Valle Training Gloves | Brand Spotlight

If you’re going to put forth a new brand within the baseball and softball sporting goods industry, it’s best to find a niche that will set you apart from the rest of the competition.

Instead of creating another baseball glove company that shot to create high-end, performance gloves for game-use, Valle went a different route. They went all in on training gloves. They outside of the box by adding twists to existing gloves, by making hard-to-find trainers easy-to-find and by crafting what might be the greatest infield trainer of them all!

Keep reading to get the down-low on all there is to know about Valle!

A Background On Valle Gloves

John Valle is a former professional baseball player who spent over a decade playing minor league ball. In that time he accumulated over 1,000 hits and over 170 homeruns on his professional ledger. Along the way he also picked up a vast amount of knowledge on the proper way for elite ballplayers to train.

John and his son Dave have developed the Valle Shield which has vastly improved the safety for batters and coaches when they train doing close-proximity soft toss or batting practice. This product has achieved so much success that “all 30 Major League ballparks have now purchased the Valle Shield to protect both players and coaches.”

In addition to the hitting shield, the Valles also found a unique way to enter into the market of baseball and fastpitch gloves. Instead of entering the market as another company trying to sell a high-end glove intended to be used in a game, they decided the better route was to focus on training gloves. Trainers were THE product on which their focus is set.

This has allowed them to make advancements not seen before in the training glove category. And not only have they provided the gloves to help ballplayers train; they’ve also provided content to assist in instructing how Valle equipment is to be used!

As mentioned earlier, we believe they’ve upgraded existing trainers, improved the availability of other trainers and created one of the greatest infield trainers of all time. We’ll outline all of these below!

Valle's Upgrades To Existing Trainers

Two of our favorite trainers from Valle earned that status due to their craftiness in taking a concept and developing it further:

Ambidextrous Pancake Glove

Yes, you may be posing this question…"Why would a pancake glove need to be ambidextrous?"

And your question is valid. As baseball and softball players develop, there will be almost no players playing second base, shortstop or third base that throw left handed. It’s almost always going to be your right hand throwers that play second, short and third and are in need of a pancake trainer to help improve their game. 

But what about the coach of the young team that’s best athlete is a left hand thrower? Although that player won’t be playing infield (except maybe 1B) as he gets older, he can really help the squad as a 9, 10 or 11 year old by playing some shortstop. And what if he needs a little polishing on his fielding skills (maybe to develop some soft hands or work on using both hands while fielding)? Well, wouldn’t that coach benefit from having a pancake glove that could be used by both lefties and righties?

We’ll let you decide…

Shop Valle Ambidextrous Pancake

Ultra-Small Training Glove

Trainers do a great job of forcing fielders to have high intent during their training sessions. Especially as an infielder, you can start to get comfortable just using your game model at its 11.5 inch or 11.75 inch length. To add a little spice to the training sessions, glove makers have long been creating gloves with shorter lengths to help throw a variable into a player’s training regimen. 

In the near past, it wasn’t rare to see a 9 inch or 9.5 inch glove built to help infielders train. However, things got crazy when Valle developed their Eagle 7 inch training glove. We don't even carry a 7 inch youth glove at JustGloves, but Valle did the unthinkable by making one (and even more impressive is that it is able to fit an adult hand). When a player first starts using this glove, baseballs and softballs are going to be popping out with frequency. But once you get a hang of its feel, you’ll be able to zone in and have some high-focus and high-intent training sessions.

Shop The Valle Eagle 7" Trainer

The Availability of the Valle First Base Trainer 

For a while, first base trainers were a little bit of a unicorn in the glove market. You might see one being used by a big leaguer, but it could be hard to pick one up for yourself.

Not any longer though. Valle has two trainer options at first base in the 11 inch length. Similar to the tiny trainer we mentioned above, players handling first base can get over-comfortable with a giant 13 inch mitt on their hand. It’s always good to get out of your comfort zone while training. Using the smaller 1B trainers will bring extra intent back to your training regimen.

Shop The Valle Eagle 11" 1B Trainer

Valle Built The Greatest Trainer Of All Time

Did we just use hyperbole…maybe a little bit, but this glove is fantastic!

We discussed the Valle pancake model earlier and now we’re going to bring up pancakes trainers as a whole. Pancake trainers been around for a long time and have a lot of positive benefits to them, but professional infield instructor Kai Correa has pointed out that the traditional pancake glove has three big shortcomings:

1. They’re too rigid (i.e. can’t be squeezed)
2. They feature too large of a fielding surface
3. Only two-handed plays are allowed with a traditional pancake

Because of this, Valle crafted their KK training glove. The KK features more of a “soft taco shell” design according to Coach Correa and can be squeezed easily. As well, the entire circumference of this "modified" pancake is going to be trimmed down and thus it will only have a very small pocket in which a ball can be caught. The single-handed play is going to be difficult to make with the small pocket, but it is still possible due to the “soft taco shell” design. 

There is a less-padded design to this trainer so it is going to be designed for lower velocity drills. But if you can master using this “modified” pancake glove with low velocity, you’ll undoubtedly see the benefits when you switch back to using your gamer at live action speed!

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There you have it! By finding their niche in training gloves, Valle has made a quick impact on the glove market! If you have remaining questions regarding Valle Training gloves, please be sure to message our team of Glove Experts. They can be reached on phone at 866-321-458, through email via experts@justgloves.com or by LIVE CHATTING here!