Detroit — Tigers manager AJ Hinch intimated at the season-ending press conference last month that his coaching staff may not return intact.
“We are going to evaluate every possible way we can get better,” Hinch said when asked about his staff. “I think our staff has answered a lot of the challenges we’ve been given and all of this is in a really good place.
“But we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t debrief about our entire group.”
On Wednesday, Hinch’s intimations became fact. The Tigers announced a host of changes, both to the major league coaching staff, the player development staff and to the baseball operations staff.
For starters, first-base coach Anthony Iapoce, outfield coach Gary Jones and assistant hitting coach Keith Beauregard will not return to the team.
The Tigers hired a pair of coaches from the Baltimore Orioles to replace Iapoce and Beauregard.
Anthony Sanders, 51, the Orioles’ first-base coach the last six seasons, will replace Iapoce. The former Toronto Blue Jays (1999) and Seattle Mariners (2000-2001) outfielder also spent 13 seasons coaching in the Colorado Rockies minor league system.
He was also a member of gold medal-winning Team USA in the 2000 Olympics.
Joining the Tigers’ hitting staff — hitting coach Michael Brdar and assistant Lance Zawadzki — is Cody Asche, who was the Orioles’ hitting coach in 2025. He’d been Baltimore’s hitting strategy coach in 2023 and 2024. Asche, 35, spent parts of five seasons in the big leagues as a player with the Philadelphia Phillies (2013-2016) and the Chicago White Sox (2017).
The Tigers also promoted Billy Boyer to the big-league staff. He was the organization’s minor league field coordinator and infield coordinator last season and will serve Hinch as a quality control coach in 2026.
Boyer, 41, began his coaching career at Tarik Skubal’s alma mater, Seattle University, in 2018. He was the minor league infield coach and base running coordinator for the Twins from 2019-2021.
With assistant general manager Jay Sartori leaving the organization, the Tigers have hired Alex Smith as vice president of baseball strategy. He, like Tigers’ president of baseball operations Scott Harris and general manager Jeff Greenberg, was part of Theo Epstein’s front office with the Chicago Cubs.
He was with the Cubs the last 11 seasons working in a variety of roles, but most recently as a big-league strategy coach. With the Tigers, Smith will oversee baseball strategy, pro scouting and acquisitions and major league advance scouting.
The Tigers also have done some restructuring within the international scouting department. Longtime department head Tom Moore will transition senior adviser and Brad Ciolek, who has worked in international scouting with Baltimore and Washington for over a decade, is the Tigers new director of international scouting.
He was with the Orioles for 11 seasons and the Nationals for the last two.
The Tigers also hired former Rangers’ staff assistant Theo Hooper as an assistant director of amateur scouting.
Another point of emphasis Harris made during the postseason press conference was pitcher injuries.
“The injuries we had on the major league side and the minor league side started to thin out our depth and we weren’t able to produce the second wave of pitchers this year in August and September we needed to supplement the team,” Harris said. “We have to improve the health and consistency on the mound.”
To that end, the Tigers promoted Dr. Georgia Giblin to vice president of health and performance. She’s been with the organization since 2021 serving last year as vice president of baseball performance science.
Also, the Tigers have promoted Christian Hook to the role of director of pitching evaluation. The Tigers hired Hook from Driveline, a pitching performance academy, in 2022.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
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