I found it a bit curious that the Red Sox hired Dillon Lawson as a hitting coordinator after he was fired by the Yankees mid-season. Lawson's stated hitting philosophy is "Hit Strikes Hard".
I'll lead with the caveat that I'm sure the hitting coaches in-system have benefitted some of the players on the roster. I don't think we have enough information to begin to parse how effective which coaches are with which players. But on the whole, this isn't working.
Who has come here and gotten better? Who has taken a clear step forward this year? - as opposed to who has started cold or mildly-regressed or keeps under-performing?
I think Wong is clearly on the plus side of the ledger. You can make arguments for Duran/Abreu being in the "good plateau" category. (Perhaps Refsnyder also - who has cooled a bit.)
But that's it. Devers and O'Neill are having glittery but empty seasons, and so are in the under-performing category.
Most damning though is their getting basically nothing out of what should be average to sub-average-but-playable guys. Valdez, Dalbec, Smith, Cooper, Reyes. Even Rafaela and Hamilton. It seems like they just convert everyone's batting talent level to one or two notches below what they've been able to do before. (Or should be able to do at the MLB level.) Instead, these are all
negative fWAR guys with the bats (except Hamilton). Not just below average hitters - below replacement level hitters. (Which is defined as a starter for a team with a .295 WP.)
Those guys are 1/3rd of the roster. They (plus Grissom) account for 554 ABs. Which is just under a third of the at-bats.
Think about that for a moment. The hitting coaches have: Cooper, Rafaela, Hamilton, Reyes, Dalbec, Smith, Grissom (and Short, I suppose.) These are all guys (with the exception of Hamilton) who have hit MLB pitching in the recent past. And they can't get them above replacement level?
I don't expect universal success of course, but that's an awful lot of craptastic at-bats. And we have not one single "we brought him in and fixed him to the point of playability" guy.