Meet Jeff Pentland

Jeff Pentland was recently hired to be the hitting coach for the New York Yankees replacing long-time hitting coach Kevin Long. Pentland comes with a lot of experience in the job and should command a lot of respect from the veterans and young guys alike on the team and the more and more I read about the signing the more I think the team is going to be okay. Let’s meet the newest Yankees hitting coach, Jeff Pentland.

Pentland has coached not only at the major league level but was a college coach as well in his 69 years of living. Pentland also played college baseball for the Arizona State University as a pitcher compiling a 32-12 win/loss record and a career 2.25 ERA. During his tenure with the Sun Devils pentland made the 1967 College World Series baseball team before spending three seasons in the San Diego Padres organization as a pitcher. Pentland quickly learned he wasn’t destined to make the majors and signed on as an assistant coach at the University of California, Riverside from 1975 through 1982 before coaching for Arizona State from 1983 to 1992. Pentland finally got his opportunity to manage and coach a major league team in 1993 when he joined the Florida Marlins coaching staff.

Halfway through the 1996 season Pentland was moved to the Marlins hitting coach which landed him a job in the same position with the Chicago Cubs. Pentland was the hitting coach from 1997-2002 including the time that Joe Girardi was there as a player. Pentland moved on in 2003 to take the hitting coach job for the Kansas City Royals where he managed a younger Carlos Beltran to one of his best hitting seasons of his career and stayed there until leaving for Seattle in 2005. Pentland stayed in Seattle as their hitting coach until the 2008 season when the Los Angeles Dodgers hired him as their secondary hitting instructor before promoting him to hitting coach in 2010. Pentland was fired in 2011 and has been out of the game until the Yankees came calling in 2015.

Now you know the man and what he has to bring to the table, now it’s time to get to work. Good luck Jeff and welcome to the family.