Joyner, back when he was the Padres' hitting coach. (Getty Images)

The Phillies have hired former Padres hitting coach Wally Joyner as assistant hitting coach, the club announced Monday. With the move, Philadelphia joins in on a slowly but growing trend across baseball.


In June, CBSSports.com's Scott Miller wrote about Atlanta's process in replacing former hitting coach Larry Parrish with Greg Walker and assistant Scott Fletcher. The Braves had just scored fewer than 700 runs for the first time since 1992 (excluding the strike shortened 1994 and 1995 seasons), mustering just 641 last season as they limped to one of baseball's most historical collapses. This year, even as run scoring continued to fall leaguewide, the Braves rose back to 700 runs scored, scoring 0.36 more runs per game than 2011.


Atlanta general manager Frank Wren thinks their experiment will be the norm sooner rather than later:

The man who ultimately made the decision in Atlanta chuckles when someone suggests that, a decade from now, at this rate, maybe all 30 clubs will employ two hitting coaches.

"I don't know that it will even take that long," Wren says. "We've seen it more and more over the past three years. And like any other good idea, which obviously we didn't originate it, when it's a good idea and teams see people having success with it and talking about it positively, I think you're going to see it spread."


Just 16 days after Miller published his piece, the Tigers brought up minor league hitting coordinator Toby Harrah to the major league clubhouse as a sort of unofficial assistant hitting coach. According to a report from MLive.com, Detroit summoned Harrah to "[work] alongside hitting coach Lloyd McClendon as an assistant for an undetermined period."

Since teams are only allowed to have six uniformed coaches aside from the manager -- hitting coach, pitching coach, bullpen coach, bench coach and base coaches -- some teams are going with unofficial assistants like Harrah who don't spend all their time around the team. "I don't know how long Toby will be here, but he'll probably come and go," Leyland said, adding that, "A lot of teams have done this." Leyland credited his friend and former Cardinals manager Tony La Russa for the idea.

The Cardinals were with the Braves and San Diego Padres as the only three teams to officially employ an assistant hitting coach at the beginning of the season, but many like Leyland acknowledge the use of the position. Include Phillies manager Charlie Manuel in that group. Manuel told Miller "We would consider doing something like that, but it's got to be the right guy. The hitting coach has to feel comfortable."

Maybe Wren's vision of the assistant hitting coach as baseball institution within a decade is a bit swift for an industry as rooted in tradition as baseball. But maybe teams just have to find the right guy. Manuel found his guy in Wally Joyner, and the ranks of the assistant hitting coach just keep increasing.