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Tommy Joseph (35), who previously played for the LG Twins in Korea's professional baseball KBO League, has been appointed as the hitting coach for the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball (MLB).
The Texas organization officially announced on the 12th (Korean time), "Joseph has been named the MLB hitting coach for the 2027 season. He will join the coaching staff led by Manager Skip Schumaker (46)."
Joseph is a familiar name to domestic baseball fans. He came to the KBO League as LG's foreign hitter in 2019. In the regular season, he recorded a .274 batting average (54 hits in 197 at-bats) over 55 games, with 9 home runs and 36 RBIs, a .332 on-base percentage, a .426 slugging percentage, and an OPS of 0.758. However, he missed significant time due to injuries such as back pain and was ultimately released by LG during the season.
After returning to the United States, he signed a minor league contract with the Boston Red Sox. He played in the Rookie League and Double-A, and continued his playing career in 2020 in the Constellation Energy League, which has an independent league character.
After retiring from active play, he began his coaching career in 2021 as the hitting coach for the Single-A St. Lucie Mets, a team under the New York Mets organization. In 2022, he served as the hitting coach for the Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies, and in 2023, he was the hitting coach for the High-A Eugene Emeralds, a team under the San Francisco Giants organization. The year he coached, the Eugene Emeralds hit 140 home runs in 132 games to finish second in the Northwest League.
Recognizing his achievements, he joined an MLB coaching staff for the first time in 2024 as an assistant hitting coach for the Seattle Mariners. In 2025, after serving as an assistant hitting coach for the Baltimore Orioles, he returned home in triumph to become the first-division hitting coach for Texas, where he had previously played.
Joseph was traded from the Philadelphia Phillies to Texas via waivers in 2018, where he recorded a .284 batting average with 21 home runs and 70 RBIs in 91 games across Double-A Frisco and Triple-A Round Rock.
The background behind Texas's choice of Joseph includes the clear task of restoring offensive power. Although Texas won its first World Series title in franchise history in 2023, a decline in its lineup was evident thereafter. The team failed to make the postseason with a record of 78 wins and 84 losses in 2024, and in 2025, despite ranking first in MLB overall with a team ERA of 3.47, its offensive output remained near the bottom of the league. Consequently, they dismissed offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker during the season and urgently hired Brett Boone as hitting coach.
There was no rebound in 2026 either. Texas recorded a .242 batting average, a .317 on-base percentage, a .396 slugging percentage, and an OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) of 0.713 over 162 games, with 673 runs scored ranking 25th in MLB overall. While wRC+ (adjusted run production, where 100 is the league average) rose to 102, placing them in the upper-middle tier, it still fell short of the explosive power seen during their 2023 championship season.
After the end of the season, Texas removed existing MLB hitting coach Alex Sintron from his field position. They searched for a successor centered on external candidates, and Joseph became that person.
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*This content was translated by AI.View Original
