Astros steal key Guardians coach, promote him to 'director of hitting'

Although the Guardians’ pitching factory is regarding as one of the best pitching labs in MLB, it turns out there’s at least one organization that likes their hitting approach too, 

On Sunday, the Houston Astros announced they’d hired Conner Watson as their new director of hitting after he had spent the past two seasons working as the Guardians’ assistant director of hitting development. 

Watson’s hiring would be a big deal regardless of when it happened, but it holds a bit more significance given the Astros are still working on hiring both a general manager and manager. So, instead of giving their two new leaders a blank slate, the Astros decided to prioritize adding Watson ahead of hiring both those positions. 

Watson may not be the biggest name on the Guardians’ coaching staff, but he’s one of the numerous coaches working behind the scenes that help tweak and mold players so they can have big league success. He’s going to be filling a void that opened up last August when former Astros director of hitting Dan Hennigan left Houston for a job at the Wake Forest coaching staff. 

The Astros dipped into the Guardians' coaching staff to fill their director of hitting position

Watson’s hiring is the second big hiring for the Astros, as they also added Spencer Medick as their director of pitching earlier. 

The Astros are one of baseball’s more cutting edge organizations (some would say too cutting edge), but they’ve regressed over the past couple seasons. That regression led to them firing general manager Dana Brown while also choosing not to retain manager Joe Espada. 

Whoever the Astros hire in those roles are going to have their work cut out for them with an Astros lineup that has some good but also just as much bad. Any conversation about the Astros lineup begins and ends with MVP candidate Yordan Alvarez. 

He put up another generational season that concluded with him finishing 2026 with a 1.033 OPS with 42 home runs and 106 RBI, but he was the only member of the Astros to finish 2026 with 100+ RBI and 30+ home runs. Sounds a lot like the Guardians’ lineup. 

That said, Houston finished the year with an 81-81 record and “won” the American League West, but their flaws got exposed on the national stage when the Chicago White Sox swept them in two games in the American League Division Series. 

This offseason is going to be one of the weirder ones in recent memory, but it seems like it’s going to be a busy one for the Astros since they’re going to need to add at least one more power bat and at least two more starting pitchers. 

It remains to be seen if the Astros are going to stand in the Guardians’ way in the American League in 2027, but we know that their season is going to have some kind connective tissue to the Guardians. 

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