And now your weird rumor of the day:
Heard that former Mets first baseman Rico Brogna is close to joining Angels staff, possibly as assistant hitting coach.
— Mike Puma (@NYPost_Mets) November 12, 2013
This is not weird simply because Brogna was a pretty bad hitter with a pretty bad approach to hitting for much of his career. I mean, there are a lot of hitting coaches who weren’t themselves good hitters. It’s more about communication and identification of others’ flaws. By the same token, just because you could hit doesn’t mean you’d make a good hitting coach. You want Manny Ramirez to coach your hitters? Does he even know why he murdered baseballs so effectively? Not gonna bet a lot on it!
But it is weird in that Brogna has spent almost his entire post-playing career coaching high school football and basketball and stuff. He spent a year managing in minor league baseball, but for the most part he’s been a multi-sport journeyman coach, making tons of stops. The lack of obvious hitting coach bona fides and the fact that he’s been mostly away from the game for a decade plus is what makes this weird.
But hey, it’s just the assistant hitting coach’s job. And that’s a job that didn’t really exist a couple of years ago, so let us not get too hung up about it.