Backfield bullpen is where Sonny Gray shows young Cardinals how good players become great
Wednesday was precisely the kind of day at spring training which set up for established veterans to be given a little grace about their work schedules.
With most of the team on the other side of the state for an exhibition game, the few players left behind at camp had a skeleton coaching staff guiding things under gray, drizzling skies. Two full weeks in, and with another to go before the team’s first planned full off day, it would be easy enough to check the necessary boxes and grab an early day at home.
The chalked-in batters boxes on either side of home plate at the first of six aligned pitching mounds in the back of the St. Louis Cardinals’ complex told a different story. If the chalk is down, Sonny Gray is going to throw, and what might have been an off day instead became a pure distillation of a work day.
Since Gray’s arrival last spring, it’s been clear that his unusual and precise work habits would require the team to work around him, rather than the other way around. If he’s exacting and particular, it’s because he believes he’s developed a routine that’s necessary for getting both his body and mind into the right state to compete.
It’s that required precision that gets word to the grounds crew to put the chalk down, just the same as it inspires journeyman catcher Gavin Collins to go out of his way to guarantee he’s not interrupting the routine. Collins has spent a full decade toiling at every upper level of baseball – from the SEC to all four professional levels to independent ball – without reaching the majors. He’s as veteran as a receiver can be without actually being a veteran, but he was there on Wednesday squatting and squinting through the rain, setting up precisely as instructed.
Miles Mikolas tossed his own bullpen session at the far end of the collection of six pitching rubbers, with Steven Matz leaning casually on a nearby handrail and providing a watchful eye for feedback. Andre Pallante bounced between the two mounds, catching the beginning of Gray’s work and the end of Mikolas’s.
The camaraderie that develops among a pitching staff shows itself in those details, each pitcher willing to learn from his teammates and receive the feedback that might give him the right adjustment for the right edge at precisely the right time of a given game.
Behind Gray sat eight pitchers, all of whom are either guaranteed to be in the majors or fighting for their spots in that group. Each was focused, watching the righty bark out counts, situations, and desired placements.
“First four down the middle,” Gray instructed, pumping in sinkers and four-seam fastballs, as well as snapping off a curve.
The backstop behind the collection of mounds provides a dream viewpoint for watching pitchers work. With the full protection of a fence, it’s possible to lean in nearly to the same point of view that a home plate umpire would have, hearing seams rip through the air and watching a pitch which is diving down and away suddenly snap back toward the inside corner, or fighting all reflexes to duck out of the way as the ball seems to be soaring directly at an unprotected face before snapping straight down into the zone.
“Good stuff, Sonny,” Collins called out to the mound after that snapped curve. Just a few pitches later, it was time for some situational work, and Gray barked out counts from the mound, adjusting as he went. Starting at 0-0, he judged his pitches fairly, though he did always end up ahead in the count – easier to do, in some ways, without fear of a bat coming through the zone.
The fear was elsewhere when Gray lifted his front leg on a simulated 2-2 pitch and suddenly lost his footing in the saturated dirt, rolling and tumbling down the mound in a fashion that instantly silenced the crowd of observers. He calmly climbed to his feet and thoroughly dug the mud out of his spikes, chit chatting about the weather as he went, and then he called into Collins, either in humor or to soften his own embarrassment, “hey, you good?”
“Yep, all good. Thank you,” Collins called back.
Of course he was. He wasn’t the one whose tumble set the season flashing in front of the eyes of John Mozeliak, who moseyed to the back himself to take in the sights of the day.
When Gray instructed Collins to set up a plastic dummy in the batter’s box, he really dialed in. By that point, he wasn’t merely calling his own pitches, but also instructing his catcher of how he wanted them to be caught. “1-2, low, let it bounce and block it,” Gray hollered in before he delivered a breaking ball. Collins followed his instructions, did precisely that, and received a satisfied grunt in return.
Gray is still at Cardinals camp because he declined to consider being moved this winter, playing his part in turning a “reset” into a “transition” by becoming an immovable object. It’s not yet clear whether that decision is durable; come July, it’s easy to imagine him having squared his head around a different reality and seeking out contention even as the Cardinals continue down the path toward cutting costs.
It’s that uncertain future that underlines the benefit of days like this sloppy Wednesday. There are no guarantees that there will be further spring trainings during which he’ll be imparting wisdom. Set to make his season debut in game action on Friday, Wednesday’s last tuneup was an excellent reminder of the exacting processes which great players feel they have to endure to make themselves great.
For everyone else, it was enough just to watch. Or, nearly everyone else – Gavin Collins, for one, certainly had to listen.
