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Brewers Hire Jacob Cruz as Assistant Hitting Coach

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Adam McCalvy, who covers the Milwaukee Brewers for MLB.com, is reporting that the Brewers have hired Jacob Cruz as their new assistant hitting coach. Cruz filled that same role this season for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Pirates hired Cruz almost exactly one year ago today, following their hire of Rick Eckstein as the hitting coach. In his one season with the Pirates, they finished 19th in baseball with a .741 OPS. They were tied for fifth with a .265 batting average, but they were all the way down at 20th overall in runs scored.

The Pirates didn’t fire Cruz, unless that news didn’t come out. When they let pitching coach Ray Searage and bench coach Tom Prince go, they announced that all other coaches will be candidates to remain with the Pirates and that decision wouldn’t be made until after the managerial decision was made. It’s likely that Cruz jumped on the opportunity for a guaranteed job before that position was filled, instead of waiting to hear his fate under a new manager in Pittsburgh.

John Dreker
John Dreker
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball. When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.

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