After the Orioles scored only one run in two Wild Card losses to the Kansas City Royals, and executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias promised a thorough examination of the team, it shouldn’t be a surprise that changes have been made to the coaching staff.
While Elias and manager Brandon Hyde have been a team for six seasons, adjustments have been made to the staff after each season.
After the 2023 season, the Orioles reassigned pitching coach and director of pitching Chris Holt and dismissed assistant pitching coach Darren Holmes despite a 101-win season.
This year, with the offense’s struggles in the second half of the season and a second straight disappointing postseason, changes were expected.
“All that I want to say, and can say right now is that I am going to work tirelessly to make adjustments and improve and put us in the position to have a better outcome than we just had,” Elias said on October 3rd,. a day after the Orioles’ season ended.
It seemed that changes, especially among the hitting coaches, were coming. Ryan Fuller, who shared the title of co-hitting coach with Matt Borgschulte for the past three seasons, will not be returning, it was learned on Friday.
It was a surprise that longtime baseball man Fredi González, and Jose Hernández, who’d been with the organization for 15 years as both a minor league and major league coach and had been on each of Hyde’s six major league staffs, also aren’t coming back in 2025.
The 60-year-old González had been a major league coach or manager for 25 years, including 10 seasons with the Marlins and Braves before spending the last five with the Orioles as major league coach for two seasons and bench coach for the last three.
With Hernández’s departure, the Orioles have only one coach, longtime Hyde associate Tim Cossins, their major league field development/catching instructor, remaining from Hyde’s initial staff in 2019.
That original staff, which wasn’t finalized until early 2019 since Hyde wasn’t hired until December 2018, included Cossins, Hernández, first base coach Arnie Beyeler, pitching coach Doug Brocail, assistant hitting coach Howie Clark, third base coach José David Flores, hitting coach Don Long and bullpen coach John Wasdin.
First base coach Anthony Sanders, who arrived in 2020, and third base coach Tony Mansolino, whose first season was in 2021, are the only coaches with more than three years of experience.
Fans on social media have been calling for changes in hitting coaches for weeks, and that only increased with the Orioles’ offensive shortcoming in the second half of this season and against the Royals.
While Fuller and Borgschulte held the co-hitting coach titles, Fuller was the one who was the more visible and a most articulate on the subject of hitting. For the past two seasons, former major leaguer Cody Asche served as a third hitting coach. His title was offensive strategy coach.
It’s not known how the Orioles will restructure their hitting coach alignment for 2025.
González was in many ways a throwback coach, a guy who loved talking about the game and its players. Hyde often sent the garrulous González to home plate for the exchange of lineup cards with the umpires and he served as manager when Hyde was ejected from the game.
He hadn’t managed since leaving the Braves early in the 2016 season, and after joining the Orioles, González embraced analytics and expressed an eagerness to manage again with aid of the sabermetric tools he didn’t have in previous years. His name hasn’t popped up in chatter about managerial openings in recent years, but his decades of experience would be helpful to a major league staff.
Hernández was a longtime Orioles minor league coach, working at Gulf Coast, Delmarva, Frederick and from 2013-2018 at Triple-A Norfolk.
González and Hernández are bilingual and it’s obvious that the Orioles will need to add at least one bilingual coach with their departures.
Hernández was the coach with the most major league time. He spent 15 seasons with nine teams and played each of the infield and outfield positions and was a 2002 National League All-Star as a third baseman with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Of the other Orioles’ 2024 coaches, only Asche (five seasons) and Sanders (13 games from 1999-2001) played in the major leagues.
It will be interesting to see how the Orioles fill the bench coach spot. They could choose a former major league manager, a minor league manager with experience in the Orioles’ organization or a former player.
Call for questions: Most weekdays, I’ll be answering Orioles questions. Please email yours to: Rich@BaltimoreBaseball.com