Rabid sports fans can be unreasonable folks when things go their way. When a team loses and loses and loses, people often look for a scapegoat, and managers and coaches usually do just fine. Fire a manager and a coach or two, put out a press release about a “new direction”, and everyone’s blood lust is sated for a couple of months.
Houston Astros Retain Pitching Coach, Hitting Coach
But there are times when the problems with a team are so, so obviously not the fault of the coaching staff. Or if the staff is the problem, there's no way anyone could tell with the current personnel. The Houston Astros are one of those teams. And they're bringing back pitching coach Doug Brocail and hitting coach Mike Barnett:
The entire Houston Astros coaching staff will remain intact for next season after the team agreed to one-year contracts with pitching coach Doug Brocail(notes) and hitting coach Mike Barnett on Tuesday.
It's hard to imagine an Astros fan thinking that AA players like Jose Altuve and J.D. Martinez should have come up and done better, and that was the coaching staff's fault that they didn't. And there were even modest success stories on the roster -- Brian Bogusevic and Matt Downs showed surprising production off the bench, and the Astros cultivated some interesting bullpen arms.
With the contracts to Brocail and Barnett, the Astros are retaining their entire staff, up to manager Brad Mills. The Astros were bad last year -- 106-loss bad -- but that probably had more to do with the players on the field than the coaches. Just a guess. The Astros think so too.
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