Angels News: Marcus Thames is the latest Angels coach to officially depart

The Los Angeles Angels finished in the bottom six in runs scored for the 2022 season. With that in mind, they fired hitting coach Jeremy Reed and replaced him with Phil Nevin's good friend Marcus Thames.

With Nevin gone as the team's manager, the coaching staff will have a new look in 2024. Matt Wise signed a deal to join the White Sox staff, and now Marcus Thames is on his way there too.

LA Angels will be searching for a new hitting coach following Marcus Thames' departure

This Angels offense did improve under Thames, but it's hard to know how much of an impact the hitting coach truly had. A big reason this offense improved was because the players that the team brought in were upgrades over the 2022 roster. Even a player like Shohei Ohtani who was obviously here in 2022 had his best offensive season yet.

This Angels offense at times looked great, but often was tough to watch. They were heavily reliant on the home run ball and had a lot of trouble finding ways to manufacture runs. The Angels ranked third in the AL and fifth in all of baseball with 231 home runs. That's obviously fantastic. The problem is the team also ranked 16th in runs scored. 16th isn't atrocious, but when you're fifth in home runs there's a very clear problem there.

It often felt like the Angels simply didn't have an approach when coming up with runners in scoring position. Only a select couple of players seemed capable of driving runs in when the Angels had runners at second or third, and that's a major issue. The team ranked 28th with a .236 average with RISP and 26th with a 88 WRC+ in those same spots. They were well below-average.

Had the Angels found a way to be even middle of the pack with runners in scoring position the team would've had much more success winning games. Hopefully the new manager hires a hitting coach that can really help the Angels in that area.