The Washington Nationals reportedly added two more to its minor league coaching staff this weekend with two more set to make the jump into the pros for the first time.
Pete Horner joins the organization after beginning his coaching career as a pitching coach for the Wellsville Nitros back in 2018. He then joined Bowling Green’s athletic department before moving into coaching at stints with the Wilmington Sharks, Des Moines Area Community College, Macon Bacon and McPherson College, where he also served as the co-interim head coach. Horner also served as the director of player development (pitching) at Bowling Green in 2023 while he joins the organization after serving most recently as the pitching coach at Southeastern University. Horner also served as the pitching coach at Ave Maria University for nearly two years where he briefly served as interim head coach.
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Chris O’Neill, meanwhile, joins the organization as the new manager of their Single-A affiliate in Fredericksburg, per Grant Paulsen of 106.7 The Fan.
O’Neill joins the organization after most recently serving as both a hitting coach and recruiting coordinator at VCU, a role he has been in since August of 2024. Prior to his time at VCU, O’Neill served as an assistant coach and assistant recruiting coordinator at George Washington where he oversaw an offensive surge in 2024, ranked among the best both in the conference and nationally. In his third season running the offense, George Washington broke the program’s single-season record for steals with 136, 10th-most in the country and posted over 100 doubles, ranked for third-most in school history and 26th nationally. That came one season after George Washington posted its most home runs since 2019 while the program saw improvements in several areas in his first season, boosting hits, doubles, triples and total bases while decreasing strikeouts from the year prior.
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O’Neill previously served as an assistant at Duke where he helped the Blue Devils secure the ACC Tournament Championship in 2021 en route to a NCAA Tournament regional appearance. O’Neil also previously coached at Bucknell, UMES and Concordia University Ann Arbor. At Bucknell, O’Neill coached slugger Chris Cannizzaro, who was named Breakout Hitter of the Year by D1Baseball.com in 2020.
This comes fresh after the Nationals officially announced Ani Kilambi as the organization’s new general manager alongside president of baseball operations Paul Toboni.
“As it relates to the role that Ani is in, I think at a high level, it probably starts with just being a key voice for the long term strategy of the organization,” Toboni added in an interview on Friday. “And then kind of underpinning that is doing the work to make sure that the structure is there, whether it’s staff or process building, or whatever it might be, to deliver on that long term strategy, whether that’s, you know, acquisitions or development, or any of the areas that you speak of. It’ll be anything and everything. Ani is going to be completely integrated into all facets of the baseball operations group, just as I am, and we’re going to work together to hopefully deliver on the vision of this becoming baseball’s highest performing organization.”