Hitting coach Guillermo Martinez fired by Blue Jays after offensive bust of a season
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The Blue Jays have wasted little time to address one of the team’s most glaring weaknesses in the failed 2024 season.
After a miserable offensive output throughout a campaign in which the Jays finished 14 games below .500, a source confirms the team has let go hitting coach Guillermo Martinez, the first sign that it will alter its approach at trying to improve at the plate.
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Hitting coach Guillermo Martinez fired by Blue Jays after offensive bust of a season Back to video
The Jays managed just 671 runs in the 2024 season, a meek outing that was in part based on roster makeup, but also due to regression of some prominent hitters such as George Springer and Bo Bichette.
The firing of the 39-year-old Martinez, first reported by TSN’s Scott Mitchell, is a quick reaction from general manager Ross Atkins and the baseball operations department. Martinez joined the Jays in 2012 and has held multiple roles within the organization, first as a minor league hitting coach. He moved to the big league team in a similar role in 2018, working with several players he had coached in the minors.
The declining Jays offence has been an ongoing concern for the past two seasons but was particularly gruesome in the just completed 74-88 season. The Jays ranked 23rd overall in runs scored as the team dipped significantly from the 746 they scored in 2023.
Martinez, who was long tied to the organization’s development of Bichette and Vlad Guerrero Jr., was also hitting coach with the team when the offence was booming in 2021 and 2022. The regression over the past two years has been stark, though not all on Martinez obviously.
It’s not immediately known who will replace Martinez, who was part of a hitting-focused staff in 2023 that included offensive coordinator Don Mattingly and assistant coaches Hunter Mense and Matt Hague. The Jays managed two runs or fewer in 51 games, a huge reason for their downfall in this last-place season.
GM Atkins and team president Mark Shapiro will no doubt update the situation on Wednesday at their season-ending press conference.
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