NEW YORK — The Yankees have already settled on their new hitting coach, replacing Dillon Lawson with a former All-Star that has close ties to manager Aaron Boone.
Former Cincinnati Reds slugger and MLB Network analyst Sean Casey has been hired to take over as the Yankees’ hitting coach, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman of the New York Post were first to report that the Yankees were strongly considering Casey as Lawson’s successor on Monday.
Casey played 12 big-league seasons, eight coming in a Reds uniform. He was teammates with Boone in Cincinnati for parts of six seasons there.
“I would never hire someone that our manager Aaron Boone isn’t in lockstep and in line with,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said on Sunday. “It’s someone that he is going to be comfortable with, because he’s on that front line and he knows our players better than anybody else. It’s going to be, like always, a collaborative effort.”
While Lawson was a hitting guru at the player development level, surging through the farm system with his analytics-focused philosophy, Casey brings a new perspective to the Yankees’ dugout. He’s never been an MLB coach before, but like Yankees assistant hitting coach Brad Wilkerson, he had success at the big-league level as a player.
Casey was a .302 hitter over his dozen MLB seasons, batting over the .300 mark in six different individual campaigns. He’s now joining a team that’s struggled mightily to hit for average this season (and the last few years). The Yankees entered the All-Star break with the second-lowest batting average (.231) in the league this year.
Perhaps he’ll be able to connect with some of the Yankees’ star players at a level Lawson was never able to, using his experience and skills as a communicator to bring the best out of slumping vets and struggling youngsters.
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According to Sherman, Casey’s contract…
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