The Phillies are going to hire Peter Fatse as their new hitting coach, moving quickly to replace Kevin Long after letting him go from the job a couple of weeks ago. Fatse, 39, is expected to take over a group that needs a cleaner offensive voice after a season that ended with more questions than answers.
His name is drawing attention because the Phillies are not just changing coaches; they are changing the person tasked with trying to shape the next step of an offense that disappointed in 2026. Fatse comes with a background that now spans a playing career in the Brewers system, independent ball in 2011 and 2012, and coaching stops with the Twins and the Red Sox, where he worked as an assistant hitting coach before taking over as Boston's hitting coach after the 2021 season.
That Boston run gives the Phillies a reason to believe he can handle a major-league lineup, but it also shows why the move is not as simple as swapping one name for another. The Red Sox hit.255/.322/.419 for a 104 wRC+ from 2022 to 2025, a useful stretch but not one that proves a hitting coach alone can turn a club around. It is always hard to separate what a coach does from what the players do, and that is the part of this hire that will be judged long after the announcement.
The Phillies have already spent much of this year chasing the right answer. They tried to hire Alex Cora when he was let go by the Red Sox in April 2026, and he turned them down. They tried again at season's end, and he said no once more before the club removed the interim tag from Don Mattingly and gave him a two-year contract. Against that backdrop, Fatse looks less like a surprise than the next available answer to a problem the Phillies have been trying to solve for months.
What happens next is straightforward: the Phillies will ask Fatse to improve production from a lineup that only had Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper finish above a 102 wRC+ in 2026, while Trea Turner and J.T. Realmuto fell well below expectations. Eleven different Phillies hitters reached at least 130 plate appearances, so the issue was not a lack of opportunities. The club is betting that a new voice can make the difference, even if the harder truth is that no hitting coach gets to do the job alone.
