Meet John Soteropulos, the new Red Sox hitting coach tasked with turning around a brutal offense

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A key piece of the firings, according to league sources, was that chief baseball officer Craig Breslow did not agree with how the hitters were being coached by Fatse. Breslow had considered making changes before the season began, but acquiesced. The one addition he did make to the hitting group entering the season was an internal promotion of Soteropulos, a former Driveline coach. The 32-year-old was hired by former chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom entering the 2023 season to serve as a Florida complex roving hitting coach. The following year, after the Red Sox fired Bloom, Breslow promoted Soteropulos to a minor-league hitting coordinator, overseeing development of the entire system’s hitters. “It’s been a whirlwind for sure,” said Soteropulos over the weekend in Atlanta. “Regardless of what happens one day, you’re playing the next day. It’s been crazy in the sense that a lot of stuff happened in the past few weeks, but execution and consistency are by far the biggest things from our group standpoint.” While there’s been consistency in the behind-the-scenes work, the team hasn’t yet been able to execute and translate that work on the field. In fits and spurts, the Red Sox offense has shown life, like a 3-2 come-from-behind win in Atlanta on Saturday, only to be followed by an 8-1 drubbing on Sunday. In 27 games before the firings, the Red Sox were 10-17, hitting .233 with a .667 OPS, averaging 4.1 runs and 8.5 strikeouts per game. Since Soteropulos took over, the Red Sox’s offense has still been searching for its rhythm. In 18 games since the firings, the Red Sox are 8-10, hitting .238 with a .665 OPS, averaging 2.9 runs and 8.3 strikeouts per game. There have been glimpses of progress, especially in terms of traffic on the basepaths, but bringing those runs in has been astoundingly difficult. “I feel like we’re having quality at-bats every inning now and that’s been really consistent, we just need that one hit to fall first,” said Jarren Duran, whose struggles have been well-documented. “I feel like from my perspective, when we get guys on, it’s like we have to score. I feel like that’s what screws us sometimes. We’re putting all this pressure on ourselves. It’s like, no we don’t, let’s just go up there and have a good at-bat.” To counter that pressure, Duran likened it to a scene from an episode of ‘The Office” in which the boss, Michael Scott, runs around the office screaming, “Nobody panic!” during a fire drill. “I think of that moment and scream that in the dugout to lighten things up,” Duran said. Despite the struggles, the Red Sox have tried to focus on the positive elements, knowing all too well that a defeatist mindset will make an already monumental task of pulling themselves out of their hole even more difficult. The sample sizes from before and after the changes are small (because of that, many in the industry offered disbelief at the early-season firings), but Breslow was adamant in a press conference following the moves that he wanted to give the team enough runway with roughly 135 games remaining at the time to turn things around. In that sense, it’s been a race against time for Soteropulos to not only get up to speed on the group but also implement changes quickly. “(As an assistant hitting coach) there was a familiarity with the responsibilities of the role, but now the responsibilities are mine,” he said. “So the execution, the day-to-day, there’s just a lot more that goes into what I do. It’s not something I take lightly.” Through the early weeks, Soteropolus has been constantly evaluating his process alongside his new assistants, interim hitting coaches Nelson Paulino and Collin Hetzler. As a minor-league hitting coordinator, Soteropulos had already worked with several players who came up through the system, including Wilyer Abreu, Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer and Ceddanne Rafaela. Paulino has been in the Red Sox organization for nearly 30 years, most recently serving as hitting coach at Low-A Salem, and has worked with nearly every homegrown hitter on the club. Hetzler previously served as hitting coach at Triple-A Worcester, alongside current interim manager Chad Tracy, meaning they, too, have preexisting relationships that have helped the process. “A lot of it is executing the day-to-day work and then doing as much as you can during the games,” Soteropulos said. “Then when you go back at night, seeing like, ‘OK, pregame, what did we execute? What did that look like during the game?’ And then being honest from a coaching standpoint. ‘What do we do well? What was kind of a neutral? And then what can we improve on?’” The first few weeks for Soteropulos’s offense have not borne results. There’s recognition that the new coaches need time to catch up to speed, but also an immediacy in needing to turn things around. “You go from not working with somebody to, ‘All right, this is my guy now,’” said Duran, who, like Trevor Story, worked closely with Fatse. “So they’re learning how guys’ swings work, their approaches, the way they think about certain pitches, their path. That’s stuff (lead coaches) learn in spring training, so now that we’re all having to do it here during the season and ramp it up faster, it’s crazy to see.” Soteropulos has balanced not messing with veterans’ routines and building their trust while also trying to implement some tweaks to swings, approaches, mechanics and mindset. “There’s things we want to accomplish on a daily basis, but getting more specific, the way that each player gets to their success that night is going to be different,” he said. “So when we message that to them and we give them their game plan, it has to be more specific than just telling 13 hitters what to do. It’s like, OK, each guy is going to click a certain way. And then if it doesn’t work or did work, taking parts of what we did that night, extracting it and then doing the next day.” Some within the team have seen improvements in the processes, particularly among the younger players. Pregame meetings have skewed more toward the younger players, helping them game-plan better by presenting them with more individualized numbers and data on pitcher tendencies and what to expect. That information was always available, but not presented as formally in daily meetings, more as a supplemental guide, according to players. “I think the younger guys have responded very well to it,” Isiah Kiner-Falefa said. “It’s just more of helping them develop in the big leagues and get better. So it’s just a shift in the way we do things, more catered to growth and helping these young guys take it to the next level.” “I think the numbers have always been there, but guys are asking more questions about it,” Duran said. “Before we probably didn’t, and now we are. It’s something that’s always there, but we probably didn’t utilize it as much and now we’re talking about it more and it’s out there more for us to see.” Rafaela, Abreu and Mayer seem to have benefited the most from the changes. Rafaela was hitting .265 with a .706 OPS before the managerial and coaching changes, but has hit .311 with a .900 OPS since. Abreu has hit well all season, starting the year hitting .297 with an .834 OPS. Since the changes, he’s hitting .304 with an .845 OPS. Marcelo Mayer is hitting roughly the same, starting the year hitting .222 with a .661 OPS and hitting .213 with a .612 OPS since the shakeup. “John is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever been around,” said Mayer, while noting he’d developed a close relationship with Fatse, too. “As a player, that’s all you could ask for from your hitting coach. And (Soteropulos) is also one of the smartest minds I’ve been around, too. He knows so much about the swing, so much about approach, how to attack pitchers. So he’s a super smart mind and I know that players will listen.” But obviously not everyone is clicking. Caleb Durbin, Duran and Story, who went on the injured list over the weekend with a sports hernia and may need surgery, have struggled. Figuring out how to get the entire group going at the same time continues to be a work in progress. Veteran Willson Contreras has been among the team’s best hitters and has been able to stay true to his own approach better than most. “It seems like there’s a lot of pressure on everybody,” Contreras said recently. “I feel the pressure too, but I have a little more experience on that. And when I feel like I put pressure on myself, I just try to (think), you know what, just have fun and be relaxed. It’s a long season. We’re in May.” Driveline, the independent hitting facility many players visit in the offseason, has become controversial in some baseball circles for overloading players with too much information. Soteropulos said his Driveline experience has helped him learn how to synthesize information to apply to players. But it’s been different using those data points to help minor leaguers advance to the next level, as he did in his previous role, compared to what he’s currently trying to do in helping more experienced big leaguers daily. “Once you get into the major leagues, you realize that all of those guys do those macro things pretty well, that’s what’s allowed them to get to the major-league success,” he said. “So then it becomes like, ‘How can we put you in a position pregame so that when you go into the game, you’re in the best position possible with your swing, your approach in your mindset.’ It’s not the only part of the equation, but it’s definitely weighted a lot more heavily because when it comes down to it at this level, the four-to-five at-bats that night are by far the most important thing.” Soteropulos doesn’t have a magic answer for why Boston’s offense has been struggling so much. It’s clear there’s work being done and that this isn’t the end goal. But patience with the process is growing thinner by the day in a big market where winning is an expectation, ticket prices are ever-rising and losses keep piling up. The paradox in all of this is that the Red Sox scored a season-high 17 runs on the day Cora, Fatse and the other coaches were fired. The Red Sox will never know if that could have been the spark the offense needed to get going, instead of a coaching purge that had already been decided upon earlier in the day by Breslow and delivered later that day after the team’s most lopsided victory of the season. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms