The Los Angeles Angels have hired a new manager, Kurt Suzuki, and he’s gotten plenty of scrutiny. So has his new pitching coach, Mike Maddux, because of the success Maddux had with the Texas Rangers.
But one coach who hasn’t been put under the microscope a lot is Brady Anderson, the Angels' new hitting coach. Anderson is a former player with front office experience, but he’s never been a hitting coach before, so there’s been plenty of interest from the fan base about what to expect.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic did a breakdown on this, and it’s both fascinating and revealing. Anderson worked for the Baltimore Orioles back in 2015—the same team he spent most of his career playing for—as vice president of baseball operations, but Anderson’s role was basically whatever he wanted it to be.
His first project was former Orioles player Trey Mancini, who was a minor leaguer Anderson described as “super hyper” at that point in his career. Anderson relayed a message to Mancini that he wanted to work with him at the team’s major league complex, and the project was on.
“I don’t even know if he saw my at-bat. He just saw the way I was swinging on deck,” Mancini recalled.
The next day Anderson revamped Mancini’s stance, which was spread out and crouched, to straight up and tall. Anderson also talked about weight transfer, and Mancini proceeded to break out, hitting 21 homers at High A and Double A to finish with a combine OPS of .938, according to Rosenthal.
“Brady was able to diagnose right away what I could do better,” Mancini said. “That 2015 season changed my whole career trajectory, just because of him watching me take a couple of swings on deck.”
Mancini’s not the only one to compliment the 62-year old Anderson. Former manager Buck Showalter led the Oriole from 2010-2018, and he says the inexperience factor couldn’t be further from the truth.
“These people who are saying Brady had no prior coaching experience? There couldn’t be anything further from the truth,” said Buck Showalter, who also raved about Anderson’s knowledge of analytics. “He’s been coaching his whole life, with a lot better resume than some of the people they’re hiring.”
Suzuki was especially impressed when he heard from former teammate Nick Markakis, and outfielder who played with Baltimore and Atlanta and was known for his quiet personality.
“When he mentioned something to me about Brady and how he loved him, I was like, ‘Holy cow,’ that’s a big compliment,” Suzuki said. “When Nick says something, which he doesn’t do very often, you listen.”
Anderson didn’t think he’d be working in this role, however. He did some instruction work with the Angels in spring training in 2024, and he was surprised when he got a call from Angels GM Perry Minasian. He knows he has to be obsessed with the job to be good at it, and one of the first questions he asked himself was whether he could reach that level of obsession.
“It doesn’t just give me purpose,” Anderson said. “It’s something I’m good at.”
The question for the Angels is how good. Anderson experienced plenty of struggles in his big league career, but the one thing that stands out from Rosenthal’s account is how many players he helped. Angels hitters struck out at an epic rate last year, so he’ll have a monumental job on his hands.