Mariners fire hitting coach Chambliss

The Seattle Mariners have joined the horde of teams rearranging their coaching staffs, firing second-year hitting coach Chris Chambliss, reports Greg Johns of MLB.com:

When Eric Wedge took over as Mariners manager prior to the 2011 season, one of the things he vowed to do was slow the revolving door with hitting coaches in the organization.

But on Thursday, a day after Wedge’s second season ended, Chris Chambliss was fired.

With his firing, Chambliss becomes the fourth MLB hitting coach to lose his job in the last two days, joining the Royals' Kevin Seitzer, the Phillies' Greg Gross and the Twins' Joe Vavra. The Mariners hit just .233/.294/.359 as a team in the two years under Chambliss' tutelage.

For the Mariners, Chambliss is just the latest in what has been a revolving door at the hitting coach position since 2000. Seattle's next hire for the job will be the organization's tenth since spending their first full season in Safeco Field twelve years ago.

Triple-A hitting coach Jeff Pentland -- who was brought up to Seattle the final weeks of the season to help the team's young hitters -- is Chambliss' most likely replacement. Pentland previously served as the Mariners hitting coach from 2006-08.