Padres appoint three new hires to its coaching staff

The Padres are expected to hire Bob Henley, Ryan GoinsAnd Kevin Plawecki to the team’s renewed technical staff under new manager Craig Stamen, Dennis Lin of athletics reports. Henley will coach third base, Goins will be an infield coach and Plawecki will transition from a minor league catching instructor for the Padres to a new role as the major league catching coach. First base coach David Macias will return to his role, and Nick Punto will also return to San Diego’s staff for a second year in an unspecified role.

Henley (who turns 53 in January) has spent nearly his entire baseball career in the Expos/Nationals organization, with the exception of one game with the Pirates’ A-level affiliate in 2002. Selected by Montreal in the 26th round of the 1991 draft, Henley spent his first seven professional seasons playing in the Expos farm system, with his only 41 career MLB games coming in a Montreal uniform in 1998. Elbow problems then essentially ended his career. career, and Henley went on to spend 11 years as a manager and field coordinator at the minor league level for the organization, bridging the Expos’ move to Washington.

Henley was promoted to the third base coaching job for the start of the 2014 season and spent the next eight seasons in the role before moving to a player development job at the end of the 2021 campaign. Henley briefly returned to the coaching staff last July as Major League field coordinator, as the Nationals had to make some staff changes after Davey Martinez was fired as manager.

Stammen pitched with the Nationals from 2009 to 2015, so there is a lot of familiarity between the Padres skipper and his new third base coach. Plawecki is also familiar to Stammen due to their shared time in San Diego, and Plawecki’s brief time as a player in the Padres’ minor league system. Goins has no past ties to Stammen or the Padres, but he is no stranger to SoCal, having spent the past two seasons on the Angels’ coaching staff.

Goins is a veteran who spent eight Major League seasons (2013-2020), primarily with the Blue Jays. Despite a lack of hitting, Goins’ sturdy glove helped him carve a niche for himself as a part-time player, and he will now look to impart his defensive wisdom to the Padres’ infielders. Goins served as the Angels’ infield coach in 2024 and 2025, though he was promoted to bench coach last June in the wake of Ron Washington’s medical leave. Bench coach Ray Montgomery became Halos’ interim manager, leaving a vacancy in the bench coach position.

Plawecki also played eight seasons in the Majors (2015-2022), spending most of that time in a backup and part-time catcher role with the Mets and Red Sox. He played two more seasons in the minors, and after spending 2024 with the Padres’ Triple-A team in El Paso, he retired to take a new job as an instructor for the Arizona Complex League club in San Diego.