The Phillies announced some news on their coaching staff on Monday afternoon. According to a team press release, they extended manager Rob Thomson through the 2025 season, and hired two assistant hitting coaches, Dustin Lind and Rafael Peña.
Lind was the San Francisco Giants’ director of hitting/assistant hitting coach in 2023, and Peña was a minor league hitting coordinator for the Houston Astros in 2023.
Lind and Peña will replace former assistant hitting coach Jason Camilli, who the Phillies announced would be not returning for the 2024 season. They’ll work under hitting coach Kevin Long.
Lind, 35, spent four seasons with the Giants (2020-23) and the two years with the Mariners as a minor league quality assurance coach in 2018 and a director of hitting development in 2019. He worked as an independent hitting consultant from 2014-17.
Lind and Peña will replace former assistant hitting coach Jason Camilli, who the Phillies announced would be not returning for the 2024 season. They’ll work under hitting coach Kevin Long.
Lind, 35, spent four seasons with the Giants (2020-23) and the two years with the Mariners as a minor league quality assurance coach in 2018 and a director of hitting development in 2019. He worked as an independent hitting consultant from 2014-17.
Peña, 33, has spent the last six years working with Astros minor leaguers. He also worked as hitting coach in the Arizona Fall League in 2021 and for Leones del Escogido in the Dominican Winter League.
Lowering chase rate will be a top priority for the Phillies entering next season. They chased 31.4% pitches out of the zone in the regular season, a figure well above the league average 28.6%.
Dombrowski highlighted it in his end-of-season press conference as a reason the Phillies weren’t able to get past the Diamondbacks in the NLCS.
”We swung at way too many pitches out of the strike zone,” he said in early November. “Way too many.”
How Lind and Peña will attempt to rectify that remains to be seen. But Lind, for one, has a proven track record of success in San Francisco.
He helped guide the Giants to a franchise-record 241 home runs in 2021, and a .263 batting average in 2020, ranked fifth-highest in the majors at the time. Last season, the Giants’ pinch hitters drove in a league-best 29 runs, with a .380 OBP, which ranked fifth in baseball.
A former coworker of Lind with the Giants called him “unquestionably one of the most talented hitting minds in the game.”
Peña doesn’t have big league coaching experience, but developed some of the homegrown stars that came through the Astros system.
Since taking over as a manager of the Phillies on June 5, Thomson has guided his team to a 155-118 record with two consecutive playoff appearances. He was asked about his contract status in November, but didn’t seem too concerned about his future.