Bill Mueller Hired As Cardinals Assistant Hitting Coach

OILERS

The most recent memory many Cardinals fans have of Bill Mueller is his .429 batting average and 8 total bases against St. Louis in the 2004 World Series.

10 years later, he joins the team he help dismember as the assistant hitting coach serving under John Mabry.

The former (2003) AL batting champ brings a plethora of bonafides to the job, after playing 11 years of Major League baseball and posting a .291 AVG and .373 OBP. The Cardinals were one of the most offensive offensive teams in the 2014 NL standings:

  • 10th (of 15) in total runs scored
  • 15th in home runs
  • 10th in slugging
  • 11th in total bases

After the crazy good 2013 season (especially when it came to hitting with RISP), the Cardinals didn’t regress to the mean as much as fall right past it en route to the bottom.

There is much room for improvement offensively in 2015.

Mueller was most recently the hitting coach for the Chicago Cubs. He resigned in October after they dismissed his assistant Mike Brumley. Here’s what he told the Sun-Times:

“My loyalty and my word are what I stand by. I thank Theo and Jed for the opportunity. They took care of Mike, allowing me to pick Mike and bring him in. I though we had a lot of success. It’s unfortunate they didn’t feel that our team was an asset. And if that’s not the case, then you have to move on and you have to go in a different direction.”

Love it.

And this was all done before the Joe Maddon hire slash Cubs managerial housecleaning that took place earlier this month. So it wasn’t a proactive move… just a dude that had his co-worker’s back.

Let’s welcome Mueller to St. Louis and hope he has some good ideas to help the Cardinals streak of NL Championship Series appearances in order.

Photo: SFGate

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