Rangers hitting coach Tim Hyers has joined the Atlanta Braves as their hitting coach
Tim Hyers, the Texas Rangers’ hitting coach for the 2022-24 seasons, has joined the Atlanta Braves as their new hitting coach, it was announced today.
The Rangers had previously indicated that they anticipated all their major league staff returning for the 2025 season, so this does not seem to be an instance of Hyers being forced out. Per the beat folks, this is an opportunity for Hyers, an Atlanta native, to be closer to his family.
One of the interesting things about the 2024 season, to me, was that the one team that was clearly better offensively than the Texas Rangers in 2023 was the Atlanta Braves, and they had an even bigger (relative) drop in performance from 2023 to 2024 than the Rangers did. The Braves let their hitting coach, Kevin Seitzer, go at the end of the regular season.
Hyers was hired away from the Boston Red Sox by the Rangers after the 2021 season. Hyers had been an assistant hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2016-17, and then was Boston’s hitting coach from 2018-21. Boston wanted to bring Hyers back for 2022, but he passed on that for what would seem to be a bigger bag that was being offered him by the Rangers.
The Rangers still have Donnie Ecker as their offensive coordinator, and will presumably now go get a hitting coach to work with Ecker and replace Hyers. I realize that some Rangers fans will see Hyers’ departure as a positive thing for the club, though I don’t know that that is really the case.