The Red Sox have rounded out their 2023 coaching staff, bringing aboard Kyle Hudson — a member of the Guardians’ staff since 2020 — as their first base coach.
Hudson will also work with Red Sox outfielders. His hiring, which is expected to be announced after the new year, follows the departure of former bench coach Will Venable in November. After Venable (who’d also worked with the team’s outfielders) left to serve as associate manager of the Rangers, the Red Sox moved Ramón Vázquez from first base coach to bench coach.
Hudson had spent the last three years as a coaching assistant for the Guardians, working with outfielders and the advance scouting team. Prior to that, he’d been a bench coach for three years in Cleveland’s minor league system.
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Prior to his coaching career, Hudson, a two-sport star (baseball and football) at the University of Illinois before being taken in the fourth round of the 2008 draft by the Orioles, spent eight years playing professionally, including a 14-game big league stint with the Orioles in 2011. That cameo included Hudson scoring the tying run in the ninth inning of Game 162 in 2011, when the Orioles beat the Red Sox, 4-3, to knock the Sox out of the postseason on the final day of the season.
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According to Sanspo, newly signed Red Sox outfielder Masataka Yoshida will take part in the World Baseball Classic for Team Japan.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @alexspeier.