After a month of news trickling out about Orioles coaches who would be leaving but with no indication who would be replacing them, the team settled all of those questions on Monday morning with an announcement of the 2025 coaching staff. Included in the list of hires for next year are a couple of familiar names, with recent ex-Orioles catcher Robinson Chirinos joining as the bench coach and Triple-A manager Buck Britton getting bumped up to the MLB staff as major league coach.
The full list of staff announcements who will be serving under manager Brandon Hyde as he enters his seventh season as Orioles skipper, listed alphabetically by last name:
- Grant Anders – major league development coach
- Cody Asche – hitting coach
- Buck Britton – major league coach
- Robinson Chirinos – bench coach
- Tim Cossins – major league field coordinator/catching instructor
- Drew French – pitching coach
- Sherman Johnson – assistant hitting coach/upper level hitting coordinator
- Tommy Joseph – assistant hitting coach
- Ryan Klimek – pitching strategy coach
- Tony Mansolino – third base coach
- Mitch Plassmyer – assistant pitching coach
- Anthony Sanders – first base coach
Of these hires, only Chirinos and Joseph were not with the organization in any capacity in 2024. Chirinos has not played since his one season with the Orioles in 2022, and his jumping straight to being a bench coach is another example of a catcher apparently possessing qualities that are important for team coaching leadership. Joseph was the assistant hitting coach with Seattle this season, a team whose offense had a number of underachieving players.
There are those in Birdland and the sphere of baseball observers who have thought that Britton would be an eventual replacement for Hyde. That belief is not going to be tamped down now that Britton is joining the MLB staff, especially with sentences like this from MASN’s Roch Kubatko about his coming role:
Being a major league coach puts Britton back in a utility role. He’s capable of assisting every other coach in some capacity.
The 38-year-old was an Orioles draft pick all the way back in 2008 – the 35th round, which doesn’t even exist any more – and has been coaching or managing in the O’s minors since the 2017 season.
After the team’s performance in the final three months of the season, the new Orioles hitting coaches may be the ones who get the most initial scrutiny. Asche was previously around as the offensive strategy coach, and after his promotion to hitting coach, that old role won’t exist on the staff in 2025. Johnson was already the upper-level hitting coordinator but will now be a part of the major league staff as well.
