Though MLB players are locked out, baseball teams can sign minor-league players as well as make moves with managers and coaching staffs.
It’s one of the latter that we have for the Cubs today. The team named Johnny Washington as the club’s major league assistant hitting coach.
Washington is 37 and was the hitting coach for the Hanwha Eagles in the KBO League in South Korea in 2021. He was with the San Diego Padres from 2016-20, first as hitting coach for Double-A San Antonio. Washington spent three seasons on the major league coaching staff with then-manager and current Cubs bench coach Andy Green, serving as first base coach in 2017, assistant hitting coach in 2018 and hitting coach in 2019.