Cubs' Bosio will make sure pitchers won't get pushed around

You might notice a little something different about the Cubs' coaching staff this year: an edge.

Pitching coach Chris Bosio was a hard-nosed competitor who wasn't afraid to come up and in during his days on the mound while with the Brewers.

First-base coach Dave McKay was a longtime coach under Tony La Russa, who could be prickly even when he woke up on the right side of the bed.

Coaches go mostly unnoticed unless Cubs fans are booing the pitching coach or throwing up their hands over the decision of the third-base coach.

But the new management team made some key changes to the staff for this year while retaining some longtime holdovers.

From the early days of spring training, it looked like manager Dale Sveum and his crew had put the “coach” into coaching, with intense workouts and lots of instruction.

So, put us in, coach.

The new guys:

Bosio made no secret of what his approach would be when asked about it at the Cubs convention in January.

“We're going to be aggressive over the plate in the zone,” Bosio said. “We might knock a couple guys down in between.”

Of course, that drew a lot of applause from the fans, who've rarely seen that philosophy smartly applied in recent years, save for lefty Ted Lilly. Cubs pitchers have hit 18 batters during 21 Cactus League games. Some of that may be because of wildness, but some may be on account of some “effective wildness.”

McKay worked with La Russa in both St. Louis and Oakland. Sveum has stressed the Cubs playing the game right, and McKay talked of mental errors becoming a thing of the past.

“All we can do is tell you that we are here to do something about it,” McKay said at the convention. “We are going to do our best. It's not going to be something where you see it being ignored. It's not going to happen. You've heard that before. All you can do is trust us that it is not going to happen. It is not going to happen.”

The Cubs have spent much more time instructing their catchers this spring. New bench coach Jamie Quirk worked behind the plate as a player. In addition to coaching catchers, Quirk will be Sveum's right-hand man on the bench.

The holdovers:

There had been speculation about the future of high-priced hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo, who is entering the final year of the three-year contract he got from former general manager Jim Hendry.

But Jaramillo is highly regarded in the game, and he has been enlisted by the new management team to author the parts of the new “Cubs way” manual on hitting.

I've found Jaramillo to be the best interview among Cubs hitting coaches since the days of Jeff Pentland because, like Pentland, Jaramillo can articulate his ideas and philosophies in such a way that even the layman can understand them.

There's no doubt Jaramillo has a big task at hand. First baseman Bryan LaHair still needs to prove he can hit major-league pitching over the course of a long season. Third baseman Ian Stewart had no homers last year with Colorado and he still has been hampered by wrist issues this spring.

Pat Listach moves from the bench to the third-base coaching box. Listach, another hard-nosed guy, will work with infielders. Lester Strode, a longtime organizational coach and pitching instructor, returns as the bullpen coach.