Bradley has hired Elvis Dominguez to replace longtime coach Dewey Kalmer, who retired after the season. Dominguez has spent the last seven years as the head coach at Eastern Kentucky, and he has recruited and coached eight players that reached the major leagues during his 18-year college coaching career. EKU produced a first-round pick this year in All-America lefthander Christian Friedrich.

“First of all, we are extremely appreciative of the tremendous run and numerous contributions that Coach Kalmer has made during his nearly three decades at the helm of the Bradley baseball program and now wish Dewey and Carol a wonderful retirement,” said Bradley director of athletics Ken Kavanagh. “We welcome Elvis and his family to Bradley athletics and hope that they have a similar long run on the Hilltop.

“We now look forward to Coach Dominguez maximizing the capabilities of our student-athletes, both on the field and in the classroom. We eagerly anticipate him building upon the solid foundation being left behind by Coach Kalmer and developing Bradley Baseball into a program that will consistently maintain a ranking within the upper echelon of the Missouri Valley Conference in our annual pursuit of the Valley’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament and beyond.”

One sign that both Bradley and Dominguez care about the right things is that Bradley’s release announcing the hire touts EKU‘s strong Academic Progress Rate (960), which is the highest in the state of Kentucky and ranks in the 80th percentile nationally. The APR is very important in the current college baseball landscape, and more programs need to take it into consideration when evaluating coaches, like Bradley did.