No word from Red Sox on Dana LeVangie
The Red Sox parted ways with assistant hitting coach Andy Barkett earlier in the week.
The Red Sox made one staffing decision early in the week in parting ways with assistant hitting coach Andy Barkett while committing to the return of hitting coach Tim Hyers. To this point, however, there’s been no word about the status of members of the staff who work with the team’s pitchers, including pitching coach Dana LeVangie.
Because such staffing decisions have not been announced, the team’s internal discussions extend beyond the question of whether to bring back LeVangie as the pitching coach. After a season in which the Sox had a 4.70 ERA (19th in the majors), the team’s baseball operations department — led by the four-person transition team of assistant GMs Brian O’Halloran, Eddie Romero, and Zack Scott and senior VP Raquel Ferreira, in concert with manager Alex Cora — is having a more broad-ranging conversation about the team’s pitching infrastructure.
In many ways, the team is trying to determine the ideal structure to support a pitching staff, at a time when the volume of available statistical and biomechanical data is exploding. The initial conversation, then, is believed to center on efforts to identify the right coaching structure to support the team’s pitchers before determining how or whether current members of the coaching staff — including LeVangie — fit into it.
LeVangie is one of the longest-tenured members of the organization, having spent 29 years with the Sox as a player, bullpen catcher, scout, and coach. He was the bullpen coach from 2013-17 before Cora promoted him to pitching coach for the 2018 season, with LeVangie receiving raves from members of the Sox pitching staff and Cora for his role in helping the team win a World Series.
