A Major League team’s hitting coach is usually anonymous among fans unless the team isn’t hitting well, in which case even casual followers know his name.
As the Indians struggles at the plate dragged on last season, many fans learned the hitting coach was Ty Van Burkleo.
Team president Chris Antonetti decided a change was necessary. Van Burkleo was not retained. The Indians/Guardians hired Chris Valaika, who had been the Cubs’ assistant hitting coach for one season, to replace him.
Manager Terry Francona said going outside the Indians organization to find a new hitting coach could be beneficial.
“We have (assistant hitting coach) Victor Rodriguez with us, and we love Victor,” Francona said on a Zoom call. “I had to kind of think about this myself because of my age (62) — it’s not just the hitting coach, but it’s somebody leading the hitting team. I was really proud of our effort. We got after it and we interviewed some really, really good candidates and a really broad cross-section of opinions. It was really cool.
“We all felt like this is a kid that, although young and not terribly experienced, is going to be really good and seems to be really open to wanting to get better and be a learner. All the things that we value, he certainly seems to fall into that category. We try not to interview people on friendship. We try to look at qualities and then start to match up names when you get people who you ask around and you start hearing names. We tried to get people to say something bad about him. We couldn’t do it. We really tried. We dug. We just couldn’t do it.”
Valaika is 36. He had an unspectacular career as an infielder with the Reds, Marlins and Cubs, appearing in 99 games from 2010-14. He made 248 plate appearances and batted .238 with five home runs and 24 RBI.
Valaika broke into coaching as an assistant hitting coach at UC Santa Barbara in 2016 and then studied hitting data at Sparta Science near San Francisco for about 10 months. The Cubs hired him to coach in their minor league system. The Cubs promoted to their assistant hitting coach last offseason.
Valaika learned first-hand how not to coach during his time with the Marlins in 2013. He and other players were allegedly verbally abused by former Marlins hitting coach Tony Martinez. It became so toxic that Martinez resigned.
![It says a lot about Coach J.B. Bickerstaff’s focus that, even with a 2-0 series lead on the Magic, he decided to make April 23 a day for film study before returning to practice April 24. The Cavaliers scored the first basket in Game 1 on April 20 and did the same thing in Game 2 on April 22. They never trailed in either game, winning 97-83 and 96-86 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse both times. The Cavs had a better shooting percentage in both games (44.4% compared to 32.6% and 41.5% compared to 36.2%). They won the rebounding battle both […]](https://www.morningjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/TNH-L-Cavaliers2-0422-02-1.jpg?w=525 "It says a lot about Coach J.B. Bickerstaff’s focus that, even with a 2-0 series lead on the Magic, he decided to make April 23 a day for film study before returning to practice April 24. The Cavaliers scored the first basket in Game 1 on April 20 and did the same thing in Game 2 on April 22. They never trailed in either game, winning 97-83 and 96-86 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse both times. The Cavs had a better shooting percentage in both games (44.4% compared to 32.6% and 41.5% compared to 36.2%). They won the rebounding battle both […]")
