A year removed from winning an AL West title, the Los Angeles Angels are making changes to their coaching staff.
According to the Los Angeles Times‘ Bill Shaikin, the team announced late Tuesday night it has fired pitching coach Mike Butcher and hitting coach Don Baylor.
MLB.com’s Alden Gonzalez relayed a statement from general manager Billy Eppler on the shakeup:
Eppler said manager Mike Scioscia was involved in the decision, noting “It feels very much like we’re in lock step,” according to Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register.
Butcher has been a staple of Mike Scioscia’s staff since getting hired prior to the 2007 season, while Baylor was brought aboard after the 2013 season ended.
The Angels competed for a playoff spot in a heated AL West race with the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros, but Scioscia’s squad ultimately fell three games short and missed out on back-to-back postseason appearances.
As a team, the Angels ranked 27th in MLB in batting average (.246) while pushing just 621 runs across the plate. The team’s average also ranked as as the worst in the AL. By comparison, L.A. graded out as the A.L.’s third-most efficient team at the plate (.259 average) en route to winning an AL West crown in 2014.
L.A.’s pitching staff finished a respectable No. 6 overall in the AL with a 3.94 ERA, but some late-season struggles ultimately doomed Butcher. Following the All-Star break, Los Angeles posted a cumulative ERA of 4.29, which would have ranked as the third-worst mark in the AL had it spanned the entirety of the regular season.
Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller offered his take on the firings within the context of a disappointing campaign:
Baylor and Butcher are out of the picture, but the Angels have a tremendous amount of talent on a roster that includes Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson, Jered Weaver, Erick Aybar and Huston Street.
The coaches Scioscia brings aboard will have plenty of pieces to work with, but it will be up to the new faces to maximize those players’ abilities as the Angels seek to make recent disappointments a distant memory.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com