San Francisco Giants Rumors: Chili Davis interviewed for Hitting Coach

 Rumors broke this afternoon that the San Francisco Giants interviewed current Boston Red Sox hitting coach, Chili Davis for that same position.

The San Francisco Giants are now interviewing people, who are employed and hold a certain position, for a spot that is apparently still held by someone.

Weird.

Andrew Baggarly broke news this afternoon that the San Francisco Giants interviewed former Giant stud, and current Boston Red Sox hitting coach, to be their hitting coach. Davis, obviously would replace Hensley Muelens.

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This whole thing seems kind of weird, as the Giants haven’t formally announced the departure of longtime hitting coach, Sir Hensley “Bam Bam” Muelens. But coaching staff decisions like this had to be expected. Nobody should be safe after a 64-98 season. With the offense being as historically futile as it was, the calls for Bam Bam to go from the fanbase got louder.

Bam Bam’s critics were always laughed off, because who cares when you’re winning a World Series every other year? But as things really started to go south at the plate, the frustrations have clearly spread to the front office.

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Take into account the whole “locker room unrest” thing that was reported late in the summer, the Giants could certainly use a fresh voice in the locker room. Since Chili Davis took over the reigns as hitting coach in bean-town, their offense has placed higher than the Giants in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

Also, since 2014, the Red Sox are one of only three teams in baseball to score over 3000 runs in that time-frame. The Giants scored nearly 300 less runs. Throw in the fact that they were top ten over that time span in average and first in on-base percentage, Davis has clearly been doing something right.

Oddly enough In not so surprising news, the general consensus from Boston was that he wasn’t doing good enough. I reached out to a good Red Sox friend of mine, Joshua Greenberg, from BoSox Injection. He had this to say about the Red Sox nation’s perspective on Davis:

“People generally don’t like him. It’s not hard to understand why either. Mookie just looked off all season, and Davis could do nothing to fix him. Bogaerts couldn’t find a swing that worked and didn’t cause him some pain. Hanley was just awful. He’s streaky to be sure, but never as bad as he was this year in the second half. There’s more I could mention, but the bottom line is that with Davis as coach, it seemed that hitters developed more problems than they solved. Davis seems to be well respected by those working in baseball. He was before he joined the Red Sox, and I believe he still is. But something just didn’t work for him in Boston. Could be his fault. Could be the players. It’s probably a combination, but as coach he gets to take the blame because he owns the responsibility.”

Next: 2017 Management Review

Overall, I think this would be a good move. You have someone who helped put together a pretty well oiled offense in Boston, taken out of that pressure packed environment could be a good thing. Also, a fresh voice in the Giants’ clubhouse ultimately makes this a great move for the Giants in my opinion. I don’t think Chili Davis’ approach is all that different from Muelens’, but it has had greater success in recent years.