TJ Bennett enters his second season as an assistant coach for the Redbirds. Bennett brings six years of professional baseball experience as an infielder, most recently spending the 2019 season with the independent Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks where he was named an American Association All-Star.
An alum of the University of Utah, Bennett reached Triple-A in the San Francisco Giants organization in both 2016 and 2017, and was named the Giants’ Organizational Defensive Player of the Year in 2016.
Upon his hiring, Bennett said, “I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to begin my coaching career at such a great university. I have the utmost respect for Steve Holm and am looking forward to learning from and working with him and his staff. I have heard nothing but great things about the young men on this team and am excited to get started working with them. I hope to add to the already positive environment and winning mentality in place with the Redbird baseball program.”
The Mesa, Arizona, native has played in several different levels of independent, affiliated, and foreign professional baseball throughout his career, including four seasons with the Brisbane Bandits of the Australian Baseball League. Bennett led the league in home runs during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons and helped the Bandits to four ABL championships during his time abroad.
Bennett began his professional baseball career playing with the Frontier League’s Gateway Grizzlies in 2014 and Schaumburg Boomers in 2015. He was signed by the San Francisco Giants in March of 2016 and spent the next two-and-a-half years playing on affiliated minor league teams within the Giants organization, including call-ups to the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats in both 2016 and 2017.
Upon Bennett's hiring, Coach Holm said: “We are pleased to welcome TJ to the Redbird baseball family. I played for his father in the minor leagues when TJ was a little kid shagging fly balls in the outfield. I have watched him grow as a person and as a player ever since. He has gone on to have a quality career as a player, reaching as high as Triple-A. When he expressed to me that he felt it was time to hang up his spikes and start helping out the next generation of baseball players, I knew we had to add him to our team.”
Bennett began his collegiate career at Oral Roberts where he was named All-Summit League second team and a Louisville Slugger Freshman All-American during the 2011 campaign. He spent his sophomore season at Mesa Community College, earning all-region honors while posting a .331 batting average over 52 games. He finished his final two seasons at Utah, where he slashed .258 in a combined 94 games played.
