Mariners to add Brant Brown to coaching staff (source)

SEATTLE -- The Mariners have an agreement in place to bring Brant Brown onto their coaching staff, a source told MLB.com on Wednesday night. The club has not confirmed.

It’s unclear what the exact role and title will be, but Brown was the Marlins' hitting coach last season.

The move brings into clearer focus what Seattle’s staff will look like under manager Scott Servais in 2024, with the entire group expected to return other than Stephen Vogt, whom the Guardians hired as their manager earlier this month. Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto told reporters at the GM Meetings last week that Vogt was slated to be promoted to a bench-coach role had he remained.

Vogt vacated his position as Seattle’s bullpen coach after one season following a successful 10-year playing career, and Tony Arnerich will shift to that post after spending the past two seasons as the club’s hitting coach alongside director of hitting strategy Jarret DeHart. The Mariners had gone with a two-man operation before Tim Laker left after 2021.

Brown rejoins the organization after spending the 2013-17 seasons contributing in Seattle’s farm system, serving as the Minor League offensive coordinator in his final year before joining the Dodgers’ Major League coaching staff.

Prior, he was the Mariners’ Minor League outfield coordinator, and before that, he’d spent six seasons as a hitting coach in the Rangers’ organization, where he began his coaching career after playing parts of seasons in the Majors, including three alongside Servais with the Cubs from 1996-98.

It’s Brown's most recent roles that have put him back on the Mariners’ radar.

In Miami, Brown oversaw a Marlins lineup that surprised the industry by climbing all the way to the postseason for just the second time since 2003. There, he worked with players like batting champion Luis Arraez and slugger Jorge Soler, who recently became a free agent and could be a Mariners target. For all of their upstart success, the Marlins are experiencing significant turnover this offseason to the staff of Skip Schumaker, who just won the National League Manager of the Year Award in his first season.

Brown was the Dodgers' hitting coach from 2020-22 after being promoted from assistant hitting coach, a role he served from 2018-19. Los Angeles reached the postseason in each of those years largely on the shoulders of an elite offense. Personnel was certainly a factor there, too, including Cody Bellinger and Justin Turner, both of whom are free agents and could potentially be fits in Seattle.

Brown will bring his pedigree to T-Mobile Park, a venue well known to be more of a disadvantage to hitters, particularly in the cooler months. The Mariners ranked average to slightly above average by most metrics last year, but the lineup was also the most glaring culprit behind their most significant shortcomings.