fresh start

Phillip Wellman will serve as a hitting coach at the Double-A level this season, but it won’t be long before the former Mississippi Braves manager is running a club again. Wellman, who was not retained after four years at the helm of the M-Braves, will work for the St. Louis Cardinals’ Springfield, Mo., team in the Texas League in 2011. Wellman was the M-Braves’ hitting coach in 2005 under Brian Snitker and in 2006 under Jeff Blauser. He did a fine job in that role, but he seemed much better suited for the captain’s chair. He won two division titles and a Southern League crown as the Mississippi manager and, more importantly, helped send a ton of players to the big leagues. The reason he was not retained by Atlanta has never been made public — it had nothing to do with his infamous blow-up in Chattanooga in 2007 — but Wellman indicated near the end of the 2010 season that he might need a fresh start somewhere else. He’d spent a lot of years in the Southern League. There’s little doubt he’d make a good major league manager; he’s just got to get his foot in the door at that level, possibly as a hitting coach. Maybe it’ll happen with St. Louis. Too bad it won’t happen with the Braves.