DENVER – Brett Pill, hired as the Rockies’ new hitting coach Friday after spending the past six years working with Dodgers Minor League batters, has many issues to help correct after Colorado’s 43-119 performance in 2025.
According to Baseball Savant, the Rockies led the Majors with a 51% swing rate, a 31.7% chase rate and a 29.0% whiff rate.
The Rox also finished second in the Majors in strikeouts with 1,531. The leader was the World Series champion Dodgers, but Los Angeles finished second in the Majors with 244 home runs while the Rockies knocked the sixth-fewest, 160.
Pill, 41, who was the Dodgers’ Minor League hitting coordinator the past three years and a coach for Dodgers affiliates the three seasons before, is coming from an organization that has all the talent, technology and teaching methods anyone could ever want. And the Rockies’ many issues call for policy-setting and implementation from top to bottom.
However, much of the act of hitting is individual, so improvement comes through a myriad of ways and means. Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer sees Pill as more than a hitting methodology wonk.
“One of the things that stood out to us was his ability to teach to the individual – take an individual strength and keep it a strength,” Schaeffer said. “He has the ability to diagnose each individual player and give him exactly what he needs. There’s nothing cookie cutter about Brett Pill.”
Pill’s hiring comes after a topsy-turvy year for the Rockies’ coaching staff. Hitting coach Hensley Meulens was replaced in April by former manager Clint Hurdle, who had been in the organization in a special advisor’s role. But when Schaeffer became interim manager in May after Bud Black was removed, Hurdle became bench coach, assistant hitting coach Andy González replaced Schaeffer as third-base coach, and the hitting coach post was shared by Triple-A Albuquerque hitting coach Jordan Pacheco and Minor League hitting coordinator Nic Wilson.
Schaeffer said the Rockies are still determining the remainder of the 2026 coaching staff, including the number of positions. Other announcements so far have come in the pitching department, with the additions of pitching coach Alon Leichman, assistant pitching coach Gabe Ribas and bullpen coach Matt Buschmann – the latter in an added position – plus director of pitching Matt Daniels.
Pill, from San Dimas, Calif., grew up in a baseball family. His father, Michael Pill, pitched for three seasons in the Pirates system in the 1970s. His younger brother, Tyler Pill, made seven pitching appearances for the Mets in 2017.
Brett Pill appeared in three seasons (2011-13) as a first baseman and corner outfielder with the Giants – and posted a .233/.279/.404 slash line over a 111-game stint that included contributing to a World Series-winning team in 2012. Pill played three seasons with the Kia Tigers in the Korea Baseball Organization, then served as an international scout for the club.
Last season, Pill joined the Dodgers’ dugout briefly while their hitting coach, Aaron Bates, took a health-related leave of absence. With the Dodgers, Pill worked under Josh Byrnes, who was in charge of the scouting and player development before recently becoming the Rockies’ general manager.
Recent history shows that a talented offensive squad can improve quickly. For example, the Braves had the third-most strikeouts in MLB during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season but came together late in ‘21 and marched to a World Series title. The 2024 Blue Jays finished 23rd in runs scored but finished fourth in MLB in ‘25 and fell a late Dodger comeback in Game 7 short of winning one of their own.
What can be done about the Rockies, who finished last season with a young roster of position players and at the most will sprinkle in a veteran or two as regulars? Only the most dreamful Colorado fan can expect the Rockies to match the aforementioned Braves and Jays. But the Rockies under Pill will have to marry the individual sport of hitting with the team sport of offense.
“It’s a little bit of both,” Rockies president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta said during the Winter Meetings. “Some of it certainly is the individual. We’re trying to look at different parts of their makeup and say, ‘How do we improve this part of their game?'
“On the other hand, there absolutely is a team aspect to it, of being willing to pass the baton to the next hitter if you don’t get the pitches you think you can drive, etc. Toronto is a great example of it, because when you watched them play in October, it was very much a team offensive approach. Those guys trusted in the other players in the lineup. No one tried to do too much.”