The Los Angeles Dodgers have hired Pedro Guerrero Acta as their new head hitting coach, returning the Dominican instructor to his original organization.
The 37-year-old coach takes over the offense of one of Major League Baseball's most potent lineups after Aaron Bates failed to reach a contractual agreement with management on a renewal. Bates had served as co-hitting coach alongside Robert Van Scoyoc since the 2023 season and had worked on the Dodgers coaching staff since 2019.
Los Angeles front office executives made the change to refresh the team's offensive methodology, turning to a young coach whose work produced measurable statistical turnarounds during his recent tenure in the Major Leagues.
Offensive turnaround with the Miami Marlins
Guerrero moves to California after spending the past two seasons as the hitting coach for the Miami Marlins. Under his guidance, Miami's hitters achieved significant quantitative growth, finishing the previous season among baseball's top ten clubs across multiple primary offensive metrics.
The Marlins concluded the campaign ranked sixth in Major League Baseball in on-base percentage at320, seventh in team batting average at249, ninth in hits with 1,347, and ninth in on-base plus slugging percentage with a727 OPS. Those performances stood out across the industry, proving that Guerrero could extract consistent contact and quality at-bats from an offense operating under tight payroll constraints.
In modern professional baseball, on-base percentage and OPS serve as fundamental measurements of offensive efficiency. While traditional batting average measures base hits per at-bat, on-base percentage accounts for walks and times hit by a pitch, reflecting a lineup's ability to avoid making outs. OPS combines on-base percentage with slugging percentage to gauge overall run production, making Miami's top-ten finish in both metrics a key factor in Guerrero's recruitment by Los Angeles.
Different generation from 1981 World Series MVP
Guerrero's appointment brings a storied baseball name back to Los Angeles, though team officials noted that he shares no direct connection with the former Dodgers slugger of the same name. The newly appointed hitting coach is not the Pedro Guerrero who starred for 11 seasons with the franchise during the late 1970s and 1980s.
That earlier namesake established himself as an iconic figure in franchise lore, winning the 1981 World Series against the New York Yankees and earning Most Valuable Player honors for the Fall Classic alongside teammates Ron Cey and Steve Yeager. While both men were born in the Dominican Republic and wore Dodger blue, they belong to different eras and separate families within Dominican baseball history.
The younger Guerrero possesses his own prominent family pedigree in the sport as the nephew of Manny Acta, a respected Major League coach and front office executive. Acta spent six seasons as a Major League manager, leading the Washington Nationals from 2007 to 2009 and the Cleveland Indians from 2010 to 2012, before continuing his coaching career across the league and in Dominican winter ball.
Both Guerrero and his uncle hail from San Pedro de Macorís, a city on the southern coast of the Dominican Republic that has produced dozens of Major League stars over several decades. The city is widely celebrated as one of the most prolific development centers in international baseball, having sent generations of infielders, outfielders, and instructors to North American organizations.
A decade of Major League coaching experience
Guerrero arrives in Los Angeles with an established track record in Major League dugouts, having risen swiftly through the coaching ranks over the past nine years. Before taking the lead hitting post in Miami, he served as the assistant hitting coach for the San Francisco Giants from 2022 through 2024, gaining extensive familiarity with National League West pitching.
His Major League coaching career began in the National League East, where he worked as an assistant hitting coach for the Philadelphia Phillies from 2018 to 2021. Prior to entering the big leagues, Guerrero took his first instructional steps in the lower minor leagues, serving as the bench coach for the Rookie-Advanced level Ogden Raptors during the 2016 and 2017 seasons.
In his new role with the Dodgers, Guerrero will collaborate closely with Van Scoyoc, who joined the Los Angeles coaching staff ahead of the 2019 season. Van Scoyoc gained national attention as a private hitting consultant who helped popularize modern swing path adjustments and launch-angle mechanics, transforming the Dodgers into one of baseball's most analytically driven offenses. Guerrero is tasked with integrating his own hands-on philosophy into that framework to maintain the club's sustained offensive dominance.
Full circle to his playing roots
The hiring marks a full-circle return for Guerrero, whose entire playing career was spent in the Dodgers organization. Originally signed by the franchise as an international amateur, he played eight seasons in the Los Angeles minor league system as an infielder from 2006 to 2013.
Over 483 minor league games, Guerrero recorded a236 batting average with 23 home runs and 163 runs batted in. His playing journey reached its peak during the 2010 season, when he advanced to the Triple-A level with the Albuquerque Isotopes of the Pacific Coast League, then the Dodgers' highest minor league affiliate.
More than a decade after his final game in the Dodgers farm system, Guerrero returns to take on one of the most visible coaching responsibilities in professional sports. He enters a clubhouse loaded with championship expectations, charged with directing an offense that must continually perform at an elite level through the regular season and into October.
