Angels News: Halos Make First Coaching Change of the Offseason After Down Year

We knew they had to make some changes this offseason.

The Angels have made their first major change of the offseason. Jeremy Reed, the team's hitting coach since 2019, will not return in 2023. 

The 2022 Angels ranked 24th in the league with a batting average of .233 and ranked 25th with 623 runs scored. Their OPS of .687 ranked 23rd in the Majors. We knew the Angels had to make a change, so Reed became the first guy to go.

Jeremy Reed, LA Angels hitting coach, will not be returning for the 2023 season. Established himself with veteran MVPs as well as impacted young up and comers Luis Rengifo, Taylor Ward and Jared Walsh.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) October 19, 2022

Reed was drafted in the Majors by the White Sox in the 2nd round of the 2002 draft. He sporadically played in the Majors over the course of eight seasons, hitting .252 with 12 home runs and 110 RBIs.

After his playing career, he joined the Brewers as a minor league coach in 2014, before moving to the Angels' minor league coaching staff in 2017. In 2019, he finally got an opportunity to coach in the Majors.

Towards the end of August, Reed told The Athletic that he was working with the players to improve their approaches at the plate.

"There’s been some things that we’ve seen, that we’ve noticed," Reed said back in August. "The swing-and-miss. The strikeout rate. We’re very well aware of those things. We go in there and work on the heater, if it’s the fastball that they’re swinging and missing at. Or we work on the breaking ball if it’s that. We have a lot of knowledgeable people that are working on swing mechanics, swing decisions, approach, game-planning. There’s a lot of different things at the major-league level that get magnified. It’s baseball. And it’s just nice to see some success at the end of it."

Since September 1, the Angels ranked sixth in the Majors with a much-improved team batting average of .256. They ranked top 10 in OPS (.736), home runs (39) and hits (270). The Angels went 16-15 in that time. So clearly Reed was able to help his guys fix something in the back-half of the season. Hopefully they can carry that into the 2023 season with the new hitting staff.