Giants name Hensley Meulens hitting coach

November 2, 3:41 PMSan Francisco Giants ExaminerTheo Fightmaster

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Bruce Bochy (left) never blamed Carney Lansford (right) for the Giants hitting struggles.
Jeff Chiu, AP

After two frustrating seasons under the watchful eye of Carney Lansford, the Giants offense was one of the league's worst. Now Hensley Meulens, who was the hitting coach for the Fresno Gizzlies last season, will try his hand at turning things around as the Giants announced Monday that they named Meulens the team's new hitting coach.

Prior to joining the Giants organization last season, Meulens, a native of Curacao, was the triple-A hitting instructor for the Indianapolis Indians of the Pittsburgh Pirates' organization from 2005-08. He also coached Baltimore's advanced rookie team in the Appalachian League from 2003-04. As a player Meulens spent eight seasons in the Yankees organization and played parts of five seasons with the Yankees (1989-93). He later played three seasons in Japan (1994-96). Meulens returned to the Majors and had stints with the Expos in 1997 and the D-backs in 1998. The 42-year old concluded a 17-year playing career in '02 with Puebla in the Mexican League. The former utility player hit .220 (109-for-496) with 15 homers and 53 RBI in 182 games in the majors. Meulens was also the first major leaguer from Curacao, which has since produced a number of other players, including Andruw Jones, Randall Simon and Jair Jurrjens. He is also fluent in five languages: English, Spanish, Dutch, Papiamento and Japanese.

If Meulens' work in Fresno is any indicator, then he may be the right man for the job. Take John Bowker for example. In 2008 Bowker split time between Fresno and San Francisco and, aside from a few spurts of power, he struggled to reach base and was commonly a victim of the strikeout.

From 2006-2008 Bowker played in 387 games between San Jose and San Francisco, hitting a combined .282 (398 for 1407), with 41 homers, 208 RBI, 104 walks, 300 strike outs, an on base percentage of .270, a slugging average of .327 and an OPS of .597.

In 2009 under Meulens' tutelage Bowker hit .342, had an OBP of .451, slugged .596 with an OPS of 1.047. More impressively perhaps for the first time in his professional career, Bowker had more walks than strikeouts - 74 walks to just 64 strikeouts and Bowker won a Triple-A batting crown.

As is always the case in sports, the player deserves much of the credit/blame and it may be a coincidence that Bowker had his best season the same year Meulens was his hitting coach.

But perhaps this is a case of the messenger and not the message. It wasn't Lansford's fault the Giants were so terrible offensively the past few seasons and he wasn't urging Aaron Rowand and Edgar Renteria to swing at the first pitch. Nor was it as if Lansford was given much to work with during his tenure in China Basin, but whether he was a terrible hitting coach or the best hitting coach ever that no one listened to, a change had to be made.

And can you really go wrong with a hitting coach who's nicknamed Bam Bam?

Here is the official press release from the Giants:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The San Francisco Giants have announced that Hensley Meulens has been named the club’s major league hitting coach, club Senior Vice President and General Manager Brian Sabean announced today.

Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens spent the past season as the triple-A hitting coach for the Fresno Grizzlies, guiding the team to the sixth-highest batting avg. in the Pacific Coast League with a .275 mark. Two of the Grizzlies’ batters placed in the top 10 for highest batting avg. in the PCL with John Bowker leading the league with a .342 clip and Jesus Guzman placing fifth with a .321 mark. After the minor league season concluded, he joined the Giants and worked as an assistant during September.

"We are excited to promote someone of Hensley's baseball background to the big league club," Sabean said. "He will be a great asset to the team as we look to improve our run scoring production with both our existing major league hitters as well as the young talent we have coming up from our minor league system. Hensley brings a unique perspective to the game with his playing time in the majors, Latin America and Japan as well as his coaching work with a number of major league organizations. He distinguished himself as a coach this past season in spring training, with Fresno and here with the big league club in September, and we look for him to get underway immediately with our hitters this off-season."

"I'm excited to add a person of Hensley's professionalism to our hardworking coaching staff," Giants manager Bruce Bochy stated. "He had a chance to assist with us before and during the season and he displayed to everyone a tremendous ability to work with all of our hitters and to relate to them on various levels."