{"id":86908,"date":"2024-09-30T22:20:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T02:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=86908"},"modified":"2024-09-30T22:20:43","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T02:20:43","slug":"blue-jays-part-ways-hitting-coach-guillermo-martinez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/09\/30\/blue-jays-part-ways-hitting-coach-guillermo-martinez\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Part Ways with Longtime Hitting Coach After Disappointing Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After another disappointing season, the Toronto Blue Jays have parted ways with their longtime hitting coach Guillermo Martinez. Over the past month, the Blue Jays have made several personnel changes which, according to two industry sources, have now reached the major league club. Martinez spent six seasons as the Blue Jays hitting coach before parting ways with Toronto on Monday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Blue Jays have parted ways with hitting coach Guillermo Martinez, according to two industry sources.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShiDavidi\/status\/1840889026926006681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">September 30, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Blue Jays Part Ways with Longtime Hitting Coach Guillermo Martinez<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Martinez has been in the Blue Jays organization since 2012 and was promoted to the majors after a year as their minor league hitting coordinator in 2019. The results have been mixed in recent seasons, particularly after the front office revamped the lineup before the 2023 season. Toronto ranked in the top five in runs scored in 2021 and 2022, but significantly declined in the past two seasons. The Jays offense was middle-of-the-pack last season averaging 4.6 runs per game, before taking a dramatic decline in 2024. This season, Toronto fell to 23rd in MLB in runs scored, averaging just 4.1 runs per game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 39-year-old hitting coach was instrumental in the development of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/guerrvl02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-09-30_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vladimir Guerrero Jr.<\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bichebo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-09-30_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bo Bichette<\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. While Guerrero had one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/05\/12\/blue-jays-first-baseman-productive\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">best seasons of his career<\/a>, Bichette had the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/05\/06\/bo-bichette-surprising-batting-average\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">worst offensive season<\/a> of his career. Toronto has been trending downward at an alarming rate, and after the offense failed to meet expectations once again, it was time to make a change. The Blue Jays finished the season last in the AL East and 14 games below .500 at 74-88.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is unclear who will replace Martinez who was part of a hitting staff with offensive coordinator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mattido01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-09-30_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Don Mattingly<\/a> and assistant coaches Hunter Mense and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/haguema01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-09-30_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Matt Hague<\/a>. While the departure of Martinez will not solve all of Toronto\u2019s problems, it is a step in the right direction. Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins will address the media on Wednesday at their season-ending press conference.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After another disappointing season, the Toronto Blue Jays have parted ways with their longtime hitting coach Guillermo Martinez. Over the past month, the Blue Jays have made several personnel changes which, according to two industry sources, have now reached the major league club. Martinez spent six seasons as the Blue Jays hitting coach before parting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4975,"featured_media":86919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1071,35],"tags":[1608,640],"class_list":["post-86908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bluejays","category-mlb","category-news","tag-bo-bichette","tag-vladimir-guerrero-jr"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}