(Gary, IN) The Gary SouthShore RailCats have officially announced their coaching staff for the 2026 season. Returning for his first full season as Manager is Jeff Isom, Chris Jacobs will serve as hitting coach for his second year, veteran coach Kent Willis will lead the pitching staff and joining the staff is bench coach and Assistant of Baseball Ops, Owen Reith.
Jeff Isom is a native of Lafayette, Indiana and pitching at Purdue University for the Boilermakers. After graduating from Purdue he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1993. Isom would go on to pitch professionally for seven seasons and landed his first manager job with the Canton Crocodiles of the Frontier League in 2000.
Isom would manage in the Milwaukee Brewers system for six years and return to Partner League baseball in 2013 with the Lake Erie Crushers. The next season he would move to the Joliet Slammers and by 2018 he would guide the Slammers to a Frontier League Championship.
In 2024, Isom became the second manager in Chicago Dogs history and in his only season with the team they would reach the East Division Championship Series. Last season, the RailCats were 19-43 when they announced that Isom would be taking over and manage the team through the rest of the year. The ‘Cats would win 19 of the 37 games after Isom took over the job. In Isom’s career he has accumulated 1080 wins, nine playoff appearances and three trips to a championship series.
Chris Jacobs is a 37-year-old from Winson-Salem, North Carolina. When he was coming out of Robert B. Gleen High School he was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers, he would go on to play in the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals organizations. The slugger spent three years in the American Association with the Sioux Falls Canaries and Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks.
In 2022, Jacobs was hired by the New York Mets to work as the player development coach for the Mets Triple-A affiliate. He would then be the bench coach for the Florida Complex League Mets in 2023 and as the outfield coordinator in 2024. Last year, Jacobs was hired to become the hitting coach for Gary SouthShore and saw an improvement in batting average, OBP and walks compared to 2024.
Kent Willis has been in professional baseball for a while. After some great seasons at the University of Southern Mississippi, Willis was selected in the 1986 draft by the Cincinnati Reds and spent one season with the Montreal Expos farm system. Eight years after his professional career ended, Willis was back in professional baseball with the team of the 1990’s, the Atlanta Braves. The veteran served as the pitching coach in rookie ball up to Double-A and in 2007 the Braves made him the Minor League Pitching Coordinator.
Willis enters his fourth season with the RailCats and his staff last year finished with the best team ERA in the month of July (3.07). The RailCats staff penciled in a 4.48 ERA which was the lowest team ERA since 2019, had five complete game shutouts which is a mark the team had not seen since 2018, and the 1.485 WHIP was the best since 2019.
Owen Reith is the newest coach to join the RailCats ranks after a couple of seasons with the Dogs. Reith is a native of Tower Lakes, Illinois and graduated from Carthage College where he was a pitcher for the Firebirds. He pitched professionally for the New Jersey Jackals and the Charleston Dirty Birds.
Reith works closely with the Black Sox baseball club, in his time was the club they have had over 500 players signed to professional contracts. In 2023 the Dogs hired Reith to be their bench coach and head of player procurement. In the three years with the Dogs the club made it to the Miles Wolff Cup Final and advanced to the East Division Championship Series in 2024 and ‘25.
The RailCats play their first game of the season in 16 days and the home opener is a week later when they face the Cleburne Railroaders. Single game tickets are available, and fans can come away with a magnet schedule for the May 22 game. Tickets can be purchased Here!