J.R. House returns to D-backs as third base/catching coach

PHOENIX -- The Diamondbacks made J.R. House's hiring as their third base/catching coach official Monday.

It's a homecoming for House, who spent seven seasons in Arizona's player development system. He served a variety of roles, including hitting coach with Rookie-Advanced Missoula (2012) and Short-Season Hillsboro (2013), manager with Hillsboro (2014), Class A Advanced Visalia (2015-16) and Double-A Jackson (2017), and Minor League field coordinator (2018).

House, who resides in Phoenix, joined the Reds' big league coaching staff under then-manager David Bell in 2019 and served as Cincinnati's third base/catching coach for seven seasons.

"I grew up as a coach within this organization, through player development, lot of familiarity, lot of friends, lifelong friends that are here," House said. "And even a lot of the players are still here from when we were here. So, looking forward to getting to see all them and continue to build the relationships."

Tony Perezchica was the Diamondbacks' third base coach from 2017 until leaving after the 2024 season to join the Astros' staff. To fill his spot, Arizona moved farm director Shaun Larkin to third and it was not a good fit as Larkin struggled in the role and was replaced in August by Tim Bogar.

Larkin remained on the staff as infield coach, a role he will again fill in 2026.

Bogar was considered to stay in the role, but he will move back to working in player development, where he was before taking over at third last year.

"The respect that I have for him as just a baseball mind and as a teacher is pretty immense," Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said of House. "To be honest with you, we've tried for several years to bring him back, it just wasn't right for him, it wasn't right for the situation. But when we reached out this time and we decided that we were going to make this happen, I felt great about it. He's got great Major League experience."

The rest of Lovullo's coaching staff will return intact from last year, including bench coach Jeff Banister, who had also coached the team's catchers. By having House take over that role, Lovullo said, Banister can now be even more involved in helping Lovullo both before and during games instead of also being responsible for the catchers.

Over the past three seasons (2023-25) among NL teams, Reds catchers posted the second-fewest catching errors (23), behind only the Diamondbacks (20), and combined for the fourth-highest caught-stealing percentage (23.2), behind the Phillies (24.2), Cubs (24.0) and Giants (23.5).