New Manager Scott Hennessey Leads 2025 Oklahoma City Comets Coaching Staff

OKLAHOMA CITY – The Oklahoma City Comets, in conjunction with the Los Angeles Dodgers, have announced the 2025 Comets field staff, led by new manager Scott Hennessey.

The rest of the coaching staff is comprised of hitting coaches Manny Burriss and Dylan Nasiatka, pitching coaches Ryan Dennick and David Anderson and bench coach Chris Gutierrez.

Hennessey served as manager of Double-A Tulsa since the middle of the 2017 season through 2024. With 455 career wins with the Drillers, he is the second-winningest manager in Tulsa professional baseball history, dating back to 1905.

In 2018, Hennessey led the Drillers to the team’s first Texas League title in 20 years. The team also advanced to the Texas League Championship Series in 2017 and 2019. Hennessey’s squads in Tulsa finished with a winning record in six of his seven seasons and advanced to the postseason four times. The six consecutive winning seasons by the Drillers from 2017-23 is the longest streak in franchise history.

During the 2023 season, Hennessey was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma and spent most of that year receiving chemotherapy treatments but returned to the dugout prior to season’s end. He is now cancer free.

Hennessey has been a member of the Dodgers organization since 2007, first serving as an amateur scout in Florida before transitioning to coaching in player development in 2017. Hennessey also has coaching experience at the high school and junior college levels and helped Cowley College in Kansas to back-to-back Junior College World Series titles in 1997 and 1998 as an assistant coach. Hennessey had a brief professional playing career with the Kansas City Royals organization during the 1990s.

Travis Barbary, who served as OKC’s manager from 2019-24, remains in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization in a roving player development role.

Burriss enters his fifth season as the team’s hitting coach and was part of the team’s Pacific Coast League Championship in 2023. In 2022, OKC set club records with 949 runs and 731 walks.

Burriss joined the Dodgers organization in 2019 as a roving hitting instructor. The Washington, D.C., native played professionally from 2006-18, including parts of seven seasons in the Major Leagues with the San Francisco Giants, Washington Nationals and Philadelphia Phillies. He played collegiately at Kent State University and was selected with the 33rd overall pick of the 2006 Major League Baseball Draft by San Francisco.

2025 marks the first season Oklahoma City will have two hitting coaches, as Nasiatka joins Burriss to guide the offense. Nasiatka spent last season with Double-A Tulsa and has been a minor league coach in the Dodgers organization since 2020. He has also spent time with Single-A Rancho Cucamonga and High-A Great Lakes.

Dennick returns to OKC after previous stops with the team as a player and staff member. He served as a pitching coach with Double-A Tulsa each of the last three seasons and was also the pitching coach for High-A Great Lakes in 2021.

Dennick pitched for Oklahoma City during the 2015 season and returned to the team as its development coach in 2018. He played for the Cincinnati Reds in 2014 and played professionally from 2009 through 2016.

Anderson moves up to the Triple-A level after spending the last three seasons with High-A Great Lakes. In each of his three seasons with the Loons, Great Lakes led the Midwest League in strikeouts and finished in the top four in ERA.

He began his tenure in the Dodgers organization in 2020 as a development coach and received his first assignment as a pitching coach in 2021 with the Rookie-level Arizona Complex League Dodgers. Anderson also has collegiate coaching experience with Muhlenberg College, Cornell University and Emory University. He served as the head coach of the Fayetteville SwampDogs of the collegiate Coastal Plain League in 2018-19.

Gutierrez is back as the team’s bench coach and third base coach for a third consecutive season. Before joining OKC, he spent the 2021-22 seasons in a similar role at Double-A Tulsa and has been a coach in the Dodgers organization since 2018. Previously, Gutierrez spent two years as a hitting coach in the Chicago Cubs’ minor league system.

His playing career spanned from 2005-13 in the Blue Jays, Angels, Dodgers and Marlins organizations, reaching as a high as Triple-A. Gutierrez is originally from Orlando, Fla., but played collegiately at Oklahoma State from 2003-05 and was named to the program’s “All-Allie P. Team of the 2000s.”

The team’s 2025 athletic trainers are Griffin Boyte and Josh DiLoreto. Boyte spent all of 2023 with OKC and split last season between OKC and Tulsa. DiLoreto completed the last three seasons with Triple-A El Paso and was named the 2024 PCL Athletic Trainer of the Year by the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society. Paul Fournier enters his fourth season as the team’s performance coach. Fournier has a total of 17 years of experience as a Major League strength and conditioning coach, including eight seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies. He’ll be assisted this season by Jose Gutierrez. Tyler Hollow will be the team’s development associate.

The OKC Comets open the 2025 season Friday, March 28 and play their home opener Tuesday, April 1. Season-ticket and group packages as well as single-game tickets are all on sale through okccomets.com. Visit okccomets.com or call (405) 218-2182 for more information.