San Francisco Giants manager Bob Melvin is adding an outside coaching voice to his major-league hitting group. And critically, that voice can communicate with the club’s Spanish-speaking players.
The team is hiring Oscar Bernard, who was part of Melvin’s staff with San Diego in 2023 and spent last season as the Padres’ minor-league hitting coordinator. Bernard, 41, essentially replaces Pedro Guerrero, who left to take a hitting coach position with the Miami Marlins.
The Giants also promoted Triple-A Sacramento hitting coach Damon Minor to join a major-league hitting group headed by former big leaguer Pat Burrell. Minor, 50, had spent the past eight seasons on the River Cats coaching staff and is familiar with virtually every position player who has come up through the system.
Additionally, the Giants announced that assistant coach Taira Uematsu will be promoted to major-league quality control coach. (The Giants lost their other assistant coach, Alyssa Nakken, to a player development role with the Cleveland Guardians, but are not expected to replace her position.)
Melvin sought to promote from within as much as possible to fill out staff vacancies created with the departures of Guerrero and Justin Viele, who left to join the Texas Rangers. But Melvin also considered it a priority to have a coach on the hitting side who could communicate easily with the team’s Spanish-speaking position players; prior to Bernard’s hiring, pitching coach J.P. Martinez had been the only fluent Spanish speaker on Melvin’s staff.
Bernard served as the Padres’ minor league hitting coordinator from 2016-22 before Melvin elevated him to San Diego’s major league staff. Bernard had previous coaching stints in the Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs organizations. Bernard had an unusual path as a player during six years in the Cubs system after signing out of the Dominican Republic. He began as a catcher and infielder before converting to the mound as a relief pitcher in 2006-07 but didn’t advance beyond A-ball.
The Giants have several promising young hitting prospects who speak Spanish as a first language and might be at a career crossroads as they seek to establish themselves at the major-league level. Outfielder Luis Matos is thriving in the Venezuelan Winter League while hitting .302 with six home runs in 42 games for La Guaira. Marco Luciano, who has been asked to convert from the infield to an outfield role, passed up the chance to play winter ball in the Dominican so he could work with his personal swing coach.
It’s easy to understand the potential impact that Matos and/or Luciano could make if they are able to turn the corner in their development. That’s what Heliot Ramos did this past season while becoming the Giants’ first drafted and developed outfielder to represent them in the All-Star Game since Chili Davis in 1986. Ramos, 25, hit 22 home runs and his 125 OPS+ was the fifth highest among NL outfielders.
Ramos credited several coaches with helping him refine his swing and approach; he worked intently with Viele over the two previous winters but also spent plenty of time with Minor over parts of four seasons in Sacramento.
Minor, whose 6-foot-7 stature earned him the ironic nickname of “Tiny” during his big-league career, starred on the University of Oklahoma team that won the College World Series in 1994 and was the Giants’ 12th-round pick in the 1996 draft. He played parts of four seasons with the Giants from 2000-04 and hit .232 with 13 home runs in 136 games. He hit a total of 179 home runs over nine minor-league seasons.
Minor’s twin brother, Ryan, also played in the major leagues with the Baltimore Orioles and was the third baseman who famously replaced Cal Ripken in 1998 when the future Hall of Famer ended the longest consecutive games streak (2,632 games) in major league history. Damon Minor mourned the loss of his brother in December 2023, when Ryan Minor died after battling colon cancer.
(Photo of Minor: Jennifer Stewart / Getty Images)
