To understand the intensity of the Brett Pill Wars, you had to have been online during 2011 through 2013. Giants fans separated into Pro-Pill and Pro-Belt factions, which was ironic because the true enemy was Aubrey Huff. Brandon Belt was a young hotshot left-handed prospect with a great on-base percentage and huge potential who often looked at called strike threes, while Pill was an older, right-handed first base prospect who swung at everything and hit a bunch of dingers for the AAA Fresno Grizzlies (this was a long time ago!).
After a decade, the wounds have healed. Belt took over the first base job for good midway through 2012 and never let go. Pill was left off the 2012 playoff roster and eventually played three successful seasons with the Kia Tigers in Korea. Aubrey Huff posted a lot of tweets. But now, Pill is back in the National League West as the hitting coach for the Colorado Rockies.
The Rockies have been retooling their organization after three straight 100+ loss seasons and a miserable 2025 season where they finished 43-119, firing longtime manager Bud Black early in the season. Their general strategy seems to be to import people from the Los Angeles Dodgers organization. They hired Josh Byrnes, the Dodgers senior vice president of baseball operations to be their general manager, after tapping former Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta (AKA “Peter Brand” from “Moneyball”) as president of baseball operations.
Pill also came from Dodgerland. He was a minor league hitting coach for three years, then served as the team’s minor league hitting coordinator from 2023-25. Before that, he worked as a scout for the Kia Tigers. Now he’ll be tasked with improving an offense that had the worst on-base percentage and worst batting average in Rockies history, along with the second-highest strikeout rate in the major leagues.
He’s coaching a team that plays in Coors Field who were a lousy home-run hitting team. While Pill might not have been great at getting on base, one thing Pill knows quite well is hitting the ball out of the park, especially against his future employers.
This hire creates a unique opportunity for Giants fans. Now that the team has a new hitting coach in Hunter Mense, who is not just Hunter Pence wearing a fake mustache and glasses, the Pill Wars can begin anew! It’s far easier to blame the hitting coach, or coaches, or hitting coordination staff for the struggles of the Giants batsmen, and now he/they/them can be negatively compared to Brett Pill and whatever happens with the Rockies.
Buster Posey is in charge of the Giants. There’s a “Now You See Me” movie in theaters. Brett Pill is back in our lives. It’s 2013 all over again.