Don Long, hitting coach

John Russell continues to round out his staff and this time it's with another name from the Phillies organization: new hitting coach Don Long. He's been the Phillies minor league hitting instructor since 1999, which means he's worked with a lot of the guys who made up one of the best offenses in baseball this year in Philadelphia. Of course, Gerald Perry was thought of as one of the best hitting coaches in baseball before he came to work for Lloyd McClendon's staff. After all the talk of remodeling the team after the Indians, Long is the third member of the coaching staff (after Russell and Varsho) to have spent significant time in the Phillies organization. That might be meaningless coincidence, but I kind of doubt it.