The attributes that made Chris Valaika the choice as Cleveland Guardians hitting coach
PITTSBURGH, PA - SEPTEMBER 14: Chris Valaika of the Chicago Cubs looks on from the dugout before a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park on September 14, 2014 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pirates defeated the Cubs 7-3. (Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
By Zack Meisel Nov 30, 2021 17
CLEVELAND — Chris Gimenez was 35 years old, stuck in Triple A and mired in a wretched funk at the plate.
“I was like, ‘What am I doing with my life at this point?’” Gimenez said.
Chris Valaika was the hitting coach for the Cubs’ Triple-A affiliate in Iowa. He and Gimenez were similar in age and had played against each other for years. They forged a friendship that 2018 season, often grabbing postgame dinners and beers and chatting about their families and futures.
Ultimately, Valaika helped Gimenez retool his swing. Valaika understood the oft-indescribable feel Gimenez was struggling to pinpoint. They swung rebar, a piece of metal weighted in a particular way that helped Valaika demonstrate where Gimenez wanted his wrists to break and where he wanted his barrel to cross the zone.
Gimenez was eventually traded to Minnesota, where he enjoyed one of the better offensive stretches of his career.
“I have him to thank for a lot of that,” Gimenez said.
Hitting coach can be a thankless job. Ty Van Burkleo once said he regularly lost sleep because rarely is every hitter in a lineup functioning at an optimal level. There’s always another leak to plug.
A member of Cleveland manager Terry Francona’s staff since 2013, Van Burkleo was the longest-tenured hitting coach in the league. But this offseason the Guardians finally opted for a new voice in the dugout and in the cages. They tabbed the 36-year-old Valaika, formerly the Cubs’ assistant hitting coach, to take Van Burkleo’s place.
Valaika appeared in 99 career big-league games. By the time he was toiling away at Triple-A Iowa in 2015, he caught “the coaching bug,” he said. He had previously trained at Sparta Science, a Bay Area-based facility that specializes in biomechanics and body movement analysis. He was interested in the advancements in data, science and technology that were becoming more prevalent in ballparks and front offices. So, after the 2015 season, he returned to UC Santa Barbara to complete his degree and serve as a coach on its baseball team, which included a strike-throwing specialist named Shane Bieber.
Pat Valaika, the youngest of the four Valaika boys — all four were selected in the MLB amateur draft — remembers his brother telling him all about force plates, the kinetic chain and other scientific subjects that coaches, players and executives have explored in recent years.
“He was learning all the new analytical stuff,” Pat said, “and next thing you know, he had it down pat. I was like, ‘Geez, that was quick.’ He puts his mind to something and he’s all in. He really doesn’t half-ass anything.”
A lot has changed in the past decade or so. When Gimenez first reached the big leagues in 2009, Cleveland’s video staff would burn DVDs for hitters to study video on portable DVD players.
“That was top of the line,” Gimenez said, ‘like, ‘We’re rolling right now. I have a DVD player in my lap!’”
Following a brief stint working in sports science and coaching athletes in the San Francisco area, Valaika, dissatisfied with office life, joined the Cubs’ minor-league coaching ranks in 2017. He ascended to the role of major-league assistant hitting coach last season in Chicago, and when Cleveland’s front office opted to change the head of their hitting instruction group, Valaika was among the targets. (They also considered Jay Washington, who, coincidentally, is expected to wind up replacing Valaika in Chicago.)
The role of a hitting coach has evolved in recent years, and the qualities teams seek in candidates have changed as well. Luke Carlin, Cleveland’s minor-league catching coordinator, played with Valaika on that 2015 Iowa team. Carlin noted “you can’t hijack experience,” but said a coach must check three boxes: the ability to connect with players, vast knowledge of the subject matter and “instructional competence.” And fueling those areas of expertise, Carlin said, are social, emotional, mental and communication skills.
“I think I learn the most from him in those lower moments,” Pat Valaika said, “when you’re kind of lost and can just talk, break it down. He’s really good at the mental side as well. Most of the time you’re struggling, it’s not even mechanical. It’s mental.”
Added Carlin: “You can just pick up any book nowadays and read the research on it, but the authenticity and selflessness that come with becoming an effective coach are really the underlining, underpinning qualities that you need. That’s how you build trust.”
Valaika spent a decade playing professional ball with the Reds, Marlins and Cubs organizations. He posted a .633 OPS in 268 plate appearances across four major-league seasons with those three teams. As his career waned, he exhausted the resources at his disposal to better equip himself for a future in coaching. When assessing the fit as hitting coach, Carlin pointed to Valaika’s experience in both major- and minor-league clubhouses, his ability to navigate relationships well and the curiosity he demonstrated in the past in learning more about the technical side of hitting.
“Those are the traits,” Carlin said, “where you’re like, ‘OK, this guy might be a really good coach.’”
When Gimenez broke into professional ball, Eddie Murray was Cleveland’s hitting coach. Murray was a first-ballot Hall of Famer with 504 home runs and 3,255 hits to his name. He introduced himself to the league with a season impressive enough to land Rookie of the Year honors. He made eight All-Star teams.
Gimenez was a 19th-round pick who had a productive first year at short-season Mahoning Valley while playing all over the diamond. Murray told a group of hitters one day during 2005 spring training in Winter Haven, Fla., to hit the ball the other way. Gimenez knew the benefits of spraying the ball to the opposite field, but he wasn’t sure how to position himself to do so effectively. Murray repeated: Just hit the ball the other way.
“And I’m like, ‘Dude … how?’” Gimenez said. “Guys who have never struggled, never had to grind, they don’t necessarily know the mentality of the person they’re dealing with. To them, it came easy. That’s why they’re Hall of Famers. You have to be able to take the information and apply it on an individual basis.”
That’s a significant point of emphasis in Cleveland (and in many organizations), on both the pitching and hitting sides. Individualized pitching plans have fueled the team’s envied pitching factory. Valaika stressed the importance of tailoring a specific plan to each hitter, “rather than just trying to throw blanket drill packages or approaches or goals” on everyone. Every player has different physical limitations, different motivations, a different aptitude and tolerance for data and technology.
“Really trying to focus on individualizing everything,” Valaika said, “if it’s the movement quality, to how we attack a pitcher. It’s all based on that one hitter.”
“No hitter is exactly the same,” Gimenez said. “You have to be able to be malleable to mix things up. You can have the same core principles. That’s totally OK, in my opinion. But to be able to execute those core principles, it’s going to be different for everybody. That’s what makes a good coach, is somebody who can take those core principles and really mold them to fit each individual player.
“You have to know your customer. You have to know how you can compute what you see from a data perspective and relate that to a player and make it so a player understands what you’re talking about.”
Valaika will oversee an especially young group in Cleveland. He has already worked with Oscar Mercado and Owen Miller for a few days in Cleveland. He also has started to collaborate with the player development staff, his assistant coaches and front office analysts in an effort to ensure “we’re all aligned with the same messaging going forward.”
“You want to go somewhere that you can really dig in and make some change,” Valaika said. “This was a great fit for me.”
