St. Louis Cardinals make changes to coaching staff. Find out what they are.
The St. Louis Cardinals made a subtle but impactful change to their coaching staff publicly known Friday morning with the release of their 2020 spring training media guide. Inside the inch-thick booklet were new titles for Joey Prebynski, now the run prevention coach, and Patrick “Packy” Elkins, now the run production coach.
Prebynski, who was with the organization last season, was previously styled the “major league game plan coach.” Elkins, hired to the coaching staff this winter, was originally the “major league internal player strategist.” Elkins will be a coach in uniform throughout the 2020 season and Prebynski will not, but both will travel with the team through the duration of the year.
“It’s really just simple terms,” Cardinals manager Mike Shildt explained. “Joey’s on the side of the ball that he more works with (pitching coach Mike Maddux) and (bullpen coach Bryan Eversgerd) and our baseball development group on the pitching and the defense side of the coin. That part of the ball is trying to prevent runs.”
“Packy’s assisting with obviously the offense. That includes a little bit of the base running. And so, that’s the side of the ball that wants to create runs.”
“That’s really what this game boils down to. Prevent as many as you can, create as many as you can and, you know, you need one more at the end of the day to shake hands and feel good.”
Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak said Friday he had a conversation with Shildt in late January about the ways in which the two were establishing their roles, and Mozeliak and Shildt agreed the change would be appropriate.
“I think the single simplest answer was clarity,” Mozeliak said. “When you think back to the previous titles, it left people a bit confused on exactly what it meant.”
“When you’re thinking about players looking for help or if they have questions it’s just much simpler to go to. So that was the purpose of the change. As far as really their day to day responsibilities and what they’re doing, the titles really don’t change the job description.”
That job description includes playing a major role in the organization’s winter commitment to beefing up their technological capabilities for player assessment and development. Mozeliak explained the new, portable Trackman radar systems work in essentially the same fashion for hitters or pitchers, but that there’s a difference in filtering out which data points are used in the assessment generated.
Elkins will also play a role in spring in helping minor league players utilize Blast Motion bat sensors, along with minor league hitting coordinator Russ Steinhorn and major league hitting coaches Jeff Albert and assistant Jobel Jimenez.
Elkins, Prebysnki to vet data
The Cardinals have spent the winter committed to the offensive players they have under contract in the organization, determined to see if further refinement of their skills and the provision of unfettered opportunities will provide an opportunity for a cost effective series of improvements to emerge. Rather than committing to big money player additions, bringing in new pieces of technology and hiring staff like Elkins is part of a targeted investment to generate expanded returns at the plate.
“We had been looking at ways to think about modernization throughout our minor leagues, so we were looking to really identify someone that embraced technologies and understood how to really use those technologies to teach,” Mozeliak said of Elkins.
Shildt explained a “high percentage” of the responsibilities for both Elkins and Prebynski will be in “vetting” the data produced by the new technology and finding ways to guarantee that data’s applicability on a day in, day out basis. That, Shildt explained, should help the club tailor findings more directly to specific players, providing more in-depth analysis than was available in 2019.
“We have a collective group and a team, but now we’re able to be more a la carte with our players and be more specific,” Shildt said. “They also can help guys with their preparation, their game planning.”
“They definitely are making sure that we have an understanding of what we can do and then we apply it in the simplest, most applicable terms.”
Old school style vs. modern innovation
The tension between modern innovations and old school baseball is one of the central themes of the continued creep of new bells and whistles into the professional club house.
On Friday morning, as Mozeliak was discussing a hiring process designed to bring the Cardinals fully into the 21st century, rain outside his office windows was acting to wash out the Cardinals’ plans to practice sliding into bases — practice that, likely, dates back to the 19th century.
On Thursday, prospect third baseman Nolan Gorman swung his bat with a Blast Motion sensor attached to the knob. Steinhorn stood behind the batting cage, iPhone in hand, calling out the velocity of each swing.
In that same group, slugger Tyler O’Neill strode to the plate and declared there would be “no bunting today, boys.”
The Cardinals are eager for both approaches to work. Now, with clarity, Elkins and Prebynski are tasked with finding that synergy.
