October 26, 2026
Charles LeClaire/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Peter Fatse (left) will be the Phillies' next hitting coach.
Peter Fatse will be the Phillies' next hitting coach, The Athletic's Charlotte Varnes reported Monday night.
Fatse is coming in after a several-year run with the Boston Red Sox and will be succeeding Kevin Long, who developed into a persistent source of ire for a fan base that grew tired of its team's repeated failings at the plate starting in 2024 – to which the Phils never really grew past.
Long, along with infield coach Bobby Dickerson, were let go earlier this month in light of Don Mattingly returning as the Phillies' full-time manager.
Fatse was the hitting coach for Alex Cora's staff in Boston, but was fired along with Cora 27 games into this past season because of a brutal 10-17 start for the Red Sox.
Cora, notably, was a longtime favorite candidate to take over as Phillies manager in 2027 following Rob Thomson's own firing early into 2026, but passed on the job.
Fatse, though, will join the Philadelphia staff as a Cora understudy anyway, and will now be tasked with developing a smarter Phillies offense out of a group of veteran bats who have fallen back on boom-or-bust tendencies without much plate discipline for years.
Here's a look at how the Red Sox have fared at the plate under Fatse for the past several years via FanGraphs, with the rank for each category that season in parentheses:
| Season | AVG | OBP | SLG | BB% | SO% | WAR |
| 2022 | .258 (3) | .321 (6) | .409 (9) | 7.8 (18) | 22.3 (17) | 18.4 (17) |
| 2023 | .258 (6) | .324 (13) | .424 (9) | 7.9 (24) | 22.2 (19) | 14.2 (19) |
| 2024 | .252 (6) | .319 (9) | .423 (6) | 8.0 (18) | 25.4 (3) | 22.2 (11) |
| 2025 | .254 (4) | .324 (8) | .421 (9) | 8.3 (16) | 22.9 (10) | 26.5 (9) |
| 2026* | .233 (19) | .313 (24) | .354 (28) | 8.8 (23) | 22.5 (13) | 2.2 (23) |
*Fatse was fired by the Red Sox after 27 games
Fatse will be joining Mattingly, and new infield and third-base coach Carlos Mendoza (hired earlier this month), in an effort to try and redirect a veteran Phillies club back toward World Series contention after continuous years of going another step backwards on the postseason ladder – with this past time sending the Phils home quick in a Wild Card series loss to the rival Braves.
The Phillies can still pride themselves on elite starting pitching, but a seemingly always unstable bullpen, poor defense, and cold, unaware bats have repeatedly – and predictably – left them short.
The organization is going to bank on coaching being enough to fix the latter two for now, but if you've watched the Phillies for the past two or three years, then you'll know that Fatse has a lot more work cut out for him than most outside the Delaware Valley realize.
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