked in the minors, not so well at all in the majors.
I just read the comments. Yes you were look for yourself. I’m not saying “every”. But generally. And I don’t count Red Sox fans that hate everything Red Sox and love Cashman.
RSmith – “Red Sox fans that hate everything Red Sox” are not Red Sox fans! They are trolls! KD, Fever Pitch, 30 Parks…..trolls one and all
You mean like Fever Pitch Guy? Seems to hate on the Red Sox all the time but he’s speechless when it comes to the Yankees (until now, yet his only response is Sox hate even mentioning the Yankees).
@Fever Pitch Guy, you can hate on Cora all you want, but to say he doesn’t “care about results” is absurd.
Cora the:
Where are you getting your doesnt “care about results” quote from? Youre the only one who said it on the page. Putting a fake quote in other people mouths isnt right.
Interesting. I didn’t post much here over the summer. Maybe it’s just my small circle but people I knew were also thrilled, recognizing he’s only one small problem and Boone and cashman need to be canned next lol
but people I knew were also thrilled
===========================
1-I’ve raised this question before about other coaches, so don’t take this personally, but how do you know he is a bad coach? My working hypothesis here is that 95% of the fans don’t have the slightest idea what individual coaches do.
2-From a statistical perspective, the numbers suggest that the NYY hot a fair bit better in the first half than the second half. Any thoughts on that?
Yaz, many Yankee fans believed he was a scapegoat, although they also blamed him for the team’s hitting approach, often mocking him for his “see ball, hit ball hard” approach. In the years he was there, I never heard any players praising him. Mostly silence.
Cashman is very patient with his coaching staff, never having fired a coach midseason over the past 20+ years. That’s pretty telling that Lawson was the first. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t scapegoating going on because they certainly could have waited until season’s end, but it also indicated there was a connection problem with the players, hence why they went out and got the exact opposite of Lawson in Casey. Cashman would have gotten feedback from the manager and the players on Lawson. Yankee fan’s most definitely were not furious he was canned. They were calling for his firing for months.
That all out of the way, he was viewed positively by the organization, and from what I heard, other teams. He likely was miscast as the lead hitting coach. This is likely a better position for him.
“Dillon did a lot of good things,” Cashman said at the GM meetings last month. “He left a lot of good things behind that I want to acknowledge.”
“Dillon Lawson did a lot of great things for this franchise as he came up as our hitting coordinator,” Cashman said on the day Lawson was dismissed. “He was very dominant, especially in our player development field.”
nypost.com/2023/12/19/sports/former-yankees-hittin…
suit – It’s hard to defend a guy when nearly every hitter on the Yankees not named Judge had much worse results than their career averages.
Lawson will get along great with Cora, because neither one cares about results.
“During a recent discussion, Lawson expressed his thoughts on Volpe‘s struggles by stating, “If he was hitting a reckless .200, there’s no chance you’d have confidence. But it’s a professional .200.”
THE “PROFESSIONAL .200” WAS ACTUALLY .191/.268/.358 with a .626 OPS.
Lawson is gonna love Story then!
He was apparently much better working with minor leaguers which is what he will be doing.
suit – Do you agree with his approach as a minor league instructor? Is exit velocity more important than bat control and ball placement?
“When asked to cite an example of this issue, Ruta recounted how, in 2020, the minor league staff designed a game in which a batter would “win” by drawing a walk against a pitcher or hitting a ball with an exit velocity of at least 95 miles per hour, rather than getting a traditional hit with a lower exit velocity.
Scapegoat (Definition): A person who is blamed for the faults and wrongdoing of others.
If you are a scapegoat, you arent to blame for the ‘faults and wrongdoings’.
People seem to be reinventing definitions here. If you said he was a scapegoat and didnt clarify then. You cant later say, yeah he was a scapegoat and to blame as well is what I meant.
@APBA it’s definitely there if you look for it. I didn’t put words in his mouth at all, you’re just not looking hard enough.
Fever said Lawson and Cora both don’t care about results. Look through ALL the comments, even the hidden ones.
“Lawson will get along great with Cora because neither one cares about results.” Quoted word for word.
This guy is the epitome of a new age anal-ytics clown. His motto is, “Hit strikes hard.” Lol That ex-Yankee minor leaguer exposed this statcast worshipper for the anti-fundamental fraud he is. Glad he is going to poison the Red Sox system with his nonsense.
did someone fail algebra in high school?
Yes, why? Oh, you weren’t talking to me…..
I mean, it’s like he thinks we all didn’t fail algebra in high school. I’m triggered!
Haha! Should’ve asked who didn’t fail algebra in high school; would’ve generated far fewer responses.
Classic – So true!
Check this out :
“When asked to cite an example of this issue, Ruta recounted how, in 2020, the minor league staff designed a game in which a batter would “win” by drawing a walk against a pitcher or hitting a ball with an exit velocity of at least 95 miles per hour, rather than getting a traditional hit with a lower exit velocity.
“Analytics are fine BUT when you have a bad product (and it’s obvious) and it gets defended by constantly telling you it’s not as bad as it looks b/c so and so analytic is actually really good. This is how a fan base gets frustrated.”
Fever: There is no reply option on your above question for some reason. I don’t know which is a better hitting approach, but I suspect harder hit balls become hits more often. It looks like Lawson wants hitters to only swing when balls are in the strike zone and learn not to chase pitches out of the strike zone. I don’t know for sure the best approach, but I don’t have a problem with it right now. I also suspect good bat control may be hard to come by. I also think there is more to hitting than these two approaches. Hitters need to understand how pitchers are attacking them and make adjustments if needed.
Fever: So, I think “hit strikes hard” is probably part of a good hitting approach, but that is not the whole approach.
Lawson was well thought of from the analytics approach he brought to hitting and reportedly was in heavy demand when he was part of the Yankees minor leagues, and also when his contract was up for renewal in the majors. His failure seems to have been communicating his philosophy and approach directly to MLB hitters. This is probably a good role for him as he can bring his approach across the Red Sox system, but he can do so through the hitting coaches. I can see why he’d connect with Breslow. Of course, I’m a Yankee fan, so I’m not really rooting for his success! But I do think it’s a good hire.
Who is………. Uhhhh is this…..What just happened?
Just say no to drugs.
“I’m excited to be joining a great team that’s already moving in the right direction,” Lawson said.
That says everything right there. No further analysis necessary.
Man! The Sox is really getting after it! Are you sure Bloom got fired?
We got Jeter Downs, they got Dillon Lawson…. Yep, fair trade off.
What’s the next move to counter, Clip?
Perhaps we snag a Refsnyder back and then they counter with a Sanchino pickup? I mean, this could get real very quickly…
Don’t even think about it, otherwise we’ll need to escalate things further. Don’t make us call Hicks and/or Gallo…
John Henry: Now maybe people will stop saying we haven’t done anything this off season.
All of that excitement that I was feeling at the start of the off-season is quickly evaporating.
The whole pitching market is waiting on Yamamoto unfortunately.
suit – It won’t be much longer. I think he will probably announce a decision between the 26th-31st.
Imanaga will probably announce Jan 2nd-6th.
Snell and Montgomery middle of January.
Fever: What is your guess for Yamamoto? I’m thinking Mets or Yankees.
suit – I don’t know what’s going on here, half of the comments I can’t reply to and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. I can reply to this one of yours, but can’t reply to your other one. If it’s a glitch I hope they fix it soon.
To answer your question from your other post, I truly don’t know. I think it’s all about the money, if some team blows him away with an offer he will take it. If the best offers are close, I truly think it will be the Sox. He wants to be the man, he wants to be the ace. He won’t be in the Bronx with Cole. I think Yoshida is a huge advantage, but again I really don’t feel comfortable making a prediction because anything can happen behind the scenes.
Crickets
“Moving in the right direction” lmao Which team is that?
Way things are now. Sox couldn’t compete against the Paw Sox.
Fake fan.. Doesnt even know where minor league team plays.
lol. I’ve been on this site while u were still in ur old man bag.
Fake fan indeed you r.
Yoda has entered the building.
LOL! You beat me to that by like one minute.
I started posting on here maybe 2005/2006. Under RedSox67
It got way to stupid even to reply to post
So gave up in maybe 2012/13
Just wanted to post on the non movements of the Sox and got called a fake fan after posting within a hour. Site hasn’t changed. Still have idiots on it.
Just a dumb idea. This off season has been more boring than the Harper/Machado off season
Understandably so though. There’s so much potential money tied up between ohtani and Yamamoto. Any other big free agents are smart to wait.
Surprised this is newsworthy. At least it is not the ball boy/girl update or batboy update.
CB 2.0
That’s the boost to the rotation we’ve all been waiting for!
Can he play second base?
Is “hitting coordinator” equivalent to bat boy? Sounds like a subway sandwich artist or something.
I would say this to Boston fans: if you liked having Matt Patricia/Joe Judge run the Patriots’ offense then you are going to love having Dillon Lawson take control of the Red Sox hitters.
This will be the biggest signing of the off-season for the Red Sox, but not in a good way.
Boston media is setting it up great for the Trolls.
If Boston loses out on Yamamoto, they’ll run with “Same old, Same old, Cheap Owner, Terrible GM!”.
If Boston wins the Yamamoto bidding, they’ll run with “Way too much money!” They’re already running articles saying as much.
Its a Win/Win for the Trolls. No matter what they have something to be angry about.