Any relation to Mary?

Yeah he's been there a couple of years. It kind of shows you how times have changed in baseball. It used to be that major league coaches were prominent former major leaguers (Dusty Baker as the Giants hitting coach under manager Roger Craig for instance) .

Now with the increased role of analytics the prospective MLB coach doesn't even need a successful professional playing record; they just need to understandmodern coaching. Popkins only reached Double-A as a player, although he did ok. The Giants' current hitting coach Justin Viele barely hit in pro ball (.211 career average, only reached Single-A). They have another coach who never played in the pros and was not a star player at the D-II level. And then there's Sac State alumna Alyssa Nakken who never played college or professional baseball. I think in her case they decided that based on her work in her previous positions they wanted her on the coaching staff and tailored the position to match her skillset rather than simply hiring her to fill a specific open position.. That can happen with assistant coaching positions-manager gets free reign to hire whomever they wish.

The most recent UCD baseball news is that Robert Garcia made his major league debut with the Miami Marlins on 7/14. He retired one batter and allowed a hit and a walk. He's back in the minors.

LOL

I feel like the trend has been going the other way...or at least with managers. You used to have good managers who never played in the big leagues or maybe a game or two.Now you have all these big names who were sort of in that middle class of the big leagues if you will. I mean look at players like Aaron Boone, Mark Kotsay, Rocco Baldelli, Phil Nevin, Dave Roberts, David Bell, etc.

if anything I think there are more managers who didn't play in the majors like Oliver Marmol (Cardinals) or Pedro Grifol (White Sox). than there used to be. I think there's about 6 or 7 this year. But the assistants nowadays definitely have less professional experience. Gabe Kapler, for instance has 16 assistants and I believe only 3 of them-Brian Bannister, Andrew Bailey, Antoan Richardson) -have MLB experience. Yes they have Pedro Guerrero but it's not the one who was a star for the Dodgers and Tommy Lasorda (who I don't believe played in MLB)

Speaking of the Cardinals would one of their assistant coaches be considered a Marmol-aide ?

Edit: Tommy Lasorda did play a little bit in the majors. Here's a mind f'er though. Lasorda was briefly a teammate of Jackie Robinson but he out-lived Robinson by almost 5 decades !

Robinson had diabetes, which affects people differently. I saw one TV special which said he died in his early 50s because of racism ...

I thought he died due to a heart attack ? If that program took a political stand they probably made the argument that he didn't have access to adequate preventitive health care because of racism. There could be some truth to that if he was discriminated against when seeking treatment but I don't know all the facts.

Lasorda must have actually been drinking the SlimFast he endorsed on TV to avoid the same fate.

He apparently had a poor diet when younger, and gained 25 pounds one off season traveling through the south. Diabetes and heart disease. Two of his brothers also had diabetes.

Diabetes is far more common in the African American community.

https://diatribe.org/jackie-robinson-diabetes-and-opportunity-lost

He's one win away from getting a World Series ring as he's the hitting coach for the Blue Jays. Heard his name mentioned on a podcast just now and had to look up if it was the same guy. Pretty awesome.

so sad to see the Jays lose.

...huge bummer for us too especially since we're avid Giants fans as well...

Yeah if the 49ers lose today my weekend of sports may a bit more of a bummer than I hoped. I will say objectively that was an amazing World Series when it comes to drama on the field (as a giants fan)

DON'T SLIDE!!!! RUN THROUGH THE PLATE, IT'S FASTER!!!!

agree. Very well played by both teams. Blue jays were SO close but the dodgers made big plays

Yep. I did hear something that it was probably tough for the guy to even think to run through home there since those guys are conditioned to slide on a close play at home. Now, that's usually because it's a tag play at home and this was a force out, but still. If you're told to slide into home on close plays, your mind probably isn't going to think to run through the bag in Game 7 of the World Series.

agree...its one of those hindsight things from guys that are sitting at home with a beer in their hand. i don't recall any of the broadcasters bringing it up and they are never shy about discussing mental mistakes.