MIAMI — Before he became the guy who helped launch over 300 home runs in Minnesota, new Marlins bench coach James Rowson didn’t exactly “fit the Yankees mold.”
“So he came over to the Yankees when he was traded from Seattle,” Twins bench coach Derek Shelton said. “He had an earring on, and he was wearing high-top (Ken) Griffeys (sneakers). At that time, no one on the Yankees wore that. He caught on quickly though.
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“I bring that up to him all the time to dig at him a little bit.”
That was back in 1997 when Rowson was still a 20-year-old minor-league outfielder trying to make a living as a professional baseball player.
Rowson put away his jewelry, found new footwear and spent the next year in the Yankees system. He hit .152 with no home runs in 45 games.
After one more year playing in the independent leagues, Rowson’s playing days were over.
But as a coach, Rowson has helped countless others hit it out of the park.
During his three seasons as hitting coach, Rowson led the Twins from the bottom half to the top five in the majors in multiple offensive categories.
Last season, Minnesota’s “Bomba Squad” set a new major-league record for home runs in a season (307).
These days, Rowson is the guy the Marlins are counting on to supercharge their anemic offense.
“We’re going to glean as much of his experience from an offensive side as we can,” Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill said. “Without question, you get someone of his experience and ability, you’re going to take advantage of the entire package and his skill set.”
Rowson spent a few recent mornings at Marlins Park in meetings with team staffers as he familiarizes himself with his new digs.
Before being introduced to the media last week, Rowson sat in the Marlins clubhouse surrounded by empty, untagged lockers.
In a few months, though, that space will be occupied by young players the Marlins are hoping he can mold into sluggers capable of reaching the same levels of success as the ones at his previous stops.
“As a coach, his ability to develop personal relationships is what sets him apart,” Shelton said. “He has a really good feel for individual guys and individual hitters, which is what he’s been doing the last few years. The key is to find out what makes each guy tick. There’s no one way for him. It’s catering and talking to each individual hitter to find out what works with each specific person.”
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Rowson, 43, has left a mark on three of baseball’s most successful franchises.
Rowson was a ninth-round pick of the Mariners in 1994 out of Mount St. Michael High School in the Bronx. He spent four years in the minors (1995-98), one of which he split between three levels in the Yankees organization, which is where he met Shelton.
Before joining the Twins, Rowson went onto become the Yankees’ minor-league hitting coordinator for six years (2005-11) and later from 2014-16 with a brief stint in between as a hitting coach with the Cubs in 2012.
His message to players sounds simple, but it has been effective nonetheless.
“Put your best swing on the ball consistently.”
The Twins hit .270 with a .494 slugging percentage and an .832 OPS, all of which ranked second in the majors this season behind only the American League-champion Astros.
Minnesota’s 116 wRC+ ranked third overall in 2019 after finishing 18th (95) in 2016, the year before Rowson became hitting coach and when the Twins lost 103 games.
Rowson cultivated that personal approach Shelton mentioned to help some of the game’s top hitters flourish.
During his two stints with the Yankees, Rowson helped shape the development of sluggers including Aaron Judge, Gary Sánchez and Miguel Andújar.
Rowson coached Anthony Rizzo during his one season as the Cubs’ hitting coach.
And Rowson worked wonders in Minnesota.
He helped turn catcher Mitch Garver, who hit only seven home runs and hit .268 with a .749 OPS in 335 plate appearances in 2018 into the American League’s Silver Slugger at that position. Garver, 28, posted career-highs in home runs (31), OPS (.995) and slugging (.630).
Shortstop Jorge Polanco went from hitting .256 with 13 home runs in 544 plate appearances in 2017 to hitting .295 with 22 homers and drawing a career-high 60 walks in his first All-Star season this year.
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Third baseman Miguel Sanó, demoted to Advanced-A ball in 2018 after hitting .199 with an 83 OPS+, hit a career-high 34 home runs this season.
Left fielder Eddie Rosario hit 23 combined home runs in 2015-16. Rosario has hit 27, 24 and 32 in the past three seasons and hasn’t finished with an OPS lower than .800 since.
“I think it’s all about being the best version of yourself. Players have so many different strengths, and you just have to find out what you do well,” Rowson said. “You have to be comfortable in your own skin and learn what you do well. Once you do that, you start to become the player you can be every day. When you try to manipulate things or try to force things, that’s when you get in trouble.”
Shelton said Rowson did some of his best work with 26-year-old right fielder Max Kepler, who slugged a career-best 36 home runs, drove in 90 runs and hit .252 with an .855 OPS a year after hitting a career-low .224 with a .727 OPS.
“Just getting (Kepler) to be consistent and opening his mind to the kind of player he could be and just using his physical abilities and not worrying about the smaller things, I think, was a huge positive,” Shelton said.
Going inside the numbers
Improving their collective approach and elevating the ball became two key elements in the Twins’ offensive transformation under Rowson.
The Twins had the lowest ground-ball percentage (38.6) and highest fly-ball percentage (39.3) in baseball last season according to FanGraphs. They also finished with a .224 ISO (the average number of extra bases per at-bat).
The Marlins have hit the fewest home runs and scored the fewest runs in baseball each of the past two seasons since trading power hitters Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich and Marcell Ozuna after the 2017 season.
And elevating the ball consistently is something the Marlins have struggled with for some time. According to FanGraphs, Miami had the highest ground-ball percentage (48.5) and lowest fly-ball percentage (30.3) in baseball last season.
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“In a perfect world, that (fly) ball leaves the ballpark,” Rowson told The Athletic back in September. “I don’t think as much in terms of ‘hit home runs,’ but ‘consistently go up and try to put your best swing on the ball,’ and home runs tend to come from that when you execute the right way.”
The Twins also had the third-highest hard-contact percentage (41.3) behind the Dodgers and Braves and the fifth-highest home run per fly ball percentage (17.7).
Garver, for one, increased his launch angle from 12.5 to 15.3 this season, and his average exit velocity jumped from 88.8 to 91.1 mph. He finished with a 15.5 barrel percentage, which ranked in the top 4 percent of the majors per Statcast.
In 2017, Polanco’s average exit velocity (83.6) was among the league’s worst (bottom 6 percent). It shot up to 87.0 mph on average this year, and his average launch angle rose to 17.9 degrees after it dropped to 14.8 in 2017.
Twins hitters also recorded the sixth-fewest strikeouts (1,334) in the majors. Minnesota finished with the fourth-lowest strikeout percentage (20.9) in the majors and went from 25th in 2016, before Rowson arrived, to 14th in 2017 and ninth in 2018.
The Marlins, on the other hand, were 29th out of 30 teams in swinging at pitches outside the zone (34.9 percent) last season per FanGraphs.
The Twins finished 20th (32.6) and 10th in making contact (76.8 percent) on such pitches.
“We stressed to those players (in Minnesota), when you get a good pitch, hit the ball hard,” Rowson said. “That was the mindset, and you find out different players can do that in different ways and on different pitches. It’s cool as a coach when you start finding out about how these guys work together and work toward a common goal.”
Can it translate to the Marlins?
That’s the million-dollar question here, isn’t it?
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Rowson was hired to be Marlins manager Don Mattingly’s “right-hand man.”
“The back of the baseball card doesn’t lie,” Rowson said. “(Mattingly) is a guy who’s been around the game a long time, and just standing around him you learn a lot and I continue to plan on doing that. We have a passion for hitting, and it’s easy to connect on that side.”
The bench-coach role is new for Rowson, but he spent the past season picking Shelton’s brain about what it takes to succeed as a bench coach and learning about game situations from him and Twins manager Rocco Baldelli.
“During the year, we talked a lot more, especially since he had applied for a couple of managerial jobs the year before,” Shelton said. “It kind of got his mind working that way, and during games a lot this year he’d come over and ask about certain situations and about what the conversations between me and Rocco were like. He really started to think about how opposing pitchers were being used and where they should be used in the lineup.”
But one of Rowson’s primary jobs as an “offensive coordinator” will be to bring the same offensive philosophies to the Marlins.
The Marlins still face the challenge of fielding a mostly talent-depleted lineup with few serious power options at the major-league level. They also play in one of the most hitter-unfriendly ballparks in baseball.
Players who have shown consistent home run power that Rowson could potentially help include third baseman/right fielder Brian Anderson, catcher Jorge Alfaro and first baseman Garrett Cooper.
One major project could be to figure out if center fielder Lewis Brinson can finally figure out his hitting woes and become a productive, everyday major leaguer.
The Marlins are also looking to add free agents this offseason who could help offensively. Among the possibilities are Nicholas Castellanos, Marcell Ozuna, Justin Smoak, Avisaíl Garcia and Todd Frazier.
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Rowson will work with the Marlins at all levels of the organization.
Miami has beefed up its farm system, too, which now ranks in the top five in baseball according to multiple national evaluators.
Several prospects within a season or two of reaching the majors have power potential including outfielders JJ Bleday, Jesús Sánchez, Monte Harrison, Lewin Diaz and Jerar Encarnacion.
“The goal is you want to be in sync and have a pulse on what’s happening,” Rowson said. “Those guys are coming up and hopefully will be around for a long time. It’s a group effort, and I hope to be able to help and maybe get some help when they tell me about players that are coming. That way we know how to help those players when they reach the major-league level.”
(Top photo of James Rowson: Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins / Getty Images)