News broke this morning from Alex Speier of The Boston Globe that the Washington Nationals were yanking another person from the Red Sox. This time it is Andrew Wright who was the Red Sox field coordinator. Five years ago, only about 30 percent of teams had a field coordinator.
Some immediately think that a field coordinator is a logistics person, but it is more of a modern quality control person to make sure the same techniques are being taught at each level. A consistency in coaching up players. This was something that PoBO, Paul Toboni, was clear about at his introductory press conference.
What Toboni made clear about consistency in coaching:
Previously, Wright was the head baseball coach at the University of Charleston from 2015 to 2019 before joining the Yankees. He brings a very unique skill set that includes over a decade in coaching, some scouting experience, player development time in the Dominican, and Field Coordinator experience. He speaks Spanish which should also come in handy.
Then there was the previous time that Wright took his talents to the DMV and for one season was the pitching coach at Georgetown Prep (2009), and two years as the lead instructor at Bethesda-Chevy Chase Baseball Facility (2008-2009). He also did a stint for the Milwaukee Brewers as a scout with the Washington, DC region in his geography as an assistant to their area scout.
There are few people who have accomplished what Wright has done that also included his first job with the Yankees in player development as their Manager of Staff Development. You can say that Wright has seen it all.
Wright played high school baseball in Woodstock, New Brunswick in Canada. He chose Concord University, a smaller school in West Virginia where he was on their baseball team from 2000-2002. He went on to get his Masters in Athletic Coaching at West Virginia University.
Matt Quatraro who is now a baseball manager and former Cleveland hitting coach had this to say about Wright when he was a college coach, “Andrew is truly one of the best young teachers in college baseball. He understands the value of building relationships with his players to help them elevate themselves on and off the field.”
Just so people have an idea of what a field coordinator is all about in Wright’s time with the Red Sox, there was a great interview with Jeff Banister when he held that position with the Pirates about 15 years ago.
“A field coordinator implements the philosophies and ideals and fundamentals that are set out by the major league manager and staff and translates and teaches them to the minor league staffs and coaches. I also help our farm director evaluate all of our coaches, managers, pitching coaches, strength coaches, and all other staff members.
— Banister said in that interview
I help teach our managers the art of managing: managing the men and the players, and implementing of the programs that we have in place. With players, I help aid in evaluating their skills, I aid in developing and overseeing player plan programs. I coordinate all of Spring Training for our minor leaguers. I take info from each coordinator (pitching, hitting, infield, etc. ) and put all the instruction together to map out each day to maximize our instruction.
The goal is to have each day be full of instruction and to have it be a progression as we get closer to the beginning of the season. There is an evaluation of each day of practice so we know as a staff what went well, what we need to do better, etc, so we can make sure that we are teaching well and players know what they need to work on.“
So here’s the thing, Speier says that Wright will be joining the Nationals’ front office, and what we don’t know is whether he will be the field coordinator, a VP of Player Development, an AGM, or another position. We will have to wait to see where this goes. Exact title for Wright is TBD. But he has an incredible résumé.
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