The Philadelphia Phillies made a couple of moves at the Winter Meetings on Monday, although they weren't the big, groundbreaking moves fans were hoping for.
The team announced a one-year extension for manager Rob Thomson, which will see him remain the skipper through the 2025 season. At the same time, the team announced a pair of hirings to Thomson's coaching staff.
The Phillies have hired two new assistant hitting coaches: Dustin Lind and Rafael Peña.
The Phillies have extended the contract of manager Rob Thomson through the 2025 season.
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) December 4, 2023
In addition, the club has hired Dustin Lind and Rafael Peña as assistant hitting coaches for the major league staff.
Dustin Lind joins the Phillies staff after spending four years, from December 2019 until this past November, as the San Francisco Giants' director of hitting and assistant hitting coach.
Lind played college ball at Montana State University-Billings. The former Yellowjacket started working with MLB and minor league players in 2014 as an independent hitting consultant before being hired as a minor league quality assurance coach by the Seattle Mariners in 2018. He moved up to become the director of hitting development and strategies for the major league team in 2019.
Rafael Peña was most recently the minor league hitting coordinator for the Houston Astros. He has been with the Astros organization since 2018 when he became the development coach for the Quad Cities River Bandits, Houston's High-A affiliate at the time.
Since then, Peña has served as the hitting coach for the Bandits in 2019, the Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks (2021) and the Triple-A Sugar Land Space Cowboys (2022).
Peña played college ball at Western Oklahoma State College and the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, where he hit over .400 as a college senior in 2015 and made All-Sooner Athletic Conference, per his Bullpen Wiki page on Baseball Reference.
The team hasn't announced whether Lind or Peña will have additional responsibilities when they join the major league coaching staff.