On Monday, the news broke that the Detroit Tigers had hired a pair of coaches to add to Ron Gardenhire’s new staff. Rick Anderson was hired out of Minnesota to take up his old post as Gardenhire’s bullpen coach. That seems straightforward enough.
The second hire is more interesting. Joe Vavra, who was the bench coach under both Gardenhire and current Twins’ skipper, Paul Molitor, was hired by the Tigers as their new quality control coach. Vavra is also the team’s first quality control coach. What is a quality control coach?
There is a growing number of teams who use that title, and the job description varies to a degree from team to team.