DUNEDIN, Fla. — As the end of Matt Hague’s playing career neared, when his body started to break down and ceased moving the way he wanted to, his second career as a teacher of hitting was taking hold.
Hague’s keen interest in things like dissecting swing paths, honing in on pitch selection, understanding zone coverage and swing decisions in the twilight days of his 11-year playing career was a sign the former first baseman was bound for a future as a hitting coach.
“I think just being really observant on why things were happening in front of me, trying to process and find ways to do stuff even though my body was breaking down,” Hague said. “I had a passion for understanding why guys are having career years or why guys are doing things certain ways and really trying to deep dive on that.”
He found that future with the Toronto Blue Jays, for whom he played briefly in 2015. Once retired, Hague first accepted a professional fellowship role in 2019 with the organization which he later parlayed into a minor-league coaching job. After three seasons in the minors, Hague was promoted to the major-league staff in the offseason.
As an assistant hitting coach, Hague joins a group that includes returning coaches Guillermo Martinez and Hunter Mense and is led by Don Mattingly, who is in the newly created offensive coordinator role. Players who have worked with Hague in the past say his promotion is well-deserved and his personal touch to coaching will complement the existing staff.
“All the guys love him,” said Ernie Clement, who worked with Hague last year while with the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons. “He creates a personal relationship with every player he has. And that is so important when coaching and being around guys every day. He builds the relationship first and then he gives you tools for you to make your own adjustments and gives suggestions. And there’s never one way to do things. He is really good at individualizing a plan for each player.”
How Hague connected with Clement was over their mutual understanding of what it was like to be a player bouncing between the majors and minors and the challenges that role can bring.
“I can relate to him, he can relate to me, and he just watched me work and gave me small little critiques to use and drills to do to naturally help clean up my swing a little bit. I just love the way he went about it and I love the way he connects with all his players on a personal level,” said Clement, who is hitting .423/.444/.731 with two home runs this spring and positioning himself well to break camp with the Blue Jays. “When a coach has been in your shoes and knows what it takes to have success and work through failures, that goes a long way.”
Relationship-building and discovering what players value and what drives them is at the heart of Hague’s coaching philosophy. When he understands what a player holds dear, he said, it becomes easier to understand how to push them or help them reach the next level.
“Baseball, it can beat you up and just making sure that the player knows that you’re there with them, you’re there consistently holding them accountable and in a loving way,” Hague said. “Hitting coaches can never lose sight of how hard baseball is. Just as long as they feel that you’re there with them, you usually tend to have a pretty good relationship with a guy.”
Mense, the Blue Jays’ other assistant hitting coach, understands the nuances of earning buy-in from players. Hague’s humility, self-deprecating sense of humour and knowledge of the craft help put players at ease and make him a perfect fit for their coaching foursome, Mense said.
“I tell people this all the time as a hitting coach, you have to be somebody that people enjoy being around because we end up spending so much time with players and in the cage and then coaches in the locker room. Especially for players, if they don’t enjoy being around you and they don’t enjoy the conversation and they don’t enjoy the camaraderie, I know they’re professionals and I know that they want to get their work in regardless, but the back and forth isn’t the same,” said Mense, who called Hague one of his best friends.
Hague was limited to 43 MLB games in his playing career — which includes one season in Japan — but he enjoyed particular success in 2015 with the Jays’ Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo, hitting .338/.416/.469 in 136 games while becoming a fan favourite, affectionately called MattVP. He spent that September with the Blue Jays as their lineup featuring José Bautista, Josh Donaldson and Edwin Encarnación bashed its way to the city’s first postseason appearance in more than two decades.
“I had the easiest job in baseball — I sat and watched all those big dogs perform,” Hague quipped. “Essentially, I was along for the ride. But it was just the atmosphere of Rogers Centre during those series was electric. To be able to experience the atmosphere like that was amazing.”
Now as a coach with the Blue Jays, he’s been doing plenty of learning this spring as he fortifies relationships with the players and coaches. He’s paid particularly close attention to Mattingly, whose resume as a player, coach and manager is unrivalled.
“It’s been a real treat for me. I think just because of the background and everything that he’s accomplished and in so many different roles. It’s the perspective that he has. I’ve never been around anybody like that,” said Hague, who admitted he was nervous when he first met Donnie Baseball. “(I’m) just trying to soak in as much information as I can just to understand how he views things, what he wants, and then my ultimate goal is to support him, support whatever vision he has.”
After spending previous springs with the Blue Jays as a minor-league coach, Hague had familiarity with his fellow hitting coaches but further strengthened those relationships during an offseason spent collaborating on weekly Zoom calls, where Hague said he did a lot of homework to get up to speed on the team’s offensive approach.
Despite a talented lineup, the Blue Jays were a middling offence last year, ranking 14th in the majors in runs scored (746), and the club spent ample time this offseason digging into its offensive process and, in particular, trying to streamline its communication and messaging to the players.
Naturally, four hitting coaches with varying playing and life experiences are bound to bring their own ideas to the job, which is why there has been a particular emphasis on working as one unit and delivering clear, consistent and united messaging. Earlier this spring, Mattingly spoke about building an “individual team approach” in which players focus on their strengths in at-bats and everyone does their part in the collective battle against the opposing pitcher.
“Each coach has a different perspective on things so I think just meeting in the middle with Donnie’s overall vision, that’s been the biggest thing as a group that we want to accomplish,” Hague said.
In terms of conveying information to players, Hague keeps it straightforward.
“We’re delivering a simple message, but the source of the simple message is very complex,” Hague said. “Filtering everything from analytics to their swing metrics, their past history, how they handle certain pitch characteristics, we’re taking all that in and we’re trying to simplify it for the player and provide game planning.”
Getting the message to stick is also vitally important, which is why Hague individualizes how he talks to each player, catering his language and terminology depending on who he is speaking to.
“He’ll say some stuff to me that’s totally different from (Spencer Horwitz),” utility man Davis Schneider said. “Spence needs a little bit more technical stuff or data and I’m more the opposite. He knows how to say different words to me.”
Last year, Hague watched proudly as a few of his Bisons players, including Schneider, Clement and Horwitz, thrived at the big-league level after their call-ups. When he learned he was getting called up, too, albeit as a coach, Hague texted a few of those Bisons players, who had a taste of the city, asking for the best coffee spots in Toronto.
“He’s like, ‘Got the new hitting coach job,’” Schneider said. “I was like, ‘Hell yeah!’”
It’s fair to say the excitement about landing the gig was mutual, and as the Blue Jays look to improve their offensive performance from a year ago, Hague is eager to be a part of the solution.
“There’s a lot of hungry guys in that locker room right now and there’s a lot of things to learn from,” Hague said. “That’s the biggest thing is making sure there’s a plan where we can learn (and) not necessarily dwell on what’s happened. It’s what are we going to do now and how do we do it? That’s been the mindset throughout camp consistently — and I think that’s very important.”
(Top photo of Hague when he was on the Blue Jays in 2015: Tom Szczerbowski / Getty Images)
