Toronto Blue Jays third-base coach Luis Rivera reportedly set to retire

The first hammer of the offseason has fallen, and it’s not one that we expected.

During a hit on Sportsnet Central, Shi Davidi reportedly said that Toronto Blue Jays 3rd base coach Luis Rivera is set to retire from Major League Baseball.

Rivera, 59, has worked with the Jays for the past 13 years having joined the organization in 2010 as its manager of the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats, and worked the following year as a coaching assistant for the Blue Jays. In 2012, he was promoted to his role as 3rd base coach taking over from Brian Butterfield.

He broke into the Major Leagues as a player in 1986 with the Montreal Expos and bounced between them, the Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, Houston Astros and Kansas City Royals before putting away the bat. His best year, however, came in in 1991 when he hit .258 driving in 40 RBIs with eight home runs as the Boston Red Sox’s primary shortstop.

He transitioned to the coaching world joining the then-Cleveland Indians in 2000. He coached High-A for his first two seasons, before he took over as the manager of the Low-A Lake County Capitals in 2002 and was named manager of the year the next year.

He was promoted to the Majors in 2006 with the then-Indians as an infield coach and later first base coach, before joining the Blue Jays.

Most recently, Rivera has played a key part in helping shortstop Bo Bichette turn it around as a defensive player. As Sportsnet’s David Singh noted in an article earlier this week, Bichette had gone to Rivera looking to mix up some of the spring training drills they were doing.

Rivera helped craft new exercises that went from more stagnant types of hand-eye training to more mobile drills working on fielding and throwing at game speed.

“We were talking [recently] about how hard it was for him last year mentally that most of the errors he was making was because he didn’t trust himself,” Rivera said in the article. “He didn’t have confidence. And, now, his confidence is over the roof.”

Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@oilersnation.com.