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ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers on Wednesday named Tommy Joseph major league hitting coach on Rangers manager Skip Schumaker’s staff for the 2027 season.
Joseph, 35, was an assistant hitting coach with the Seattle Mariners in 2024 and with the Baltimore Orioles in 2025. In Arlington, he will work alongside Rangers lead hitting coach Justin Viele, who enters his third season with the club.
Joseph takes over the major league hitting coach title that Alex Cintrón held in 2026.
Alex Cintrón Steps Back From Full-Time Role On Texas Rangers Staff
On Nov. 2, the Rangers announced that Cintrón would not return to the major league coaching staff in 2027 and would remain with the organization in a different role. Assistant pitching coach Dave Bush will not return either. The club does not plan to fill Bush’s spot.
Cintrón joined Texas before the 2026 season after nine seasons on the Houston Astros coaching staff, including seven as Houston’s hitting coach from 2019 to 2025. Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young spoke with reporters the day of the announcement.
“This was a choice Alex made to balance what’s best for him at this point,” Young said, according to MLB.com’s Kennedi Landry.
Young said Cintrón would continue working with the major league hitters and throughout the farm system. The Rangers hated to lose him as assistant hitting coach, he said.
Young also said that day the Rangers were interviewing for the assistant hitting coach position under Viele and that every candidate to that point had come from outside the organization.
Tommy Joseph Played In Rangers’ Farm System In 2018
Over two major league seasons with Philadelphia in 2016 and 2017, Joseph hit .247/.297/.460 with 43 home runs and 116 RBI in 249 games.
A Phoenix native, Joseph was a second-round pick of the San Francisco Giants in 2009 out of Horizon High School in Scottsdale, Arizona. He came up as a catcher, and San Francisco traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies on July 31, 2012. Multiple concussions moved him to first base in 2015.
Philadelphia designated Joseph for assignment on March 12, 2018. On March 19, the Rangers claimed him off waivers. Texas designated him for assignment 10 days later, and he accepted an outright assignment to Double-A Frisco after clearing waivers. He never appeared for Texas in the majors but played 91 games that season between Frisco and Triple-A Round Rock, hitting .284/.351/.533 with 21 home runs and 70 RBI.
After his year in the Rangers’ system, Joseph played for the LG Twins in South Korea in 2019 and Team Texas in the Constellation Energy League in 2020. His playing career ran from 2010 through 2020.
Joseph got into coaching in 2021 as lead hitting instructor for Single-A St. Lucie in the New York Mets organization. Two more minor league stops followed, at Double-A Binghamton in 2022 and High-A Eugene in the Giants system in 2023, where Eugene hit 140 home runs in 132 games, second in the Northwest League.
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