Correcting Cardinals pitching problems isn’t only about the arms, but about their approach
Sonny Gray was fishing on Kyle Farmer’s property in Valdosta, Ga. with his sons Gunnar, 8, and Declan, 5, when John Mozeliak called with hopes that he wasn’t too late to get in touch with the then-free agent, who said he was “deep into negotiations” with other teams.
Valdosta is approximately halfway between Gray’s Tennessee home and the St. Louis Cardinals’ complex in Florida, and Mozeliak was hoping to push him the rest of the way.
That first conversation impressed Gray, he said, because Mozeliak asked questions and seemed genuinely interested in his answers. It also revealed a great deal about some of the shortcomings at the center of last season’s pitching free fall.
“He went down the pitching department and the people that were here,” Gray recalled, “and I said, ‘well, what about this? Do you have a guy for this, and this?’ And he’s like, ‘no, tell me more about that.’”
He signed soon after, and within weeks, the Cardinals made two additional hires to their Major League coaching staff whose focus will be in the precise areas where Gray made his inquiries. Hardly a coincidence.
Dean Kiekhefer joins the staff as an assistant pitching coach, and Daniel “DC” MacLea was added as major league coordinator of technology and systems. Both are internal promotions with responsibilities which are new to them but not precisely new to the team’s structure.
Kiekhefer’s duties are expected to largely mirror those which were handled by Dusty Blake as a pitching strategist and assistant to Mike Maddux before he was promoted into Maddux’s former job, with a special emphasis on identifying and correcting pitch tipping. That area is one where the Cardinals frequently felt exposed in 2023, exacerbated perhaps by pitchers feeling rushed by the new pitch clock.
“[Kiekhefer]’s been a big guy there for me going through these different levels,” said prospect pitcher Tink Hence, who worked with him at Low-A Palm Beach and throughout his years in the system. “It’s good to have him there to just kind of watch over you.”
MacLea’s technological and video responsibilities – he attended the Winter Meetings and sat in on the MLB-organized seminars for video coaches – recall those of Joey Prebynski, who worked in an analyst role for the Cardinals before leaving for a promotion with the Los Angeles Angels ahead of the 2021 season.
His role has not been directly filled since, with the Cardinals instead dividing responsibilities among Blake and game planning coach Packy Elkins, whose beat has bounced back and forth between hitters and pitchers over the last three seasons. Now, with focus, purpose and broader bandwidth, the intent is for preparation to recover to its previous levels.
“I think there’s lots of things that we can take away from last year, and I think we all have to do a little self reflection on what that looks like,” Mozeliak said.
Later, in describing the team’s decision-making process, Mozeliak acknowledged “a little bit of arrogance” that he felt may have hindered finding optimal outcomes. That’s true in player procurement but also applies to pitching development and coaching.
At the winter meetings, he described a team that had grown comfortable with the role its starting catcher – Yadier Molina – had in handling the pitching staff, and a team that perhaps had not realized how far it had fallen behind the standard.
Even if his conversation with Gray hadn’t resulted in a successful signing, it seemingly would have been worth having for its impact in opening the organization’s eyes to those shortcomings.
“I really appreciated Mo’s willingness to do that,” Gray said of the team’s eagerness to respond to his coaching inquiries with actions. The incumbent pitchers, as well, anticipate seeing a difference.
“The coaches work so hard, day and night, more than we even see a lot of the time.” Andre Pallante said. “Having a third coach will definitely help kind of split up that work so they can be a little bit more attentive to what we’re doing and they’re not so spread thin.”
Kiekhefer was also Pallante’s pitching coach during his 2021 stint in the Arizona Fall League and, as it turned out, his catch partner after Jordan Hicks made only an abbreviated stop there. It was there where Pallante saw first hand his skill for making quick adjustments with his eyes and transmitting that knowledge to pitchers in real time – a particularly valuable skill considering the areas where the Cardinals felt they lacked last season, and one that Kiekhefer displayed during his brief stint as a guest on the Major League staff toward the end of the year.
“A lot of the stuff that’s the way baseball is going is, you know, let me look at the machine and let me look at this and kind of tell you through this whether something is good or not,” Pallante explained.
“I think [quick adjustments were] something that he was definitely focused on and he brought up to some guys, so having him around the whole year I think is gonna really help.”
That is the model Gray, among others, requested, and it’s the one the Cardinals believe they must correct toward to prevent a bad blip from becoming a worse trend.
