Mets To Add Jeff Albert To Coaching Staff
The Mets are adding Jeff Albert to their uniformed coach staff, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. Previously the director of hitting development, he will run the club’s hitting program next year. Passan doesn’t explicitly say what Albert’s title will be, though he notes that the club plans add another hitting coach to complement him.
It’s possible Albert ends up with a classic hitting coach title, though some clubs get creative with these kinds of things. Perhaps the Mets will call him an offensive coordinator or a senior director of hitting strategy or something like that.
Either way, the larger point is that he’ll be atop the club’s hitting hierarchy. He previously served as the hitting coach for the Cardinals from 2019 to 2022. It’s always tough to separate the contributions of a coach from the players on his team, but for what it’s worth, the Cards slashed a combined .246/.321/.411 during Albert’s time with that club. That translated to a league-average wRC+ of 100.
He decided not to return to the Cards after that 2022 season, even though they were planning to offer him a multi-year extension. He was then hired by the Mets as director of hitting development and has been working with the club’s minor leaguers for the past three years.
After a disappointing 2025 season, the Mets are making a number of notable coaching changes. The offense wasn’t a big part of the club’s poor performance, as their .249/.326/.427 line led to a 112 wRC+, a mark that was bested by just three MLB teams. Regardless, hitting coaches Eric Chavez and Jeremy Barnes are two of the guys who won’t be coming back. Albert will step up and take over, though as mentioned, another hitting coach will be added at some point. It’s unclear if that additional hitting coach will be an internal hire or if the Mets will conduct an external search.
Photo courtesy of Jeff Curry, Imagn Images
Mets To Hire Jeff Albert
The Mets are set to name former Cardinals hitting coach Jeff Albert as their new director of hitting, SNY’s Andy Martino reports. He’ll presumably work in close tandem with hitting coach Eric Chavez and assistant hitting coach Jeremy Barnes. The team hasn’t made a formal announcement and given an exact description of the newly created position, but the team’s recent hire of Eric Jagers to serve as director of pitching likely sheds some light on Albert’s role. Jagers is expected to oversee the Mets’ minor league pitchers while also working closely with pitching coach Jeremy Hefner.
The 41-year-old Albert joins the Mets on the heels of a four-year stretch as the Cardinals’ hitting coach. He left the St. Louis organization after the season of his own volition. Cards president of baseball ops John Mozeliak said at his season-ending press conference that he’d been planning to offer Albert a contract, and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tweets that the plan had been to offer Albert a multi-year extension. Albert instead chose to pursue new opportunities, and the Cardinals subsequently promoted assistant hitting coach Turner Ward to Albert’s vacated position of hitting coach.
While Albert drew his share of criticism from Cardinals fans during some offensive struggles, the Cardinals’ composite offensive output in 2022 was quite strong. The team ranked ninth in the Majors in home runs (197), fifth in runs scored (772), tenth in batting average (.252), fourth in on-base percentage (.325) and seventh in slugging percentage (.420).
Obviously, not all of that can be simply attributed to Albert’s influence alone. But Albert, who has also spent time as the Astros’ hitting coach and minor league hitting coordinator, remains a highly respected coach and hitting instructor — and the new appointment to a prominent role within the Mets organization does nothing to change that perception.
Cardinals Make Changes To Coaching Staff
The Cardinals will have a new look coaching staff in 2023, after president of baseball operations John Mozeliak announced at his end-of-season press conference that pitching coach Mike Maddux was stepping down and hitting coach Jeff Albert had elected not to return in 2023. Mozeliak also announced that bullpen coach Bryan Eversgerd has been reassigned as a special assistant with the organization (Links via Derrick Goold of the St Louis Post-Dispatch and Katie Woo of The Athletic).
Mozeliak said he was willing to offer both Maddux and Albert new contracts, per Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat. He adds that Maddux is stepping away after a long career, but does not say that the veteran pitching coach is retiring. On Albert, Mozeliak says the hitting coach grew “frustrated” by the frequency with which he “took blame”, particularly among social media comments, for the team’s hitting struggles.
Maddux, 61, joined the Cardinals ahead of the 2018 season after previously spending two seasons as the Nationals pitching coach. The older brother of Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux, Mike enjoyed a 14-year playing career before retiring in 2000. He began his coaching career in the Astros organization, before landing his first big league coaching gig with the Brewers. He stayed there until 2008 before joining the Rangers and then Nationals.
Albert, 41, initially began as a hitting coach in the Cardinals’ minor league system. He was signed by the Astros to be their minor league hitting coordinator before they promoted him to assistant hitting coach on the major league club in 2018. He lasted there a year before the Cardinals brought him back ahead of the 2019 season to serve as hitting coach.
Eversgerd, 53, has been in the Cardinals organization since 2001, and served as their bullpen coach since 2018.
The Cardinals now have four open positions on their coaching staff, after bench coach Skip Schumaker landed the Marlins manager job.