Rutgers has a winning problem.

With the hiring of softball coach Kristen Butler and gymnastics coach Umme Salim-Beasley, athletics director Patrick Hobbs has signaled his blueprint for change.

Both are young coaches who demonstrated program-building ability at their prior stops and now take over programs that have underachieved in recent years, replacing long-tenured coaches whose contracts Hobbs declined to renew. They also come to Rutgers after Hobbs raised the bar for compensation at their positions.

Butler and Salim-Beasley signed four-year deals that will pay them a higher base salary than their predecessor, according to contracts obtained by NJ Advance Media through Open Public Records Act requests.

Butler will be paid $100,000 plus incentives in her first season, while former softball coach Jay Nelson made $92,908 in 2017 according to university payroll records. Salim-Beasley will make $95,000 plus incentives after former coach Louis Levine earned $86,521 in 2017.

It's all part of Hobbs' department-wide effort to change the culture (while acknowledging it will take time) and raise expectations across the board following a 2017-18 academic year that saw Rutgers athletics post an overall winning percentage of .234. The hires also send a clear message: Hobbs won't hesitate to make changes, particularly when a coach's contract is up, if a program is not where he expects it to be.

"No one is satisfied with the current winning percentages,'' Hobbs told NJ Advance Media in a recent interview ahead of Rutgers' four-year anniversary as an official Big Ten member, "but it's not a short-term fix."

Salim-Beasley was familiar to Rutgers due to her time as the Scarlet Knights' assistant coach and recruiting coordinator before being named head coach at Temple, but Butler had no ties to the school. Her success turning around a perennial cellar-dweller at Toledo in four years - the Rockets' 35-23 finish in 2017 was their first winning season since 1996, and their shared Mid-American Conference West Division title the first league title since 1992 - and what one university official said was a stellar on-campus interview secured her the job.

"I can't speak to the past, but winning matters to me. It matters when you're making investments, when you're providing resources and doing things differently. It's really hard to have expectations of a coach where they go into a competition with one hand tied behind their back. So we're making some of those investments now, and you can have expectations," Hobbs previously said.

"I think coaches need to be pushed. You need to sit down and map out the strategy you have and the goals for the year. Coaches can't enjoy losing. So if you can work with them to develop a plan, a strategy and the type of investment that's going to produce winning, that's why they're coaching. They expect to be judged. They expect to be evaluated. I think they're welcoming that frankly."

James Kratch may be reached at jkratch@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JamesKratch. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.