"Bam-Bam" hired as Giants hitting coach.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

The Giants have a new hitting coach.

Hensley Meulens named Giants hitting coach

11/02/2009 5:05 PM ET
MLB.com

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - The San Francisco Giants have announced that Hensley Meulens has been named the club's major league hitting coach, club Senior Vice President and General Manager Brian Sabean announced today.

Hensley "Bam Bam" Meulens spent the past season as the triple-A hitting coach for the Fresno Grizzlies, guiding the team to the sixth-highest batting avg. in the Pacific Coast League with a .275 mark. Two of the Grizzlies' batters placed in the top 10 for highest batting avg. in the PCL with John Bowker leading the league with a .342 clip and Jesus Guzman placing fifth with a .321 mark. After the minor league season concluded, he joined the Giants and worked as an assistant during September.

"We are excited to promote someone of Hensley's baseball background to the big league club," Sabean said. "He will be a great asset to the team as we look to improve our run scoring production with both our existing major league hitters as well as the young talent we have coming up from our minor league system. Hensley brings a unique perspective to the game with his playing time in the majors, Latin America and Japan as well as his coaching work with a number of major league organizations. He distinguished himself as a coach this past season in spring training, with Fresno and here with the big league club in September, and we look for him to get underway immediately with our hitters this off-season."

"I'm excited to add a person of Hensley's professionalism to our hardworking coaching staff," Giants manager Bruce Bochy stated. "He had a chance to assist with us before and during the season and he displayed to everyone a tremendous ability to work with all of our hitters and to relate to them on various levels."

Prior to joining the Giants' organization, the Curacao native was the triple-A hitting instructor for the Indianapolis Indians of the Pittsburgh Pirates' organization from 2005-08. He was also a coach at Bluefield, Baltimore's advanced rookie team in the Appalachian League from 2003-04. The 42-year-old made his professional debut with the New York Yankees organization in 1986 and spent eight years in their system. He played parts of five seasons with the Yankees (1989-93) before spending three seasons in Japan (1994-96). Upon returning to the U.S., Meulens had brief stints with Montreal (1997) and Arizona (1998) before concluding a 17-year playing career in 2002 with Puebla in the Mexican League. The former utility man batted .220 (109-for-496) with 15 home runs and 53 RBI in 182 major league contests. Meulens was the first major leaguer to come from Curacao, which has since produced a number of other players, including Andruw Jones, Randall Simon and Jair Jurrjens. He has the rare ability of speaking five languages: English, Spanish, Dutch, Papiamento and Japanese.

[hallzee]

Hopefully, the team BA of .257 will be on the rise...

[Rich the Giants fan]

Hardly a shock.

But just for the record, Fresno finished 9th (out of 16 teams) in on-base percentage in '09 at .337, and that includes Bowker's .451 mark.

On the other hand, he was the one who got Velez turned around and saw Rohlinger and Bowker have very productive seasons under his tuteledge. Perhaps they'd be able to reproduce their minor league success a bit better in the Majors if he were around them all the time.

If he gets guys to take more pitches and, or rather, swing at better pitches, then it will have been a good move.

[giantsrule]

so i guess barry will haveto wait till next year to be the hitting coach?


atleast thats what i see in my head...

[Greg Maddux's Biggest Fan]

First off, I want to say I know nothing about how Hensley Meulens has performed as a hitting coach, but the choice strikes me as odd nonetheless. The reason being is that I recall Hensley the player as being a notorious unselective hitter. Back in the late 80's, Meulens was the next can't miss Yankees farmhand, much in the way Reuben Rivera was in the mid 90's. Hensley hit 28 HR's as a 20 yr. old in Single A in 1987, and hit 26 HR's as a 23 yr. old in Triple AAA three years later.

Unfortunately upon being promoted for multiple years thereafter, Meulens could never put it together despite given extended looks. A BIG part of the problem was pitch selection, as he racked up 165 SO and only 42 BB in 496 ML AB's. Upon further review, he did walk more than I thought he did when I first made this post: 789 BB in 6248 Minor League AB's according to Baseball Cube - which is a smidge above average - but he also stuck out 1858 times; yikes!

Nonetheless, Meulens did find a modicum of success in Japan, IL and Mexican Leagues, and hopefully he can make the Giants more patient hitters on aggregate.