The Angels are hiring Brady Anderson as hitting coach and John Mabry as an assistant hitting coach, relays Jeff Fletcher of The Orange County Register. A three-time All-Star who played 15 seasons in the majors, Anderson gets his first major league coaching position.
Anderson, 61, spent 14 years with the Orioles. He’s best known for his 50-homer season in 1996 but was consistently a very good player from 1992-99. He hit 210 career homers with a .256/.362/.425 batting line in more than 1800 games. Anderson recorded 1661 hits and stole 315 bases.
A little over a decade after his playing career concluded, Anderson was hired as Baltimore’s vice president of baseball operations. He held that position from 2013-19 until stepping down after one season under Mike Elias. Anderson had played a significant front office role under prior GM Dan Duquette but reportedly had a different vision from the one Elias brought to the front office. Anderson has not worked in affiliated ball since moving on from the Orioles.
That makes it important to have an experienced voice as his assistant. The 55-year-old Mabry certainly qualifies. He has worked on MLB staffs dating back to 2012 after a 14-year big league playing career. Mabry has been a lead hitting coach with the Cardinals and Marlins and spent the ’25 season on Brandon Hyde’s staff in Baltimore as a senior advisor.
Anderson and Mabry will work with an offense that finished 25th in scoring this year. The Halos had an MLB-high 27.1% strikeout rate and a .225 batting average that was worst in the league. Their .298 on-base percentage was better only than those of the Rockies and Guardians, while they were middle of the pack in slugging. The Angels had the fourth-most home runs in MLB — trailing only the Yankees, Dodgers and Mariners — but were too reliant on right-handed power bats with limited on-base skills. They traded Taylor Ward, who’s coming off a career-high 36 home runs, to roll the dice on a Grayson Rodriguez upside play in the rotation.
Kurt Suzuki is headed into his first season as a big league manager. They’ve added veteran pitching coach Mike Maddux and former manager John Gibbons as bench coach. Base coaches Adam Eaton and Keith Johnson, catching coach Max Stassi, and infield coach Andy Schatzley have also signed on. The Angels have yet to finalize the staff.