Cubs Reportedly Reworked Hitting Coach John Mallee’s Contract to Keep Him
Shortly after word circulated that Cubs assistant hitting coach John Mallee was being considered by the Mets for a role on their coaching staff, it was reported that Mallee had withdrawn from consideration and would remain in Chicago. Mallee would have been the second member of the team’s hitting infrastructure poached by the Mets in the last year, with Rachel Folden having departed last November. Rather than lose the longtime coach, the Cubs reportedly restructured his contract to keep him from seeking greener pastures.
Folden worked closely with Pete Crow-Armstrong in the first offseason following his trade to the Cubs, and Mallee is credited with helping the young outfielder achieve superstar status this season.
“Earlier in my career, I think I definitely let that be something other than it was,” PCA shared with reporters back in June. “I think it was [John Mallee] that had the conversation with me, but in those moments, every bit of good energy is behind you. So seeing it like that, where I think earlier that made me a little nervous.
“I felt like I had to instead of I get to go his in this really cool moment with this crowd of 40,000 pulling for me. And I think I’m just learning how to use that to my advantage instead of making me shake in my boots when I’m up there and wanting to get the job done so badly.”
This next season will be Mallee’s fifth in his return to the Cubs organization after serving as the hitting coach under Joe Maddon from 2015-17. Perhaps more than any of their counterparts across various sports, hitting coaches are hired to be fired. Mallee was perhaps a victim of his team’s success, as he was booted in favor of Chili Davis after presiding over the most successful run of Cubs baseball anyone alive had ever seen. Talk about being careful what you wish for.
That was a weird time on the North Side, as a coaching shakeup signaled the beginning of the end for Maddon and the championship core. In addition to Mallee, the Cubs opted not to renew pitching coach Chris Bosio‘s contract. They also saw bench coach Dave Martinez leave to manage the Nationals, while assistant hitting coach Eric Hinske — a holdover from Rick Renteria‘s staff who convinced Anthony Rizzo to crowd the plate — left to take the lead hitting role in Anaheim.
Having Jed Hoyer in the front office through all of that made it all the more interesting for Mallee to be brought back, even if it was initially as the hitting coach for Triple-A Iowa. The Chicago native was promoted back to the big club when Craig Counsell took over as manager, and Mallee’s ability to blend analytics with common-sense baseball logic has helped him to gain buy-in from players of all dispositions.
It’s not enough to simply have a strong grasp of modern hitting science or to be a really good dude who players like being around. The best coaches are those who can communicate the data in a way players can best digest it, whether that’s simplifying it or being able to do a deep dive into the most granular metrics. Mallee’s superpower, however, may be his ability to set his ego aside in order to do the work.
Pride might have kept other coaches from returning to an organization that sent them packing the way the Cubs did with Mallee. Then there’s the willingness to admit that you don’t know everything, and that personalizing your approach to each player is far more effective than clinging to a system that you believe works just because it has in the past. And sometimes it’s not about the numbers at all, as we heard from PCA above.
I’ll close here with a quick anecdote about Mallee that some of our OG readers might appreciate. During his first stint with the Cubs, I wrote about how fans calling for the hitting coach to be fired were pointing fingers in all the wrong directions. That drew the ire of an unhinged individual named Augie Gonzalez, who claimed to have played with Mallee in the minors. Of all the comments we’ve ever gotten across multiple platforms, his were easily the wildest and most offensive.
The entertainment factor eventually devolved into something that was borderline frightening, but Gonzalez eventually went away after being blocked several times. I wrote about the whole thing in a lengthy Medium post that spurred several people to reach out to me with similar stories about Gonzalez harassing and/or conning them and people they knew. I got to relay that story to Mallee after a panel at Cubs Convention back in January, and he shared that Gonzalez was indeed a very strange person.
Anywho, Mallee’s return to the home dugout at Wrigley means there’ll be a good deal of continuity in Counsell’s coaching staff. Pitching coach Tommy Hottovy and assistant pitching coach Casey Jacobson have reportedly been retained as well, and there hasn’t been any buzz about bench coach Ryan Flaherty being courted by other teams. At least not yet. This might not be good news for those who believe Hottovy implemented the pitch lab all on his own or that Mallee is the reason the Cubs didn’t hit in the postseason, but it’s helpful for a team that has a lot to do on the player personnel side this offseason.
