Cubs act quickly, hire Iapoce as new hitting coach

Out with the new, in with the old?

That's what the Cubs seemed to be saying Monday when they acted quickly and hired Anthony Iapoce as their new hitting coach. Iapoce had been the hitting coach for the Texas Rangers.

The 45-year-old Iapoce replaces Chili Davis, who was fired last week after only one year on the job.

Interestingly, Iapoce is a longtime disciple of former Cubs hitting coach John Mallee, who was fired last fall after three seasons as the Cubs turned to Davis.

Mallee, now the hitting coach of the Philadelphia Phillies, is a proponent of emphasizing "launch angle" as a way of generating power and contribute to a high on-base-plus-slugging (OPS).

During the 2018 season, Cubs manager Joe Maddon took several opportunities to downplay the "launch angle revolution" and emphasize a hitting approach that focused on batters hitting line drive and using the whole field.

However, the Cubs' offense took a dive in the second half of the season. The team finished the season ranked fourth in runs scored, fifth in OPS and 11th in home runs.

During his postseason news conference after the Cubs were beaten in the wild-card game by the Colorado Rockies, team President Theo Epstein vowed to fix the problems with the offense, saying: "I've never been a part of something like this offensively, and I never want to be again."

Enter Iapoce, someone well known to the Cubs.

Iapoce was in Texas the last three seasons after spending the previous three years in the Cubs organization as a special assistant to the general manager while overseeing the club's minor league hitting program from 2013 to 2015.

During Iapoce's years in Texas, the Rangers ranked fifth in the American League in runs and fourth in home runs in that span. The 2017 Rangers became the first team in big league history to see nine players reach 17 homers in the same season.

Before joining the Cubs the first time, Iapoce spent the previous three seasons as the roving hitting coordinator for the Toronto Blue Jays (2010 to 2012). He also served as the hitting coach for the Marlins' Class A Jupiter affiliate for two seasons from 2008 to 2009.

Iapoce played 11 seasons in the minor leagues in the Brewers and Marlins organizations, as well as independent ball, after being selected by Milwaukee in the 33rd round of the 1994 draft.

Iapoce and Mallee have a working relationship that dates to 1996 when Iapoce was a minor league player and Mallee was a coach.

The Cubs hired Mallee as their hitting coach after the 2014 season, and in an interview late that year, Mallee talked highly of having Iapoce in the organization.

"Luckily, I'm going to have some help, because the minor league hitting coordinator is Anthony Iapoce, and Anthony has been with me forever," Mallee said at the time. "I coached Anthony as a player and tried to take him everywhere I went as a coach. It was interesting because when I left the Marlins, I went to Toronto and then we brought him over to Toronto as the hitting coordinator."

The Cubs had tried to hire Mallee before that, but he went to the Houston Astros as their hitting coach.

"When I turned down the Cubs job to take the major-league job with the Astros, they asked me if I knew anybody 'who runs your philosophy,' " Mallee said in 2014. "Anthony was the guy."

Getting acclimated should be easy for Iapoce. In his previous role with the Cubs, he worked in the minor leagues with several of the prospects who are on the big club now.

The Cubs say they will finalize their coaching staff at a future date.

There has been some intrigue concerning the staff. As the Cubs were getting eliminated in the 2017 National League Championship Series by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Maddon said the coaching staff would be welcome back for 2018.

But shortly after the season ended, the Cubs fired Mallee along with pitching coach Chris Bosio and third-base coach Gary Jones. Bench coach Dave Martinez, a longtime Maddon associate, left to take the manager's job with the Washington Nationals.

The Cubs said the firings of Mallee and Jones came about because of the availability of Davis and Brian Butterfield, who previously held those respective jobs with the Boston Red Sox. The Cubs also brought in longtime favorite Jim Hickey as the pitching coach. Hickey had been with Maddon in Tampa Bay.

The coaching staff purge largely was seen as a Maddon-engineered event. In fairness to Maddon, he inherited the coaching staff - except for Martinez - when he took over as Cubs manager from Tampa Bay after the 2014 season.

However, there was a good deal of collaboration on the Davis hire. Davis coached in the Dodgers organization in 2010 before Epstein brought him to Boston to coach in the minor leagues the next year. From 2012 to 2014, Davis was the Oakland Athletics' hitting coach before he went back to Boston to serve as big-league hitting coach from 2015 to 2017.