TORONTO – Already through one big-league debut as a player, Matt Hague is getting ready for another as a coach, returning to the majors eight years after his last game there with the same team – the Toronto Blue Jays.

There’s been plenty of life from then to now for the 38-year-old. A season in Japan. Two more years in the minor leagues, filled with detailed note-taking and the introspection typical of athletes facing the end of their playing days. The arrival of daughters Lydia and Julia, with wife Erica. A pro scouting fellowship with the Blue Jays. And three years coaching in the organization after the lost COVID summer of 2020, leading to his recent promotion.

The many lessons picked up along the way will be poured into his new job as an assistant hitting coach, working alongside Don Mattingly, in the newly created offensive co-ordinator role, returning hitting coach Guillermo Martinez and returning assistant Hunter Mense.

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And just like when he broke through with the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 7, 2012, Hague is full of anticipation about his looming return to the majors in a new role.

“Both of them, you’re excited, but as a coach, it's trying to understand from a holistic perspective, how can I bring value to a team,” Hague says over the phone. “You're doing that as a player, but it's a different lens, as in how can I contribute myself and where do I fit into this. The emotions as a coach, you're trying to see where you can really help the whole thing.”

Doing that will be a focal point for the entire coaching staff, which includes three other newcomers in associate manager DeMarlo Hale, third base coach Carlos Febles and mental performance coach John Lannan. While the Blue Jays aren’t finished adding from an off-season market nowhere near resolved, the club’s success this year may very well hinge on rebounds from key players who had down seasons in 2023.

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Though Hague played in only 43 big-league games over his 11 years of pro ball, he got time in with both the wild-card-winning Pirates in 2014 and the AL East champion Blue Jays in 2015. Those experiences came at a time when he began to see “the light at the end of the tunnel” on his playing days, which led him to focus on being ready for whatever opportunity came rather than fixating on whether he’d ever get real run to prove himself in the majors.

Hague had what he considers his best year in ’15, when he hit .338/.416/.469 in 136 games for Buffalo, and that season turned out to be a formative one for his thinking. “The stuff I learned about myself, how I move, what I can cover, what zones I can hit are things that I take into my coaching today,” he explains. “I learned how to succeed at the plate more and more consistently.”

Injuries, however, kept him from putting that knowledge to the test afterwards. He signed with the Hanshin Tigers in 2016, eager for a bigger role on a bigger stage, but managed only 65 games, posting a .783 OPS. He was healthier in 2017, playing 136 games with Rochester, Minnesota’s triple-A affiliate, but recognized “that my body was breaking down.” In 2018 he played 45 games in the Washington and Seattle systems before it was onto his fellowship with the Blue Jays.

“During those times, I was trying to be observant and write stuff down and continue to learn,” says Hague. “I was hyper-conscious of everything. The awareness of what goes into daily prep, paying attention to teammates, how they move athletically, how their swing is, what their plans are. I'm not saying I wasn't before then, but I was more conscious of it. Ultimately that time led to some of the stuff that I try to emphasize as a coach now.”

For example, one note Hague remembers vividly is this: “Rear side of body, athletic movements from a more simple position.” Since he wasn’t “a hyper-athletic, controlled, stable mover” who “had to compensate to make it work,” he closely watched the varied movement profiles of successful hitters and banked the information.

Over time, he began to “put an emphasis on certain qualities and you start to see certain consistencies in guys that have success.”

Such deep dives into hitting minutiae “is a blessing and a curse,” Hague says, as “I've also wasted a lot of time going down rabbit holes. But I guess that's just the way my brain works.”

Knowing that, a trait that’s served him well as a coach is an ability to share information in a way that doesn’t drag a hitter down into the rabbit hole with him. The results have been evident during two years as hitting coach at double-A New Hampshire and last year with the Bisons.

Ernie Clement, who had his best season at the plate in 2023 with a .944 OPS in 72 games at Buffalo and an .885 OPS in 30 games with the Blue Jays, counts himself among the success stories, saying last August his improvement “was a testament to Matt Hague.”

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Not one to dig deep into data – “I'm a go play, just try to help the team win guy,” he says – Clement knew he needed help not in making contact, but with making better contact and connecting with the ball at better angles.

Hague suggested some specific drills, along with targeted tee and flip work, Clement bought in, and before long an improved swing path started generating better results.

“I don't really like to look at the numbers but all of a sudden, I looked up one day and my numbers were somewhere that they've really never been,” recalls Clement. “Matty was like, ‘Dude, you're starting to really elevate the ball, your groundball rate is down, line drive rate is up.’ And I was like, ‘I just want to hit the ball hard and hit it on a line.’ …

“It was not a pretty thing to watch me hit the last couple of years,” Clement adds. “Hats off to him. He was amazing.”

The approach with Clement is reflective of the way Hague works with hitters. Rather than seeking major changes, or adjustments for points of weakness, he instead prefers to look to accentuate strengths. He might show a player some objective data and then connect it to video, so it’s not just numbers on a page. He listens for feedback and then determines the next steps based on player reaction. He understands that hitters are protective of their swings and their approaches. He was the same way as a player and stresses that “you don't want to shift that perspective of how they feel about themselves.”

“These guys are so athletic and they move in different ways, so it's more trying to help guide them,” continues Hague. “I know what it's like to have my brain filled with a lot of information. Some guys can handle it. Some guys can't. I don't want to fill their brains with stuff that can cloud them. I want to emphasize their strengths and bring them out more often. They've shown times when they can be great and it's trying to bridge that gap and trying to sustain those periods or understand during those times what happened, what were they doing well, and then referencing it to where they're at that given moment.”

In doing so, Hague’s earned himself a return engagement with the Blue Jays, lessons from his last time up being put to use in the here and now.

Hague earns Blue Jays return as assistant hitting coach by drawing from playing days

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