Inside The Dodgers

Dodgers Promote Assistant Hitting Coach

Dodgers assistant hitting coach Aaron Bates has been promoted to co-hitting coach with Robert Van Scoyoc, replacing Brant Brown, who went to Miami.

Jeff J. Snider

When Dodgers co-hitting coach (hitting co-coach?) Brant Brown left Los Angeles to take the job as hitting coach for the Miami Marlins, it left an opening on L.A.'s staff. Brown had worked in tandem with Robert Van Scoyoc as the two-headed hitting coach for the Dodgers, with Aaron Bates serving as assistant hitting coach.

Lost in the shuffle of the Winter Meetings was L.A. manager Dave Roberts announcing that Bates will fill Brown's role on the coaching staff.

As Jack Harris says in the tweet, it hasn't yet been decided if the team will fill Bates' vacated assistant position or who will fill it if they do.

Bates played briefly in the big leagues, getting 12 plate appearances with the Red Sox in 2009. He played five more years in the minors after that, but he never made it back to the big leagues. He retired after the 2014 season and took a job coaching in the minors for the Dodgers. Bates worked his way up through the minors before being named assistant hitting coach for the 2019 season.

Brown had spent six years coaching for the Dodgers before heading to Miami. He spent parts of five seasons playing in the big leagues for the Cubs, Pirates, and Marlins.

Van Scoyoc, of course, never played in professional baseball. After what he described as a "pretty mediocre" college baseball career, he began coaching hitters privately. He was instrumental in helping JD Martinez reinvent himself as a hitter in 2013, and as a consultant for the Dodgers in 2016 and 2017, he had the same impact on Chris Taylor.

So L.A.'s three-man hitting team is down to two, at least for now. We'll see if it stays that way or if they replace Bates as assistant.

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Jeff J. Snider
JEFF J. SNIDER

Jeff was born into a Dodgers family in Southern California and is now raising a Dodgers family of his own in Utah. He's been blogging about baseball and the Dodgers since 2004 and doing it professionally since 2015. Favorite Player: Clayton Kershaw Favorite Moment: Kirk Gibson's homer will always have a place, but Kershaw's homer on Opening Day 2013 might be the winner.

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