When CBO Craig Breslow fired manager Alex Cora and several members of the coaching staff, hitting coach Pete Fatse was high on the list of coaches who the Boston Red Sox were ready to move on from. Now, he has a new team.
Fatse is set to become the hitting coach for the Philadelphia Phillies. Charlotte Varnes of The Athletic first reported the news. Fatse had been working as a hitting consultant for the Tampa Bay Rays since the Red Sox moved on from him.
The Phillies are coming off a major disappointment of a season. The hitting was a major reason for that letdown of a season in Philadelphia, particularly their lack of power hitting right-handed bats. So, they moved on from Kevin Long.
A native of Hampden, Massachusetts, Fatse played at UConn before becoming a 24th-round pick in 2009. He would spend two seasons in the Milwaukee Brewers minor league system.
Fatse founded Advanced Performance Academy in Palmer, Massachusetts. Then, in 2019, the Minnesota Twins made him their minor league hitting coordinator. Following the 2019 season, he joined the Red Sox as an assistant hitting coach, and after the season he became the team’s hitting coach.
Fatse would be criticized during his time with the Red Sox for their poor strikeout rate and poor walk percentage, though the team was among the best in MLB in batting average and slugging percentage. However, the team bottomed out offensively at the start of the 2026 season.
Pete Fatse Won’t Reunite With Former Boston Red Sox Manager Alex Cora
The Pete Fatse hire is an interesting one for the Phillies. They had twice offered former Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who had a very good relationship with Fatse, the job there. He turned them down twice, though.
Had Cora taken the job, Fatse to the Phillies would have been a no-brainer. That wasn’t the case, though, and Fatse lacks the same connection to President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski that Cora has. Dombrowski was out of Boston right around the time that Fatse joined on, meaning they didn’t have that extended connection. At the same time, Dombrowski trusts Cora and Cora clearly trusts Fatse.
The Phillies ended up promoting interim manager Don Mattingly to the full-time job. He’s now relying on Fatse to provide a power surge for the Phillies.
Interestingly, this move does reunite Fatse with one of the Phillies’ best players. Kyle Schwarber briefly worked with Fatse for 41 regular season and 11 playoff games with the Red Sox. That was back in 2021. In that time, Schwarber was .291 with a .957 OPS in the regular season and .205 with a .718 OPS in the postseason, though he did have 3 home runs in that time.
Alex Cora Blamed Pitching for Red Sox Firing
In some post-mortems on the Alex Cora era with the Red Sox, he was criticized for being too loyal to Pete Fatse. At the very least, it became clear that there were contradictory philosophies regarding hitting within the organization.
That’s why some folks raised an eyebrow at comments Cora recently made on Baseball Isn’t Boring. There, he argued that issue had more to do with pitching, where Breslow loyalist Andrew Bailey was not among the fired coaches.
“Honestly, I feel like I got fired because we didn’t pitch in the month of April,” Cora said. “As simple as that.”
Cora clearly wasn’t going to blame Fatse and the offense, even though they struggled, for the bad start in April. So, for whatever it’s worth, Fatse does come with his seal of approval.
Ex-Red Sox Hitting Coach Pete Fatse Lands New Job With Contender