Meet the Miami Marlins’ coaching staff for the 2020 baseball season
The Miami Marlins have finalized their coaching staff for the 2020 season, adding five new coaches to work with manager Don Mattingly while also retaining Mel Stottlemyre Jr., Trey Hillman and Eric Duncan.
Here is a look at the full staff:
James Rowson, bench coach
Rowson, 43, spent the past three seasons as the Minnesota Twins’ hitting coach. In 2019, the Twins season set MLB’s single-season home run record (307), scored the second-most runs in baseball (939) and had the fourth-lowest strikeout rate in the league (21 percent).
Before his stint in Minnesota, he spent two years as the Chicago Cubs’ hitting coach from 2012 to 2013 in between two stints as the New York Yankees’ minor-league hitting coach, most recently from 2014 to 2016.
Mel Stottlemyre Jr., pitching coach
Stottlemyre, 55, will look to continue making strides with a young pitching staff. He has a starting rotation that will center on All-Star Sandy Alcantara and strike-throwing lefty Caleb Smith and has a host of top prospects in Sixto Sanchez, Edward Cabrera and Nick Neidert, among others waiting in the wings.
2020 will be his ninth season as an MLB coach.
His father, Mel Stottlemyre Sr., was a five-time All-Star with the Yankees during his 11-year big-league career (1964-1974) and served as the Yankees’ pitching coach from 1996 to 2005.
Trey Hillman, third base coach/infield coach
Hillman, 56, enters his second year with the Marlins and 11th as an MLB coach or manager.
Hillman also served as Mattingly’s bench coach for from 2011 to 2013 with the Los Angeles Dodgers and was a special assistant for major- and minor-league operations with the Yankees in 2014 — Marlins CEO Derek Jeter’s final season as a player.
Billy Hatcher, first base coach/outfield coach
Hatcher, 59, comes to the Marlins with 21 years of coaching experience with the Tampa Bay Rays (1998-2005) and Cincinnati Reds (2006-2018). He has experience as a first-base coach, third-base coach and bench coach.
Prior to coaching, Hatcher played 12 seasons as an outfielder at the MLB level with the Cubs (1984-1985), Astros (1986-1989), Pirates (1989), Reds (1990-1992), Red Sox (1992-1994), Phillies (1994) and Rangers (1995). He was a career .264 hitter with 54 home runs and 399 RBI and won the World Series with the Reds in 1990.
Eric Duncan, hitting coach
Duncan opened the 2019 season — his first in the Marlins’ organization — as a minor-league hitting coordinator but was promoted to assistant hitting coach when the club fired Mike Pagliarulo on April 19. Duncan, 35, replaces Jeff Livesey, who served as the Marlins’ interim hitting coach for the final five months of the 2019 season. Livesey is remaining with the Marlins as a minor-league hitting coordinator.
Robert Rodriguez, assistant hitting coach
Rodriguez, 39, served as the manager of the Marlins’ Gulf Coast League affiliate in 2019 and is entering his fourth year in the Marlins’ organization after joining as a defensive coach with Triple A New Orleans in 2017. He is a Miami native.
Wellington Cepeda, Bullpen coach
Cepeda, 46, comes to the Marlins after working in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ organization. He will work closely with Stottlemyre as Miami aims to improve one of the worst bullpens in baseball from last season.
Eddy Rodriguez, catching coach
Rodriguez, who graduated from Coral Gables High and played at the University of Miami, joins the Marlins staff after a year as the Los Angeles Angels’ minor-league catching coordinator. This is the first major-league coaching job for the 34-year-old.
This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 11:19 AM.
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