Terry Francona Encouraged With Early Results From New Hitting Coach Chris Valaika

Valaika is leading the team's hitting initiatives as the season begins, and Francona is pleased with their progress.

The Cleveland Guardians are going to break camp later this evening after a couple of split-squad games and they'll make their way to Kansas City for the season-opener on Thursday.

While the team didn't add an major impact bats to the lineup this off-season, they did make a change on the coaching staff by adding Chris Valaika to the mix as the team's hitting coach.

It was a challenging off-season to make changes to the coaching staff, considering they weren't allowed to have any interaction with the players during the lockout. But Valaika is well-thought of around the game and the Guardians are hoping that he can make an immediate impact to bolster an offense that needs to take a step forward this year.

I asked Terry Francona this afternoon on what his thoughts are around Valaika's impact on the organization so far.

He said the early returns on Valaika are really good and he's impressed by his organization. Several of the team's young players that are breaking camp with the big league club (Steven Kwan and Ernie Clement certainly among them) have had very productive spring's at the plate.

Francona also mentioned that Valaika is "running the show", but they've tried really hard to build a good team of hitting instructors and he spoke highly of the group's effort so far. The group includes Victor Rodriguez, Justin Toole and Alex Eckelman (who is assisting from the front office).

You can watch his answer in the video at the top of the page.

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