A look at the Yankees’ minor league coaching staffs

The Yankees recently announced their minor league coaching staffs for the upcoming season. After the loss of a season in 2020, there are a lot of new faces manning the coaching positions in the organization. Both hitting coordinator Dillon Lawson and pitching coordinator Sam Briend have brought in coaches that share their coaching philosophies. Lets take a look at the names who will guiding the next wave of Yankees to the majors.

Leading the way for the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders is Doug Davis. The 58-year-old Davis has registered a 515-484 record in his minor league career that has carried him through the Marlins, Expos, and Blue Jays systems. In addition, he was a bench coach for Jack McKeon on the 2003 Marlins team that won the World Series.

Many of the best pitching prospects in the Yankees system will pitch in Scranton this coming season under the watchful eye of pitching coach Dustin Glant. He was hired from the college ranks ahead of last season to be the pitching coach for Short-Season A Staten Island. He had previously served as the pitching coach for Ball State University. During his three seasons at Ball State, the pitching staff set records for strikeouts each season.

Casey Dykes brings a strong college coaching resume to the Yankees system. He was hired by the team in September 2019 and would have debuted as the Low-A Charleston hitting coach in 2020. He coached Yankees’ minor leaguers Matt Pita and Elijah Dunham during their time in college with Virginia Military Institute and the University of Indiana respectively. His VMI teams finished top-10 in Division I home runs twice in his four seasons.

After guiding the Low-A Charleston RiverDogs in 2019, Julio Mosquera will be at the helm of Double-A Somerset this coming year. He has been a coach inside the Yankees organization for 15 seasons, previously managing at multiple levels since 2015. Prior to working as a manager he was the Yankees catching coordinator from 2006 through 2014, working with the likes of Gary Sanchez, Austin Romine, and Francisco Cervelli.

The fourth overall pick in the 2007 draft, Daniel Moskos pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2011. While in the minor leagues he was a teammate of current Yankees ace Gerrit Cole. After attempting to earn his way back to the majors, Moskos found his way to Driveline Baseball in 2017. Eventually Moskos took on a coaching role at Driveline and was then hired by the Yankees ahead of the 2020 season.

Joe Migliaccio moves up a level after working as the hitting coach for High-A in 2019 Migliaccio has worked with the Yankees’ hitting coordinator Dillion Lawson at multiple stops in his career. During his time with High-A Tampa in 2019, many of the players posted stronger second half numbers and showed significant improvement over the course of the season. He will be working with many of those players again in 2021 at the next level. Joe talked with Pinstripe Alley last fall in a two part interview that you can find here and here.

High-A Hudson Valley Renegades will be guided by Yonkers, New York native Dan Fiorito. Fiorito played for four seasons in the Yankees organization from 2013-2016. He immediately transitioned into coaching when his playing career was done spending two seasons as a defensive coach inside the organization. He then served as the manager for the Gulf Coast League Yankees East team in 2019.

Hudson Valley’s pitching coach Gerardo Casadiego is moving to the High-A level after coaching for seven seasons in the Dominican Summer League and with Rookie-Advanced Pulaski. His last season with Pulaski saw the team post the highest winning percentage among the Yankees’ minor league affiliates for 2019. He was a 10-year minor leaguer with the Yankees, Expos, Rockies and Orioles.

The Renegades hitters will be under the tutelage of Jacob Hirst, who was the hitting coach for the Yankees Gulf Coast League affiliates ahead of the 2019 season. After playing at Central College, Hirst moved into a coaching role while working on his masters degree in Exercise Science. It was there he put himself on the Yankees radar based on a conversation with Dillon Lawson. Hirst impressed the Yankees with his work in 2019 and earned a promotion to the full-season levels.

Guiding the Low-A Tampa Tarpons is David Adams, once a top Yankees prospect in his own right before ankle injuries sidetracked his career. He guided Short-Season A Staten Island in 2019 and will now lead a Low-A Tampa team that could feature many of the Yankees top position playing prospects such as Anthony Volpe, Alexander Vargas, Kevin Alcantara and just maybe Jasson Dominguez.

The Tarpons’ pitching coach Brett DeGagne was coached by Yankees’ minor league pitching coordinator Sam Briend in the Northwoods League in 2015. When DeGagne’s college playing career was complete in 2016 he began coaching while continuing to learn from Briend, who was becoming a key piece of the pitching lab at Driveline Baseball. DeGagne was coaching for North Iowa Area Community College when Briend and the Yankees decided to bring him on board in 2018. He has worked at the Yankees’ Dominican academy for the last two years helping to coach the youngest players in the Yankees system.

After working one season in the Phillies organization as a development coach, the Yankees hired Kevin Martir as a hitting coach prior to the 2020 season. Slated to coach Rookie-Advanced Pulaski before the lost season, Martir now jumps to the Low-A level and will be working daily with a talented group of Yankees prospects. A former Astros farmhand, Martir played for hitting coordinator Dillon Lawson while both were in the Astros organization in 2016.

Following a lost season and significant minor league contraction, the Yankees’ farm system looks significantly different in 2021 from years past. The player development staff has continued to bring in new coaches that they feel are the best options to guide the talented group of prospects coming through the Yankees system.