As you’d expect after the struggles from the Detroit Tigers offense in the second half of the 2025 season, coaching changes are in the works. Whether they’ll be positive ones is anyone’s guess at this point. Hitting coach Keith Beauregard will not return to the Tigers in 2026. He joins first base coach Anthony Iapoce as the two members who won’t return to A.J. Hinch’s coaching staff next year.
Beauregard came to Detroit in November of 2022 as brand new president of baseball operations, Scott Harris,
reshaped the Tigers hitting department in the wake of releasing 2021-2022 hitting coach, Scott Coolbaugh. Beauregard, James Rowson, and Michael Brdar, were all hired that year to improve the Tigers approach to hitting. Beauregard came to Detroit from the Dodgers player development system, where he had spent four years as a field coordinator and minor league hitting instructor.
Rowson departed after one season in Detroit to become the New York Yankees lead hitting coach, and recently interviewed for the Minnesota Twins managerial seat. Former Pirates manager, Derek Shelton, won out in the contest to run the Twins. Lance Zawadzki came over from the Boston Red Sox system to replace Rowson.
Michael Brdar appears to be staying as hitting coach with the Tigers, but it’s early in the offseason. Maybe a wholesale overhaul is coming and Brdar and Zawadzki may not be retained either for all we know at this point. However, Brdar was a minor league hitting coach under Scott Harris in San Francisco during Harris tenure as GM there. The University of Michigan grad then took over as the San Diego Padres hitting coach for two seasons before Harris and Hinch poached him after the 2022 season. So perhaps he’s the one with the inside track to stick around and re-shape the department.
As for Iapoce, he came to Detroit from the Chicago Cubs, where he was a hitting instructor during Harris’ tenure there, before working for the Boston Red Sox as a hitting coordinator. Harris hired him to manage the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens in 2023, before Iapoce spent the 2024-2025 seasons as the Tigers’ first base coach.
Tigers Triple-A manager Gabe Alvarez, who managed the Double-A Erie SeaWolves to back-to-back Eastern League titles before moving up to manage the Mud Hens in 2025, seems like a likely candidate for a promotion to Hinch’s staff. Whether that might be to first base with the Tigers remains to be seen.
Lynn Henning of the Detroit News also reported recently that Andrew Graham, who has been a coach and a manager in the Tigers system since 2009, would also not return as the manager of the Double-A SeaWolves. It’s not entirely clear if he’s left the organization for certain or might be considered for another role. The Australian born coach was drafted by the Tigers way back in 2003, starting as a catching instructor before managing at every level of the Tigers’ system but Triple-A starting in 2011 when he took over the old short season rookie ball level Connecticut Tigers. The SeaWolves lost in the Eastern League championship series to the New York Mets’ affiliate, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, back in late September.
So, there are certainly some coaching shake-ups going on. That’s not unusual, as there is typically turnover from year to year in player development and on major league coaching staffs. Also not a big surprise that someone would have to take some heat for the Tigers hitting performance in the second half of the season. Beauregard probably just drew the short straw in that regard, but it’s also possible he found another opportunity he preferred. We’ll have to see where he ends up landing next. It will be interesting to see where the Tigers go hunting for fresh voices. We suggest the Milwaukee Brewers.
