He really, really was. I didn't think hitting coaches mattered that much, but he's sure making me think they somehow do. Or they don't, but he's just the one really bad exception. Same. I was always in the camp of “hitting coaches don’t matter”, but, it’s hard to say that is the case after the day and night job by our roster with almost no changes in personnel The way I look at it, it's not necessarily that a good hitting coach makes a team significantly better, but that a bad hitting coach (or any coach) can easily make a team worse. A good hitting coach only exists to keep a player from falling into bad habits, and keep focused through a season. In certain cases, a good hitting coach can identify a flaw and significantly improve a player, but those are rare.