{"id":594295,"date":"2026-02-26T16:22:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/594295\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T16:22:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:22:24","slug":"how-the-2026-brewers-coaching-staff-will-function-without-a-bench-coach-brewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/594295\/","title":{"rendered":"How the 2026 Brewers’ Coaching Staff Will Function Without a Bench Coach – Brewers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Rickie Weeks<\/a> transitioned from the dugout to the front office over the winter, the Brewers did not hire a new associate manager or bench coach. Instead, Weeks\u2019s responsibilities as Pat Murphy<\/a>\u2019s right-hand man will be redistributed among the rest of the coaching staff. That’s because Murphy didn’t want to add more voices to his staff.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don’t like to add people as much as I like to add responsibility,\u201d Murphy said from Brewers spring training last week. \u201cIt\u2019s just like mixing anything else together. For that strategy part of it, I need all the help I can get. I think we\u2019re going to have two or three people be in that role of giving information. Everybody has a kind of a different area.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAs baseball\u2019s data boom has created more information to process in the front office and in the dugout, coaching staffs have grown. Nobody can process and apply everything that’s become relevant, so it made sense for teams to develop more specialized coaching roles. Each coach focuses on the finer details of their area of the game and shares their thoughts with the manager, who makes the final decisions.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch a structure brings unique challenges. Teams must pick the right coaches to handle different facets of the game. They must also hire enough coaches to ensure nobody is stretched too thin, but not so many that there are competing messages in the dugout. The Brewers believe they\u2019ve struck that balance.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt’s just a new configuration,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cMatt [Arnold] and I sat down and said, \u2018What’s the best way to utilize and not really add people?\u2019 Because it gets crowded, you know? So that\u2019s how we came up with it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder the new structure, several returning coaches will assume new roles or specialize more strictly in their area of expertise. Former third base coach Jason Lane<\/a> will now advise Murphy on in-game hitting decisions as offense and strategy coordinator. Jim Henderson<\/a> already filled a similar role on the pitching side, but his new title as major-league pitching coordinator cements it. Lead pitching coach Chris Hook<\/a> will continue working with starters.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tEric Theisen has been promoted to lead hitting coach, the role Al LeBoeuf held last season. Matt Erickson<\/a>, who assumed Lane\u2019s old role as third base coach, will continue coaching infielders and managing defensive positioning. Field coordinator Nestor Corridor will continue working with catchers, but will also specialize in controlling the running game. Game preparation specialists Daniel de Mondesert and Evan Martin will deliver analytics and other information from the front office to other coaches.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey all know what they\u2019re responsible for,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a good collection.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong with giving Henderson a new strategy-centric title, the Brewers also promoted Juan Sandoval from assistant coordinator of minor-league pitching to assistant pitching coach. With Julio Burb\u00f3n and LeBoeuf moving into front office roles and Connor Dawson taking a hitting coach position with the Kansas City Royals, the club hired Spencer Allen<\/a> as first base coach and Guillermo Martinez and Daniel Vogelbach<\/a> as assistant hitting coaches.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tVogelbach, who played parts of two seasons with the Brewers in 2020 and 2021, may be the most recognizable hire. The 33-year-old retired after the 2024 season and worked for the Pittsburgh Pirates as a special hitting assistant last season. Less than two years after the end of his playing career, he\u2019s now a full-time coach.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cVogey\u2019s great,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cHe’s unique. Not many players can come off the field [and into coaching] so quickly.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring his playing days, Vogelbach was known for his swing decisions<\/a> and cerebral approach at the plate. Early in counts, he offered only at pitches in his personal hot zones, rather than swinging at strikes he could not hit as well. While he was an active player, his 33.7% swing rate and 47.7% in-zone swing rate were the lowest among qualified hitters.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe studied the game,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cAs a hitter, he studied opposing pitchers. He was very adamant about approach, very adamant about how to practice. So he’s one of those players that you could see coaching no matter what.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Brewers have a similar philosophy. They have an internal swing decision metric across all levels of the organization and instruct their hitters to take strikes early in counts, if the pitch is not in their wheelhouse. Like Vogelbach (as an individual), Milwaukee hitters (as a group) have had the lowest overall and in-zone swing rates in baseball over the last two seasons, making him a fitting voice to help guide their approaches.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know that you teach that verbally or anything else,\u201d Murphy said of coaching swing decisions. \u201cI think there\u2019s an approach that leads to that, and I think he\u2019ll teach that approach. It coincides with what we\u2019re doing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think that comes with part of the role of being a hitting coach in the hitting department,\u201d Vogelbach said. \u201cI mean, an approach comes with hitting. But I’m not here to reinvent the wheel or change people. This is a team that won 97 games, that did a lot of really good things. It was a series away from playing in the World Series.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHaving watched last year\u2019s Brewers from the Pittsburgh dugout and observed their hitters up close in the early days of spring training, Vogelbach sees a group that is already disciplined.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey’re really good at it,\u201d he said. \u201cThey know the strike zone. They all have a plan when they go to the plate. You don’t win 97 games if you don’t have that. I think that in baseball, though, you can always get better, and I think that’s the best part about this team. They want to get better, and they want to keep getting better. And when you have a good approach, and you swing at the right pitches, and you’re good players, good things usually happen.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n\tEven in an age of rapid innovation, a staff without a bench coach is borderline radical, but what the Brewers are doing could quickly become the new normal. They\u2019re confident in the baseball minds flanking Murphy and believe they\u2019ve identified the best roles for each of them.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe coaches make me look good,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cThey make me look like I know what I’m doing. This staff in particular is up there. I can\u2019t say enough about them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Rickie Weeks transitioned from the dugout to the front office over the winter, the Brewers did not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[5,136,51392,77613,56336,67088,47536,843,59,4280,4,6077],"class_list":["post-594295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-milwaukee-brewers","tag-baseball","tag-brewers","tag-daniel-vogelbach","tag-evan-martin","tag-jason-lane","tag-jim-henderson","tag-matt-erickson","tag-milwaukee","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-milwaukeebrewers","tag-mlb","tag-pat-murphy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116137855799312939","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}