CLEVELAND — Over a 16-year pro career that included eight different organizations and 1,860 games, only 59 of them at the big-league level, Chad Mottola became well versed in the negativity inherent to baseball.
Picked fifth overall by the Cincinnati Reds in 1992, the outfielder posted big numbers, including a .309/.359/.566 season in 2000 with 33 homers and 102 RBIs at triple-A Syracuse, which was then a Toronto Blue Jays affiliate. But he never had an extended opportunity to translate that success to the majors — his longest run being 35 games with the Reds in 1996.
Now, all the adversity he experienced is top of mind in his work with as hitting coach for the Tampa Bay Rays, who are set to play Game 4 of the ALCS against the Cleveland Guardians on Friday (Sportsnet, Sportsnet+, 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT).
“I know every night when a guy steps in the box, he's not trying to fail, he's not trying to swing at the slider in the dirt, so it's not the result that drives me,” he said. “It's the process of, 'OK, what are we evaluating and how are we going to be most prepared for the game?' The first five hours before the game, that's when it’s, OK, this is where I care about the results. When the game starts, it's more sit back and talk about what the pitcher has, I’ll tell you what he’s got, I’ll tell you what his attack plan is and what your attack plan is. Trust your work and be available.”
That simple framework has made Mottola, promoted from hitting co-ordinator to Rays hitting coach in September 2016, the longest-tenured hitting coach in the majors and an outlier in an industry churning through people for the role. Robert Van Scoyoc, hired in November 2018 by the Los Angeles Dodgers, is the only other hitting coach in the majors to begin his run during the previous decade, while 22 teams, including the Toronto Blue Jays, have changed their hitting coaches since the end of the 2024 season.
For context, Cleveland Guardians hitting coach Grant Fink took over in November 2024 while the World Series-bound Milwaukee Brewers named Eric Theisen their lead hitting coach this past January, while also adding Guillermo Martinez, the Blue Jays hitting coach from 2019-2024 before David Popkins was hired, and Daniel Vogelbach.
One veteran executive shook his head at the current turnover rate, likening it to the way teams hired and fired pitching coaches in the early 2000s, desperately grasping for a quick-fix in an offensively friendly environment. But between new technology providing hard data on everything from bat speed, angles, paths, ball-tracking and detailed body positioning, along with the growing influence of external specialists players use during the off-season, there’s no doubt the job has changed dramatically in recent years, too.
That’s why Rays manager Kevin Cash said he believes hitting coach “might be the most challenging coaching (position) in baseball given the amount of information that is out there, the lack of information sometimes and the incorrect information at times.
"And then you're also dealing with a lot of third-party hitting coaches right now. Most players and most of our players go see somebody in the off-season, and it's a lot on a hitting coach to sit there and understand the verbiage and what's being said for four months in the off-season, knowing your hitter's coming back with a thought process that might be a little bit different than what he left the season with.
“Chad is really good at connecting with the guys. He has the ability to keep it really simple when it's needed, and he's got the ability to get really in-depth when it's needed.”
All that is why continuity on the team end becomes even more important, because when things go wrong during the season, the history is there to diagnose and solve problems without wasting time on fixes that have already been tried. Stability can also change the way coaches work with players, affording them the time to build trust in attacking issues structurally without frantically chasing results to protect job security.
Mottola credits his longevity to “our philosophies with the Rays organization overall, of exploring, being encouraged to make mistakes by learning, don't stay safe all the time.”
“We know we're working with less of a payroll, so we have to find ways to win games that are not the normal way. So it's just overall, being allowed to experiment but also respect the player's space at the same time.”
The 55-year-old started his coaching career in the Blue Jays system after his playing days ended after the 2007 season, eventually working his way up to the big-league club in 2013. When veteran assistant Dwayne Murphy retired at season’s end, Mottola was dismissed after a train-wreck 74-88 campaign despite the progress made by several of the club’s hitters. He moved on the Rays system from there and was promoted when Derek Shelton, now the Minnesota Twins manager, was let go.
That period remains especially influential in his outlook on hitting.
“I always go back and give Dwayne Murphy a ton of credit for being ahead of the curve on pulling the ball in the air,” which many have since oversimplified into launch angle, Mottola said.
“He said it a lot differently, but it was me getting to witness, whether it was Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, or even John McDonald, how it changed their careers. John McDonald was not a home-run hitter, but he got more efficient to the baseball by being shorter, which means you're pulling the ball in the air.”
“This turned into launch angle, but launch angle comes from making contact out front. Now, you're going to make some bad decisions when you're always trying to catch it out front, but guys get lost when they're trying to swing uphill, which is not the goal. So I got to not only live it as a player, I got live it as a coach and observe how it changed people's careers. Cito Gaston and Dwayne Murphy were doing this far ahead of their time.”
The advances in hitting technology since have helped validate much of what he believed about hitting, while giving him the tools to better assess a hitter may or may not be doing that leads to struggle. Since it’s also such a big part of the way hitters now learn, being fluent in various metrics is essential in the communications process, too.
“It's my obligation to stay current and credit to the players, they're the ones that keep me current,” Mottola said. “Whether it's going to these gurus in the off-season, and whether it's exploring all the different independent companies and coming back with ideas and feeling things, that’s the openness that you have to have as a hitting coach now with realizing that these guys are trying to get better.”
The Rays this season were 12th in runs scored (736) but second in batting average (.258, mere decimal points behind the Brewers), fifth in on-base percentage (.326), 15th in slug (.402) and had the fewest strikeouts in the majors at 1,145. Combined with their 164 stolen bases, tied with San Diego for second, and their strong baserunning, it’s a model reminiscent of the diverse offence the Blue Jays had a year ago and tried to replicate, with less success, this season.
“You'd love to blanket a whole philosophy for a team, it's kind of worked out that our roster, this is what they excel at, is touching the ball, get on base, creating havoc, and then we have our three guys (Yandy Diaz, Jonathan Aranda and Junior Caminero) that do more,” Mottola said. “Credit to our front office that put them together, but we've also had some swing-and-miss guys that have had really productive years. So it's more of a blend of what the guy can do in front of you. What he's also willing to do. Is he willing to have a team of bats? Is he willing see some pitches to get deep in the count to help the guy behind him? Overall, it’s a good group of individuals willing to play the game of baseball the right way.”
Behind the longest tenured hitting coach in the majors, that’s carried the Rays all the way to the American League Championship Series, and possibly beyond.
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