{"id":895240,"date":"2026-10-26T12:58:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/895240\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T12:58:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:58:17","slug":"astros-hire-conner-watson-as-director-of-hitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/895240\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros Hire Conner Watson As Director Of Hitting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Astros have hired Conner Watson as their new director of hitting, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Chandler_Rome\/status\/2114457125879480330\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">The Athletic\u2019s Chandler Rome<\/a> reports.\u00a0 Watson heads to Houston after spending the last two seasons as the Guardians\u2019 assistant director of hitting development.<\/p>\n<p>The new hire continues an offseason of change for an Astros team that is looking for both a new GM and manager.\u00a0 In this case, Watson fills a role that has been open since August, when former director of hitting Dan Hennigan departed for a coaching job on the Wake Forest staff.<\/p>\n<p>Spencer Medick was hired as Houston\u2019s director of pitching earlier this week, so the Astros now have two division heads in place overseeing the entire organization\u2019s pitching and hitting approaches.\u00a0 It is perhaps a little unusual that Medick and Watson were hired in advance of a general manager taking the wheel of baseball operations, though it perhaps tracks given how Astros owner Jim Crane is known for his active role in front office decisions.<\/p>\n<p>Before joining the Guardians, Watson spent three years as a lead instructor at Driveline\u2019s Arizona branch.\u00a0 He\u2019ll now look to shake up and perhaps modernize the Astros\u2019 hitting practices at both the major and minor league levels.\u00a0 While many of Houston\u2019s coaches and manager Joe Espada won\u2019t be returning in 2027, hitting coach Victor Rodriguez was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2026\/10\/astros-manager-joe-espada-wont-return.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">expected to be retained<\/a>, though this could potentially change depending on Watson\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Astros have hired Conner Watson as their new director of hitting, The Athletic\u2019s Chandler Rome reports.\u00a0 Watson&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-895240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}