An offensive coordinator?

What is this, football?

Well, no, but that is where James Rowson’s inspiration was rooted when he suggested the increasingly common baseball title in his talks to join Tony Vitello’s Giants coaching staff.

“I always felt like the NFL had a good model for this,” Rowson said on a call with reporters Friday morning once his hiring had become official. “In the NFL, they have running backs coaches, they have wide receivers coaches — they have individual coaches for areas. But at the end of the day, they have an offensive coordinator who’s trying to put all that together. …

“It’s focused on scoring. And I feel like baseball can take a page from that.”

The job is a new one for a franchise that played its first ballgames when Chester A. Arthur was president, but it’s not unprecedented as coaching staffs swell in size around the league.

The Rangers, Padres, Angels, Mariners, Blue Jays, White Sox and Astros have all had coaches hold the position, which may be more associated with football but is a growing trend in MLB.

The Giants will have company next season in the Royals, who promoted their hitting coach, Connor Dawson, into the role while hiring Hunter Mense away from San Francisco to serve under him.

President of baseball operations Buster Posey said this week at the MLB general managers meetings in Las Vegas that it was Rowson’s “preference” to take on the more expansive role.

“Kind of what through his experience he feels like will give him the structure and chain of command,” Posey said. “To have the oversight on all run production.”

Rowson, who spent the past three seasons as the Yankees’ top hitting coach, wanted to expand his purview. Vitello, with his college background, was all for it.

If Rowson hadn’t suggested it, the Giants may have.

“It was an exact phrase I used with Buster and [general manager] Zack [Minasian] and some of the other guys at the end of the year,” Vitello said. “Really offense, defensive coordinator, at least mentality, and making sure we’re as structured as possible.”

One area of improvement from Vitello’s first year as a professional manager that came up in his discussions after the season with Posey and the front office was a clearer chain of command.

On the pitching side, Posey said the communication was “just a little scattered at times.” They addressed that by reshuffling the staff, keeping Justin Meccage as pitching coach but reassigning Frank Anderson to be the assistant from director of major-league pitching. Christian Wonders, the assistant pitching coach last year, will lead minor-league pitching development.

Rowson’s new, overarching title is part of cleaning things up on the offensive side.

“As the offensive coordinator, I need to bring together our hitting staff, the baserunning guys, myself,” Rowson said. He added, “Tony’s gonna be in charge of how all that comes together.”

Rowson, 50, oversaw a three-man hitting staff that helped the Yankees produce the eighth-most runs per game in the majors last season. He has also served as a hitting coach for the Twins (2017-19) and Cubs (2012-13), an assistant hitting coach for the Tigers (2023) and as Don Mattingly’s bench coach with the Marlins (2020-22).

“Not saying this was a downfall of Mense,” Posey said of the Giants’ hitting coach last season, who hadn’t held a top job before, “but I do think after last year, [we wanted to] hire a guy who’s been there and done the work. By all accounts, making phone calls to different people, I kept hearing the same thing over and over again. One of the better leaders they’ve been around.”

Rowson will oversee baserunning, game-planning, basically anything that has to do with touching home plate — something the Giants did less often last season than all but four other teams. They drew walks at the lowest rate in the league and didn’t put much into action when they reached base, last in the league in stolen bases for much of the year until a late uptick. 

Turning things around will take a multipronged approach. The Giants need to get more out of the veteran core of their lineup — Willy Adames, Matt Chapman, Rafael Devers — but it’s just as important for Bryce Eldridge, Casey Schmitt and other young players to continue to develop.

Rowson’s job? It’s right there in the title. It’s on him to coordinate it all.

“The hitting coach, just in the title, and I’ve done that through the years, it’s always focused on, ‘Do the guys get a hit? How many hits did they get?’ ” Rowson said. “It’s not necessarily focused on scoring runs. And offense is to score runs to win the game. …

“If you outhit the other team, it doesn’t guarantee you the win. You have to outscore them.”