The Mariners announced their full 2025 coaching staff today. Most of the names are either holdovers from 2024 or were previously reported, though there were a couple of new names. Eric Young Jr. has been promoted to first base coach with Louis Boyd promoted to major league field coordinator.
Those two additions are part of a larger shuffle. Kristopher Negrón was the first base coach, but he will move over to third base coach. Last year’s third base coach Manny Acta will transition to bench coach. Brant Brown was the bench coach and offensive coordinator going into 2024 but he was fired back in May. Director of hitting strategy Jarret DeHart and assistant hitting coach Tommy Joseph expanded their roles to compensate for Brown’s departure, though DeHart was fired in August and Joseph recently hired away by the Orioles. Boyd is taking the role that Carson Vitale had last year, though it was reported this week that the Marlins are hiring him away. Adam Jude of the Seattle Times (X link) relayed the shuffling prior to the official announcement.
Young was with the M’s last year, working in the system as baserunning coordinator. He will continue working on baserunning but now gets promoted to the first base coach position in the big leagues, though it’s not his first time in that job at the MLB level. He was the Nationals’ first base coach for the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Prior to coaching, he played in the majors from 2009 to 2018.
Boyd gets a major league coaching job for the first time. He has been in the Mariners’ organization for the past six seasons, working in the minors. Most recently, he was the minor league field coordinator for the past two seasons.
Acta has been on Seattle’s staff for many years, but has shifted around to various roles. He was third base coach in 2016 and 2017, then became the bench coach for a couple of years. He went back to the third base job from 2020 to 2024 but now returns back to the bench coach gig once again. He has worked as a coach or manager in the majors since 2006, working for the Expos, Mets, Nationals and Cleveland prior to coming to Seattle.
Negrón played in the majors from 2012 to 2019 before transitioning into coaching. The M’s hired him as the assistant to the director of player development in 2020 and he served as manager at Triple-A Tacoma in 2021. He then got promoted to first base coach at the big league level for the 2022 season.
Over ten seasons, EY Jr. had more SBs, 162, than RBIs, 112, also over ten seasons, had more triples, 22, than HRs, 13. Ten seasons for a cumulative 1.4 WAR for his career. Career OPS+ of 74.
Dodgers hitting coaches are Aaron Bates, who had a total of 12 plate appearances in his mlb career, and Robert Van Scoyoc, who never played past college baseball.
Yep. And Tim Hyers (Braves) has a career -1.2 WAR, hit .217 and had an OPS+ of 55. Good baseball players don’t necessarily make good coaches, bad baseball players don’t necessarily make bad coaches.
Can you name some good baseball players that have gained a reputation as being a good hitting coach? Can’t really think of any currently.
In terms of current ones, it’s a good question that made me flip through coaching staffs. I think the answer is there really aren’t any. There are two major potential ones in Edgar Martinez and Pat Burrell, but I think we need a couple more years to really judge them as coaches.
Past ones….just operating off personal memory/bias as a Sox fan, but Jim Rice in the late-90s for them?
Merely addressing the idiosyncrasies of his playing career, have no idea if he is a good coach or not.
Where does he rank in the Baseball America’s Top 100 coaching prospects?
So basically this means Soto is gone 🙁
Gone? He was never an option in the real world
Definitely feeling old — Eric Young’s son is old enough to be a coach?… yikes.
No mention if Edgar was coming back. Offense looked noticeably improved when he stepped in granted it couldn’t have looked any worse than it did.
He’s staying on in a limited role. he’s the hitting coach’s boss
27th in OPS before he joined
4th in OPS after
I don’t want the hitting coaches boss
I want the boss hitting coach.
I get it though he doesn’t want to travel and I guess some Gar is better than no Gar.
Love Manny Acta back as bench coach.
I always enjoyed EYJr as a player. Very underrated skill set