This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy's Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
MILWAUKEE – Of the coaches added to Brewers manager Pat Murphy’s reconfigured staff this week, none is more familiar than Daniel Vogelbach, who played in Milwaukee in 2020 and ‘21 as part of a nine-year Major League career.
Vogelbach, 33, played in the big leagues as recently as 2024 before spending ‘25 as a special assistant with the Pirates. He spoke with MLB.com about his philosophy of the job, what it means to get this opportunity in a city he once called home as a player and the importance of telling it like it is.
MLB.com: Throughout your baseball travels, what made for a good hitting coach?
Vogelbach: I think that something that people forget about in the big leagues is how much of a grind it is and how much the full season of ups and downs can make you second guess whether you can hit or not. Obviously, there's mechanics involved and there's swing decisions and approach and all of that, but I think something that really goes undervalued is getting your guys to believe every night that they've got a chance. No matter how they feel, no matter how their swing feels, no matter how they felt in the cage that day, getting the guys to believe in themselves. I think that those are the best hitting coaches.
MLB.com: Brewers hitters took a step forward last season in plate discipline and pitch selection, which were strengths during your own career. What kind of group are you joining?
Vogelbach: A pretty dang good one, in my eyes. You don't win the division and be one series away from playing in the World Series if you don't have good players. Guys that maybe surprised some people on the outside, but I think if you asked those players, I don't think it's a surprise to them, because they believe in themselves. Half the battle is believing in yourself and knowing that you can do it.
[Brice] Turang playing for Team USA -- I don't know that anybody outside of him and the people inside the Brewers would have believed he would be the starting second baseman. But watching him play from afar and on the other side, I mean, the guy's one of the best in the game. And he started to prove it to everybody else, which is pretty cool. You go from maybe being the team that nobody thinks can do it to now, kind of having a target on your back. You can only hide being so good for so long.
MLB.com: What have your conversations been like so far with fellow hitting coaches Eric Theisen and Guillermo Martinez, and how do you foresee working as a three-man team? Do you have to speak with one voice?
Vogelbach: I think there's two parts to that. Obviously, you have your overall message that initially comes from Murph, right? How you want to be as a group, what you want to do as a group. And that message is presented as one from the whole hitting department. And then, obviously, every player and every hitter is different, right? You can get the same message across to different players, but you're voicing it in a different way. Some guys may want the message to be delivered to them in a mechanical way. Some guys may want it to be delivered in a non-mechanical way. But in the grand scheme of things, you could still deliver the same message to a player. So you could have one hitting coach, you could have 10 hitting coaches, it's just [about], “How do we get those guys better?” Because I think if you ask anybody in that clubhouse, from top to bottom, the ultimate goal is to be the last team standing.
MLB.com: How do you feel about coming back to Milwaukee?
Vogelbach: My wife, she loved it there, and we loved it as a family there. It's a special place. It's a winning culture. They do things the right way. I mean, it shows every single year, and I'm happy to be a part of it. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have done this anywhere else, but this was a place that I enjoyed. You want to be around the best, and you want to be around people that have won their whole life, and that's Murph. If you're going to learn from somebody going forward, you want to learn from people that have done it and been at every level and seen every part of it.
The thing about Murph that I think people know, you never question what's on Murph's mind, because he's going to tell you. I think that's a very underrated thing, not only in this game, but in this world. I think too many people are scared to tell the truth, or scared to tell you how it is because of a response or how they're going to react to it, but you never question what's on Murph's mind or what's he's feeling. If you can take it as a person and a player, it makes you better. It'll make me a better coach. At the end of the day, he does it because he wants the best out of you as an individual, a player, a friend, whatever it may be. It's something I think that this world needs more of.
So I'm excited. I'm excited to learn and to see if I can make just a small impact to help going forward and see you know how the year goes. Hopefully it ends the way we want it to end.