ATLANTA — It’s 40 miles to Truist Park from Tim Hyers’ home east of Atlanta in Loganville, Georgia. But other than perhaps needing to find a place to live closer to the ballpark to avoid Atlanta’s notorious traffic, there isn’t anything about his new job that doesn’t excite Hyers, named the Atlanta Braves’ new hitting coach Thursday.
It’s the team that the 53-year-old pulled for while growing up just outside Atlanta in Covington, and a team he’s admired from afar while he worked as Texas Rangers hitting coach for the past three seasons and while serving in a similar role with the Boston Red Sox during the 2018-2021 seasons.
Hyers was still under contract with the Texas Rangers, who won the 2023 World Series. But he couldn’t resist the lure of coming home, where he and his wife Kristin raised three kids and recently became grandparents to twin girls, to join a franchise that’s played in the past seven postseasons and certainly has the talent to continue that streak.
“Tough decisions, tough times,” Hyers said of leaving his Rangers job. “I’m probably not fond of the business side of it, but I’m surely glad to be home. And, you know, my family — wow. They probably chased me around the country for 30 years, so it’ll be nice to come home.”
Hyers replaces Kevin Seitzer, whose 10-year run with Atlanta was the longest in the majors before the Braves fired him two weeks ago, along with assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes and catching coach Sal Fasano. The Braves also will replace Magallanes, but won’t fill the catching-coach position for 2025.
The Atlanta #Braves today announced the organization has hired Tim Hyers to the major league coaching staff as hitting coach. pic.twitter.com/j4RnnNuu3k
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) October 24, 2024
Hyers, a second-round draft pick by the San Diego Padres out of Newton High School east of Atlanta in 1990, was a first baseman and left fielder for parts of four seasons with San Diego, Detroit and Miami (in 1999, when they were still the Florida Marlins).
His approach to hitting has been shaped by what he’s learned through his years playing, then scouting for Boston and serving as interim Red Sox hitting coach in 2014 before becoming an assistant hitting coach with the Los Angeles Dodgers during the 2016-2017 seasons.
In seven seasons as lead hitting coach with Boston and Texas, Hyers’ teams finished sixth or better in the majors in OPS+, including first in 2018 with the World Series champion Red Sox and second in 2023 with the World Series champion Rangers.
Texas was plagued by injuries and slumps in 2024, slipping to 23rd in OPS (.685) after finishing third the year before (.789). The Rangers’ offensive decline was similar to the Braves, who were beset by injuries last season and slipped from a majors-leading .845 OPS in 2023 to 12th at .724 in 2024. (OPS was down across baseball in 2024.)
But the Rangers continued to hit well with runners in scoring position in 2024, with a .271 average and .357 OBP that were both top three in MLB, while the swing-for-the-fences Braves struggled mightily in that area. Atlanta hit just .247 with RISP, with a .314 OBP that tied for seventh-lowest in the majors.
Asked to boil down the offensive approach he wants for his team, Hyers explained in-depth a three-part program that involves a “holistic approach, where you’re just trying to move the needle a little bit with each guy.”
He talked about using the array of tools at the team’s disposal, saying that president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos has built an outstanding support system and that’s it’s the hitting coach’s job to help simplify the information, to help each player go to the plate with one or two things that’ll help him feel better prepared.
“We have to use all the resources to help players,” he said. “It’s the mental, physical, increasing whatever they need to improve. That holistic approach — in the strength and conditioning, in the medical; trying to keep them on the field — and looking at it from all aspects. But when you do that, I just feel you have to simplify things.”
Preparation and game planning are of utmost importance to Hyers, because of what he said that does for players.
“If everybody is confident, ready to go, and has that one intention or that one game plan that they want to accomplish at the plate, then we can have more as a team, battling the pitcher with that nine-on-one type mentality,” he said. “They’re more confident and more aggressive, ready to take it to the pitcher instead of (being on) defense.”
He added, “I don’t want to bog them down with too much information. Again, it’s simplifying the one intention, the one thing that they can take to the plate to feel prepared and go and try to accomplish that goal.”
He also wants to improve swing decisions by players, some of whom need to reduce their chase rate on pitches outside the strike zone, others who need to be aggressive and make sure they swing at their pitch, not let it go.
The Braves have been built on slugging in recent years, and had some great results with that, especially during the 2023 record-breaking regular season. But there are times sluggers slump, or face pitchers who don’t give up home runs. Hyers sounds like he’s got a plan for that, and it involves a third part of his approach, the mechanical aspect.
“Cleaning up swings, finding out what works best for them,” he said. “Utilizing their swings to be able to use the whole field — you know, take those layups to the opposite field if we need it or the game tells you to do that. We always need slug; I think slug and on-base, that’s the way to score runs. But when you have that mechanical, you know, they feel good about themselves, and I just think they can do more things at the plate.”
He added, “I think when you put all those things together, then we can be a team that can be a little more fluid from the first inning to the ninth inning, Because every game’s different, but you have to optimize and see those opportunities to score runs. And when you’re fluid — we’re always going to have a game plan, we’ll always be ready to attack, but the game’s always going to tell us something. And in the middle of the game, can we make some of those adjustments, to do things to score runs.”
If that sounds good to Braves fans frustrated by the missed scoring opportunities of last season and wasted quality starts by Braves pitchers, this probably will sound even better:
“I mean, there’s days when you’re facing an ace and we’re going to have to single him to death,” Hyers said. “When we’re probably not going to be able to hit three or four home runs. But we’ve got to scratch some runs out. And that’s when, late in games, it’s in those close games that we value some of the situational hitting, just to scratch out some runs to make sure that we benefit our pitchers that are holding the opposing offense close.”
(Photo of Tim Hyers: Albert Pena / Associated Press)
