Even as the Chicago Cubs replaced one-year hitting coach Greg Brown after the season, they said from the jump that they hoped they could keep him in the organization. They didn’t want to “fire” Brown so much as they wanted an opportunity to promote minor league hitting coordinator Dustin Kelly.
The good news is that the Cubs are indeed going to be able to keep Brown around, and in a role working with minor league hitters like he did in the Rays organization before the Cubs poached him in the first place:
And hey, look at that! Old friend John Mallee is back in the organization, too. The hitting coach during some of the more successful offensive years (largely to do with the talent on the roster, mind you), Mallee was one of the few hitting coaches in the last decade to actually last multiple seasons.
I’m just going to avoid all the hitting coach-related jokes one could make about the Chicago Cubs, and instead I’m just going to note how much hitting-coach talent the Cubs now have available up and down the organization. They have Brown and Mallee, they have FOUR hitting coaches at the big league level, they have a well-regarded Director of Hitting in Justin Stone, two rising stars as co-minor league hitting coordinators (Rachel Folden and Steven Pollakov), and then obviously all the coaches at the various levels of the system. Seems good?