The Cardinals Way

by Howard Megdal

  “He was alongside the top high school players on every draft board,” Kantrovitz recalled. “He slipped to the second round, and my guess is all assumed he was unsignable. Because of his relationship with [Cardinals scout Michael Garciaparra], he texted him in the sixth round and said he wanted to forgo his commitment to Fullerton. After hearing that, we did not hesitate.

  “He runs the largest scout-ball setup in SoCal,” Kantrovitz said of Garciaparra. “Some people in baseball view that as a negative in that it can take some time away from scouting. Frankly, that is a big reason why I hired him. In addition to being an excellent evaluator, his relationships and knowledge of high school players is as good as it gets. And, I guarantee you, Chris Rivera was not texting the same information to twenty-nine other clubs as he was to Gar during the draft.”

  Rivera stayed with Turco in the Gulf Coast League and put up an .820 OPS in June, a .722 in July, and then cratered—a .456 OPS in August. As Turco pointed out, he’d done this while learning a new position—the first-round pick Oscar Mercado took over at shortstop, so Turco had Rivera move to second. But Rivera believed he could do better.

  “It really frustrated me because I was starting out hot,” Rivera told me after the morning game on May 24, as we walked toward the minor league clubhouse. “Really hot. I was just hitting the ball. Hit. Took a couple home runs the beginning of the year. And so—and then leveling off, I just—I don’t know. I mean, mentally, it was okay ’cause I’ve learned to become mentally strong with that. My dad has taught me that over the years. So just physically, you want to get that hit so it’s frustrating not getting your hit. But coming into this year, I have a lot of confidence going up to the plate. I feel like I was hitting the ball a lot better. Driving the ball with power into the gaps. So I feel a lot better this year.”

  Turco also had Rowan Wick with him. It had been a rough spring for Wick, who wasn’t yet showing Turco or the rest of the Cardinals decision makers that he’d been right to keep pursuing the major leagues as a position player.

  “I believe I’m going to State College,” Wick said as we traveled that same path from the field to the minor league clubhouse. “And—I mean, I’d like to finish in Peoria by the end of the season. I was hoping to break spring training in Peoria. I did well last year in Johnson City so I was hoping to just jump to Peoria right away, but there’s a lot of outfielders in the Cardinals organization obviously, so…”

  It was true—I’d had a scout from a rival team tell me back in March that he’d trade his team’s major league outfield for the Cardinals’ Triple-A outfield of Oscar Taveras, Stephen Piscotty, and Randal Grichuk. Tommy Pham, who hit .324 and eventually earned a big league look, couldn’t break into that Triple-A starting outfield. James Ramsey, the first-round pick from 2012, was stuck at Double-A, despite an OPS above .900, because of the talent glut.

  Wick grew up in the Vancouver area, and he saw himself similarly to how his supporters in PD did.

  “I definitely think that’s the kind of player that I am,” Wick said, referring to his strong Johnson City numbers in 2013. “Hit for power and play in the corner with a solid arm. I have power potential.”

  Or as Kantrovitz put it, encapsulating the Wick conundrum, “Wick is polarizing. He has a legit fallback on the mound if his bat does not play at higher levels. And obviously you don’t want to wait too long to make the switch. But his power is rare, and I’m a strong advocate of being patient with his bat. I’m still betting on the bat, and him being a high-K guy with twenty-five-plus bombs. But as hard as it is to believe if you haven’t seen it, which you have, his arm might end up being his carry tool.”

  Wick, a Canadian native, had to figure it out without his family nearby, or even in the same country. “My parents were down here for spring training, and I haven’t seen my sister since, like, February,” he said.

  But at this point, with short-season assignments coming, Wick had a simple task: he needed to hunt strikes, as Turco put it. It was up to Turco and Wick to figure out if he could do that. When I asked Wick if he thought he’d made any progress, his response was telling:

  “I don’t know.” He went off to lunch.

  Meanwhile, Corey Baker was not in Palm Beach, where he’d started the season. The Cardinals promoted him to Double-A, a place he’d struggled in limited opportunity in 2013. Baker arrived in the professional ranks with a delivery that needed refinement, and primarily a fastball and changeup—the changeup, he believes, is what got him drafted at all. He remembers an early conference between Ace Adams and the pitchers:

  “He spoke that to the group. He spoke to moving off the rubber. Momentum. Getting some tilt. Getting that angle on the ball in your body. So that was definitely mentioned. And I’m sure he definitely worked with guys, and I’m sure when Brent Strom at the time, my pitching coordinator, came around, he worked with guys at it. For me, personally, I don’t think that’s something that was a big issue for me. I think it was more the momentum and working on that front side.”

  And shades of Mike Witte, Adams brought his pitchers in to see old video of Greg Maddux, of Mariano Rivera, of Justin Verlander.

  “And obviously not that we have to repeat that, because everyone’s different, but just what’s in their delivery that you think is necessary and they think could help everyone. I remember Maddux, and I had a side view of him and how far his body is away from the rubber when he lets go of the ball. And that’s going to create a huge advantage for you.”

  But take it from someone who made five trips up to Double-A from Single-A by the end of the 2014 season—the continuity in the Cardinals system mattered.

  “I’ve been promoted a bunch in my career, and the transition from level to level was always really easy because of that single-mind-set way of ‘Hey, this is how we’re doing things,’” Baker said. “It’s the same at every level. This is how they do it in the big leagues. And when you get promoted from low-A to high-A or high-A to Double-A, you’re not facing the added challenge of trying to learn a new system or anything like that. It’s all in place. You’re done it in spring training. You’ve done it ever since you’ve been with the Cardinals, so that makes success probably that much easier. Even though I’m with a new team, everything’s exactly the same. So that continuity probably has led to success with guys just being able to focus on a game, because there’s not all that added outside stuff they need to figure out.”

  Baker says this kind of focus helps players fight through the difficulties of a minor league season. Again, the role Cardinals coaches and managers play in reinforcing these ideas is notable.

  “You probably see some guys struggle with that and you struggle with that,” Baker said. “And really, the only way for me to kind of combat it was, once you’re on the field—I mean, the field’s the same and you’re there to play baseball. It’s tough. It’s hard on everyone to travel. It’s tough. The sleep situations are tough. Everything is tough. And physically, there’s nothing you can do about it. You just kind of just stay focused mentally. Kind of remembering why you’re there … give one hundred percent of what you have that day. That’s something that Dann Bilardello always says to us. They understand that coming off the bus, you might not feel at your best every single day, but it’s giving one hundred percent of what you have that day and just working through it and understanding everyone’s going through it at the same time, and it’s just something that you need to adjust to. And if you’re going to keep playing, it’s something that you’re going to have to learn to deal with.”

  Baker made what turned out to be a brief trip to Double-A Springfield, returning to Palm Beach after just a few weeks. Bilardello and Adams were there to talk him through it.

  “I mean, the initial talk with Dann was that there’s two ways to go about, and the first one is be pissed off and let it get to you and not do well and stop working hard,” Baker told me when we spoke in mid-June 2014. “Or the second way is, don’t let it get the best of you and get doing wh
at you do and earn your way back up there, and that’s really it. There’s two ways to go about it, and obviously the latter is what you want to do. It’s what I plan to do. It’s what I did last year when I got sent back down here.” Baker had the advantage of a support system at home, too.

  “You know, my parents still think—they obviously want me to keep playing. They’ve seen the success I’ve had and seen me from T-ball now pursuing this goal and pursing this dream. And they’ve been there forever. And so they want me to keep going, keep playing. And Jenna is the same way. I’ve been with her since sophomore year of college and she is behind me, and it’s obviously a lot tougher for her, me being away for half the year. But she is extremely supportive.

  “She has her own career. She’s career oriented, goal oriented, and she wants me to be the same way. And I think, obviously, she would like to spend the whole year with me and it’s not ideal. That she is behind me and she’s also seen the success I have and she believes in me, too. So I get nothing but support from both my family and from Jenna. And I know for a fact that other guys don’t have it the same way. I hear guys all the time: ‘Oh, my wife wants me to quit.’ ‘My girlfriend wants me to quit.’ And I don’t have that situation at all.”

  Meanwhile, Sam Tuivailala was destroying Florida State League hitters. Baker, despite his frustrations, was clearly happy for a teammate he’d gotten to know in 2014:

  “I would say we’re definitely opposites. We were in extended together but didn’t interact much. He was still a position player at that time, and we were on different extended rosters. He was younger. We only overlapped in Peoria for about a week or two last year. So this year when we both broke in at Palm Beach, I think this was the first time we ever really spent any time together. I mean, he’s a great kid. You would never know that he is an up-and-coming prospect and has all this attention on him and stuff like that. He’s as humble as it gets. He works as hard as anyone, and as an older guy who’s been around, things I try to, that we all try to, teach him—obviously nothing physical. There’s nothing physical we can teach him. He’s been blessed with that. It’s just learning how to pitch certain guys and just the mental part of pitching and taking care of your arm because he’s so new to that.

  “I think that’s one of the great things about the Cardinals, is, yeah, we’re all competing with each other to get to the big leagues, but I don’t think any of us are going to shy away from helping each other. So I think specifically with him because we know how new he is to pitching, guys will maybe go out of their way and say, ‘Hey, this is kind of how we got this guy out’ and ‘Look at it this way,’ or that kind of thing. And just give him little pieces along the way to help him out because, like I said, he’s so new to it and he’s still learning. I mean, he’s learning how to pitch in high-A when, I feel like I’ve been doing this forever and we’re at the same level. So just imparting that on him, a lot of guys just take it upon themselves. Just little things here and there.”

  It worked. Tuivailala walked 9 in his first 9 innings in 2014. The next 9? He walked just 2 and struck out 13. Ace Adams and I discussed it after the game on May 24, and Adams put it bluntly: “The way he’s pitching, I’m not going to have him too much longer.”

  Tuivailala had simplified: he still threw that fastball, which was now sitting upper nineties, but he was throwing it more for strikes. Crucially, that curveball was getting over as well, around 81, 82 miles per hour.

  After a night game Tuivailala stood and chatted with me in the hallway leading to the minor league clubhouse. His entire demeanor had shifted from our conversation back in March.

  “I probably trust in it a lot better than the previous year,” Tuivailala said of his curveball. “When I get it, I’m not really nervous. I’m not trying to aim it. It’s more just grip it and rip it. And I feel a lot more comfortable throwing it now.

  “Sometimes if I have a feeling the guy’s going to sit on a fastball, I usually tend to just dump it in there and give the guy a different look. And if it’s for a strike, I’m feeling pretty comfortable about that at bat, have the batter think about what the next pitch is going to do. And when I throw the first-pitch curveball, if it’s for a strike, well, it really makes my fastball a lot better ’cause he hasn’t really seen it yet.”

  As for Florida State League hitters, they were being asked to try to hit two plus pitches that differed in velocity by fifteen, sixteen miles per hour. Tuivailala didn’t dispute it when I pointed out that meant they didn’t have a chance:

  “Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it’s been—it’s been really effective for me. It’s been working.”

  For Tuivailala, the tilt of his delivery—preached by Leveque, reinforced by Adams—had been the key that unlocked consistent command, he believed.

  “Just, when I’m coming up here,” Tuivailala told me, showing me his hands in set position at around his chest, “and right before I just—I tend to tilt a little bit. And that just causes the fastball to get a downward angle. And even my teammates mentioned that so I actually learned a lot from my teammates. And that would allow my curveball, so I can get on top of my curveball from my fingers.

  “So it was just a little adjustment. So I mean, after that, I felt really good with it. I felt like my arm wasn’t as stressed as before. I’m using my whole body instead of just trying to whip my arm. I mean, they always talked about it in the spring training, you know? It was always mentioned to all the pitchers. Tilt. Tilt will help everyone.

  “But every pitcher’s different. They mention a lot of little stuff. You just pick what works for you and just keep working on it and then—even when we’re doing long toss on flat ground, everyone’s messing with a little something. Just trying to get that edge.”

  I asked him whether he felt different, emotionally, than he had in the spring, when he told me he still felt like a position player pitching at times.

  “It definitely feels a lot more normal now. Last year, I felt like a pitcher at the same time, but it was kind of like I feel like a third baseman still up there. But now I’m more in the mentality of a pitcher.”

  He told me his parents and his sisters—a thirteen-year-old and a nineteen-year-old—would be coming out from California to see him pitch in July. I told him that by July I didn’t think they’d be coming to Palm Beach if they wanted to see him pitch.

  As I was leaving, I saw Alex Mejia, the Palm Beach shortstop. I’d taken notice of him prior to the game, and even in the game, seeming to know not just where the ball would be hit to him, but what kind of ground ball it was. I mentioned the Kissell ground-ball drill, and Mejia broke into a huge smile, nodding.

  And Oscar Taveras, the heir apparent to Pujols, was putting up the same kind of numbers he always had—.325/.373/.524—at Triple-A Memphis. He reached another level, even for him, from the middle of May on: .462 average, with an 1.129 OPS, over the final ten games he played for Memphis.

  Then, an opportunity: Matt Adams’s calf injury sent him to the disabled list. On Friday night, May 30, Taveras got the call and was scratched from the Memphis lineup.

  “I think everybody should be excited; I know he is,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said that night.4 “We’ve been waiting for a while. There’ve been a lot of people anticipating him getting here, and hopefully we can limit the distractions for him for where he just goes and plays the game.”

  “There’s definitely a high level of anticipation and excitement,” Mozeliak said. “When you take the time and you invest heavily in the international market, you’re looking to someday maybe get a return like this. I think everybody involved in that is A, proud, and B, excited to see what he can do at the major league level.”

  But with Taveras, always, the anticipation mixed with concern about how fully he’d embrace his playing responsibilities beyond the batter’s box. “He’s done a lot of things right for a lot of years to get the excitement level to where it is,” Matheny said. “I know the fans have been waiting for this to happen. We’l
l get a chance to see him, see how he mixes in. Hopefully he jumps on board with what we’re trying to do as a club and realizes all he needs to do is his part.”

  Meanwhile, even while Cardinals across the system battled opponents and one another with a goal of playing in St. Louis, Kantrovitz and his team of scouts met up across the country to provide everyone with even more competition for playing time. The 2014 draft was just twelve days away.

  May 25, Jupiter, Florida

  Dan Kantrovitz gathered a group of his scouts in a conference room in the office building the St. Louis Cardinals have beyond Roger Dean Stadium’s right-field fence. They share the facility with the Marlins, whose offices are along the left-field fence.

  The meeting was one of several Kantrovitz would hold over the coming days with his scouts, going through regional preference lists while flying around the country. This was just day one of two in Jupiter. The second day was dedicated to an in-person workout for as many of the prospects as the Cardinals could get to come to Roger Dean Stadium.

  Day one started at noon and ran nearly nine hours. Lunch and dinner were skipped—a bag of bagels and a bit of egg salad were passed around at one point.

  At the head of the conference table Kantrovitz, in a checked polo shirt and khaki pants, had his computer in front of him, providing him with every bit of intelligence the Cardinals had gathered on every prospect to be discussed that day, the ingredients of STOUT. The prospects had been run through the system statistically—their performances retrofitted to that of others at similar ages, competition levels—and then the mechanics of the pitchers were analyzed. The prospects were given a grade for health, which helped or hurt their stock.