The Blue Jays are hiring Lou Iannotti to John Schneider’s coaching staff, reports TSN’s Scott Mitchell (X link). Mitchell suggests Iannotti is likely to take an assistant hitting coach role under first-year hitting instructor David Popkins.
Iannotti, 32, had been with the Dodgers as a minor league hitting coordinator. A collegiate catcher at Quinnipiac, he had a very brief stint as a professional player in the independent Frontier League. Iannotti quickly moved into coaching in the lowest levels of the Dodgers’ minor league system. He worked his way up to hitting coach for L.A.’s Double-A affiliate before landing the coordinator role that allowed him to oversee multiple minor league levels. This’ll be his first work on an MLB coaching staff.
The Jays already have Hunter Mense on staff as an assistant hitting coach. He’s a holdover from previous years. The Jays otherwise made changes to their offensive staff. Toronto fired previous hitting coach Guillermo Martinez at the end of the season. Don Mattingly, who’d served as offensive coordinator in addition to bench coach, will only have traditional bench coach responsibilities with Popkins coming on as hitting coach.
They got Iannotti?!?!?!?
Unbelievable!
2025 WS here come the Jays!!!!!! No use even following the season.
Hopefully this turns out to be a game changing move for the Jay’s…. all one can do is try!!
No hate!!!
Every Jays article in MLBTR reminds me that the unwinning ways for the past 8 years comes from the top as called in 2016. Until the proper executives are put in place who have the gifting to build a winner, the Jays will continue to lose. All this stuff they do and that gets reviewed in MLBTR is just shifting deck chairs on the Titanic.
Shaprio is brilliant as a renovator, businessman and administrator but terrible at talent evaluation and putting together a major league roster. Ditto for Atkins. LaCava and Click must go too.
There are only a few elite GM types in the big leagues and Toronto is a Big Market caliber city that deserves Big Market baseball people.
I called for Dombrowksi when he was available but that would mean Shapiro giving up control which is his #1 goal in his career. Anthopolous refused to work for Shapiro. Alex knew what Shapiro was about. Trust me. Any hope of the Jays winning in 2025 is false hope.
Atkins has a few wins under his belt: He picked Gausman over Ray (they got the same deal pretty much), he built some pretty awesome bullpens in ’21, ’22, ’23 , and he got a good haul at the trading deadline for KiKuchi and others. Probably saved them from having a bottom 5 farm system to a bottom 10 farm system.
The Lousy GM shapiro and his carry-on useless baggage atkins, deserve NO credit whatsoever !!
2025 will be a disaster in Toronto….
@Ignorant Son-of-a-b:
Unfortunately, there are a few toxic Jays ‘fans’ around who just want to trash Jays management, no matter what they do. Every fan base has those types. I consider myself more of a realist. Shapiro and Atkins did a good job of building the team up over their first few years and made a number of solid moves early on. Until 2 years ago, the Jays were on an upward trajectory, and had a real shot to be true contenders.
It was at that point that management lost the plot. They neutered the offense for the sake of a few less errors on defense and it change the nature of the roster for the worse.
To me, Shapiro/Atkins can build a team up, but struggle to push them over the finish line. That was my impression of Shapiro in Cleveland. Was able to develop some competitive teams on a budget but couldn’t quite make the last tweaks. Seems to have happened again in Toronto.
Jimmertee is one of those toxic fans, very obnoxious. I cringe every time I read one of his comments. A sell pro claimed no it all, every comment of how he predicted this, predicted that. If was a baseball savant that he claims to be he wouldn’t be here on mlbtraderumors, hed have a front office job running the most successful ball team that ever existed. I’ve never comment much on this site, but he’s got to be the most obnoxious commenter on here.
Know*