PHILADELPHIA — The four MLB teams for which Kevin Long has worked share a significant commonality: all have at least reached the World Series with him as the hitting coach.
Long, 55, considers it good fortune. As a hitting coach, his players have included Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Yoenis Cespedes, David Wright, Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber, giving his teams opportunities for success. But Long, in his first season with the Phillies, is more than just the accidental traveler with a knack for arriving to a place at the right time.
“He is the best hitting coach I’ve been around,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said Monday before Game 3 of the World Series against the Astros was postponed by rain. “Not just mechanically and game-planning, but also the fact that when a player leaves the cage to go into the game, he thinks he can really hit, and that’s who Kevin is. He’s a great — he’s great at making players feel good about themselves. His energy and his positive outlook just reverberates throughout the entire team.”
Long already owns World Series championship rings from the Yankees (2009) and Nationals (2019). He was also hitting coach for a Mets team that reached the World Series in 2015 before losing to the Royals.
This season the Phillies averaged 4.61 runs per game, which ranked seventh in the major leagues. It’s a lineup that included Schwarber and Harper (both of whom had Long as a hitting coach with the Nationals), J.T. Realmuto and Rhys Hoskins.
“I think the biggest thing [Long] brings is a lot of energy,” Schwarber said. “You could be feeling like crap going into the cage, you could have a bad session in the cage, but he’s going to make you feel like you’re going to go out and have two hits and have success, and that is half the battle to strengthen your mind and he does a very good job of that.”
After the Nationals began a rebuild last season, Long couldn’t resist the opportunity to rejoin manager Joe Girardi (with whom he had worked with the Yankees) as Phillies hitting coach. But with the Phillies struggling Girardi was fired in June.
“There is nothing that feels good about somebody losing their job — absolutely zero,” Long said. “It’s gut-wrenching, but we’re in a profession where we have … got to continue to grind and we have got to continue to find ways to get better and I give a lot of credit to that clubhouse. They were able to come together and basically unite as one and when people thought we were down and out they just kept going and they figured it out.”
Under Thomson, formerly the team’s bench coach, the Phillies rebounded and reached the playoffs as the No. 6 seed in the National League before beating the Cardinals, Braves and Padres in successive postseason series.
“As sickening as it was with Joe’s news I was just as happy and excited for the opportunity that Rob was granted,” said Long, whose relationship with Thomson dates almost two decades, to their days together as coaches in the Yankees minor league system. “They picked the right guy and everybody is finding that out now. He has got a nice temperament and this isn’t overwhelming for him. It’s something that he’s taken the bull by the horns and done a nice job. It’s been a lot of fun for me to see him in this capacity and what he’s done and watch the team pretty much run through a brick wall for him.”
Long was a finalist for the Mets’ managerial vacancy following the 2017 season that went to Mickey Callaway. That same offseason, Long was a finalist for the Nationals’ managerial vacancy that went to Dave Martinez.
“I was runner-up a couple of times,” Long said. “I would have done just fine in that role, but it didn’t happen and it’s not something at the end of the day where I say, ‘I need to do this.’ If somebody deems me and thinks I am the guy, maybe that opportunity arises at some point.”