The Boston Red Sox's huge April gamble of firing Alex Cora and five other members of his coaching staff kind of worked. The Red Sox mounted an impressive comeback under Chad Tracy, but didn't make it out of the Wild Card round for the second year in a row.
Among Cora's fired coaches was former Red Sox assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson, who also worked in the New York Yankees organization. The Miami Marlins on October 12 announced Lawson as their new hitting coach.
According to Christina De Nicola of MLB.com, Lawson had already been in the Marlins organization as a roving hitting coach. His position in Miami is a promotion from his station with Boston, but he was the Yankees' primary hitting coach from 2022 until his firing in 2023.
Lawson's coaching style matches up with criticisms that Willson Contreras and other players have given about the Red Sox organization's over-reliance on data when making decisions. Lawson's focus in particular was high exit velocity numbers, as evidenced by his exceedingly obvious "hit strikes hard" mantra.
Marlins hire former Red Sox, Yankees coach Dillon Lawson as new hitting coach following short 2026 tenure
“When we swing at strikes, we’re likely to make more contact. When we make more contact, we’re likely to hit the ball harder. When we make hard contact, we would like to hit it over the infield. Sometimes we would like to hit it over the outfield fence. All of that works,” Lawson said before the 2022 season with the Yankees, via Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.
But that advice doesn't always work. Success against talented pitchers comes with more work than just swinging at strikes. Lawson's strategy didn't work in the minor leagues, either — ex-Yankees prospect Ben Ruta in 2023 criticized the organization for its pivot to analytics-focused coaching philosophy, explicitly naming Lawson as a reason for it.
"There is no baseball being taught there anymore. No baserunning, moving runners, fundamentals, etc," Ruta said of New York's farm system under Lawson, per Austin Nivison of CBS Sports.
In the first half of the 2023 season, before the Yankees fired Lawson, they clocked 691 hits, the second-fewest in the league, and 400 runs, which ranked 19th in MLB. Lawson became the first in-season coach firing in Brian Cashman's front office tenure and it isn't hard to see why.
The Marlins must've liked what they saw from Lawson during his brief tenure as their roving hitting coach, because it'd be hard to argue that he earned a promotion based on his body of work with the Yankees and Red Sox. Fans will have to wait and see if his coaching philosophy works with the Marlins' young player base.
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