Profile: Chino Cadahia
Thursday, August 9th, 2007
After 23 years of minor-league coaching in places such as Gastonia, N.C., and Daytona Beach, Fla., Chino Cadahia finally was called up to the big leagues last year as the Braves’ bench coach. The Havana, Cuba, native is a former minor-league catcher.
How did you find yourself being the Atlanta Braves’ bench coach? Well, 23 years of coaching, you know; I did it all in the minor leagues. I started off as a pitching coach, managed for 10 years.
In the minors? Yeah, all in the minors. Started in ‘84 as a pitching coach [at Salem for the Carolina League]. Started managing in 1986 [at Daytona Beach for the Florida State League]; managed for 10 years [in Gastonia for the South Atlantic League and for the Rangers' Gulf Coast League rookie squad in Port Charlotte, Fla.] and came to Atlanta as a [minor-league] catching instructor in 1996. ‘96 to ‘97 I did that, and then I became the minor-league field coordinator in ‘98, and did that until last year [2006].
In batting practice, what do you throw these guys? How do you approach batting-practice pitching? Well, most of the time the ways these guys like to do things is the first one or two rounds they like to work the ball the other way — so you try to throw the ball middle to the outside half of the plate. And then [after the first couple rounds] of working the ball the other way, then you just start trying to throw it as fat as you can down the middle of the plate, and let them decide what they want to do with it. Every hitter is different. At this level most of the hitters have been around, so they know exactly what they want to do. You know, [Edgar] Renteria for instance, he works the ball the other way consistently; every once in a while he’ll ask to throw him a few inside so he can turn on it. Chipper [Jones] likes to work the ball the other way for the first couple rounds and then he’ll start hitting the ball gap to gap. Andruw [Jones] is the same way, you know; [Brian] McCann likes it the same way. So you pretty much, in general … they’ll ask you where they want the ball according to what they want to work on during any specific round.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
