by Tom Verducci
On the fourth day of camp, long after everybody had gone home for the day, Maddon sat on a bench at the training facility and took inventory of his new team. It was early, sure, but now he had seen for himself the kind of talent Epstein had told him about in the Chicago system.
“The thin slicing of it is the young players are as good as I’ve heard,” he said. “They’re that exciting. You know, a lot of times you read stuff, you hear stuff. I have not been in the National League ever. So I don’t know that stuff. But when I see these guys on the field, get to talk to them in meetings, watch their work, and see their skill level, I believe it’s absolutely true.”
After four days he was convinced that his optimism about the Cubs was real—the team actually had a chance to go to the 2015 World Series.
“That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “Our biggest thing is that our veterans would be able to stay healthy and be there to complement these guys and ride us when it’s going wrong a little bit, primarily in the clubhouse, making sure they don’t get down on themselves when things aren’t going well. But I think there’s the right mixture of veteran players here, too, and the right veteran players, too. I mean, David Ross is as good as advertised. Period.”
Then he talked about that first-day meeting and the importance of trusting one another. Every early indication was that this group got the message.
“If we just support each other and work like this? We’ll be just fine,” he said. “They’re talented, man. Whoa! I mean, I’ve been around a lot of good classes. This is way up there.”
The recruiting pitch Epstein gave Maddon and Lester that winter could be seen with their own eyes: the Cubs were loaded.
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Once the spring training games began, Bryant was the talk not only of camp, but also of all the major leagues. After leading the minor leagues with 43 home runs in 2014, Bryant led the majors in spring training home runs with nine while batting .425. On March 30, 2015, the Cubs sent Bryant, Baez, and Russell back to the minor leagues.
“I could be in this game for a long time and not send down three players that talented on the same day ever again,” Epstein said.
The Cubs would not admit it, but the truth about Bryant’s demotion was that it was the prudent course of action based on service time rules in the collective bargaining agreement. If the Cubs carried Bryant on the Opening Day roster, he would have been eligible to leave the team as a free agent after the 2020 season, having accumulated six full years of service time. But if they stashed him in the minors for as few as 12 days, it would take an extra year for him to reach six full years of service time—through 2021. In other words, the Cubs could be assured of keeping Bryant for an extra year if they just demoted him for 12 days.
The “trick” of delaying the start of a player’s service-time “clock” is a common one around baseball. In 2012, for instance, the Cubs brought up Rizzo from the minors with 100 service days left in the season. Added to the 68 days of service he had with the Padres, Rizzo finished the season with 168 days of service time—conveniently for the Cubs, 4 days short of a full service year, thus “buying” an extra year of control.
The Major League Baseball Players Association was so angered about Bryant’s demotion that it released a statement that read, “Today is a bad day for baseball. I think we all know that even if Kris Bryant were a combination of the greatest players to play our game, and perhaps he will be before it’s all said and done, the Cubs still would have made the decision they made today. This decision, and other similar decisions made by clubs will be addressed in litigation, bargaining or both.”
Just before the Cubs announced the demotion, Bryant walked into Maddon’s office to plead his case.
“I’m ready to play up here,” Bryant told him. “I know I am.”
“K.B., I get it,” Maddon said. “Just understand you’re going to be here very soon. You’re a huge part of our future. Everything is going to work out well. Understand, I know you’re very young, but this is going to go by really quickly and you’re going to be back here and everything is going to be fine. So if you can just process that, you have to trust me on that one.”
For all his talent and acclaim, Bryant is a humble, charming sort with an aw-shucks grin and gentlemanly manners. His measured reaction to being demoted without cause when it came to his performance spoke loudly to his modesty. Bryant went to Triple-A Iowa, where, instead of pouting, he hit three homers in seven games. While Bryant was in the minors, the Cubs used Mike Olt, Jonathan Herrera, Arismendy Alcantara, and Chris Coghlan at third base. They hit .148. The team went 5–3 in the first 12 days. As soon as the 12 days passed, the Cubs promoted Bryant to the big leagues. Bryant would hit 26 home runs and be named the National League Rookie of the Year.
“He’s a pleasure,” Maddon said. “The beauty about him is conversationally you can talk straight up with him and he will talk straight up back at you—in a very polite, humble way. I learned that the first year, when all that stuff was coming down about him being sent back out. He talked to me and came into the office. I’m just getting to know the guy, and I start thinking, My God, this guy’s different.”
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Expectations soared for the Cubs in the spring of 2015, which placed pressure on Lester, the big free agent addition—and that was on top of the pressure he already felt to live up to the $155 million contract. It was clear immediately in Mesa that Lester felt this burden.
The first time a pitcher faces hitters in spring training is a low-key exercise in a controlled environment. It is live batting practice on a back field in which the pitcher throws with a protective screen in front of him and a batting cage surrounds the area of home plate. A pitcher is limited to a certain number of pitches, typically around 25 to 30. Minor league prospects might overthrow in such a setting to try to catch the eye of coaches and club personnel watching the workout, but veterans know it’s nothing more than “getting my work in” to prepare for the grind of a long season.
Lester’s first time on the mound for the Cubs, however, had the look of a late-season game. He grinded through his outing with obvious effort and with anger that he wasn’t putting his pitches exactly where he wanted them. When pitching coach Chris Bosio told him he was done upon reaching his prescribed limit of pitches, Lester insisted on staying because he wasn’t happy with his stuff. He grinded through another 10 or so pitches. Lester would throw with so much exertion that spring that he developed a condition known as “dead arm”—when otherwise healthy pitchers lose the snap on their pitches, reminiscent of his senior year in high school—that carried into April.
Lester’s competitive streak had helped him earn that $155 million. But that day in Mesa was an indication that such tenacity could also cut the wrong way. When Epstein told Lester during the recruiting process that he could be for the Cubs what Curt Schilling was for the 2004 Red Sox, Lester nodded in agreement even before Epstein finished the sentence. But there was one big difference between the arrival of Schilling in Boston and the arrival of Lester in Chicago. Schilling was joining a veteran-laden team that had just won 95 games and had come within one victory of the World Series. Lester was joining a young, last-place team that had won just 73 games and finished 17 games out of first place.
Trying too hard, Lester ended his first month as a Cub without a win and with a 6.23 ERA. By June 30, Lester was 4–6 with a 4.03 ERA and the Cubs had lost five straight games to fall a season-worst 111⁄2 games out of first place. Chicago would play its next three games at Citi Field against the Mets. Maddon sensed that the entire team, not just Lester, was tight. So he arranged for a magician to entertain his team before the game that night in New York. Simon Winthrop, a Las Vegas magician originally from Chicago, entertained the Cubs with card tricks and illusions.
“Well, we’re looking to create some magic,” Maddon explained to reporters. “Just trying to lighten things up a little bit, and we’re always trying to create some magic around here, so why not bring a m
agician in?”
It was pure Maddon. Not only was he lightening the mood around his team, he was also creating a diversion for the media. A magician in a major league clubhouse made for a better story than another day of analyzing what was wrong with the Cubs.
Presto! The Cubs won that night, 1–0. Lester started the next night and threw one of his best games of the season: seven shutout innings with one walk and seven strikeouts as Chicago won in 11 innings, 2–0. The Cubs completed a three-game sweep the next night with a 6–1 victory. Their pitchers allowed New York one run in 29 innings in the three games.
The outing in New York, if not the magician, settled Lester. It was the first of seven consecutive starts in which he threw seven innings. From that start through the end of the regular season, Lester went 7–6 with a 2.80 ERA while averaging almost seven innings per start. In those 17 starts Lester became exactly the elite workhorse Epstein expected when he signed him. He finished the season with 207 strikeouts, the most ever by a Cubs left-hander.
“April was tough on me,” Lester said, “especially coming here and all the expectations, and you know, not only personally but as a team. And to go out there and do what I did, I wasn’t obviously too proud of that.
“So if I knew how to get off to a better start, it would happen more frequently. But with that being said, just over the years I’ve been around a lot of guys—the Schills, the [Josh] Becketts—that I’ve heard them say numerous times that they don’t really feel good with their mechanics and stuff until they reach about 100 innings. For whatever reason that is, I guess that’s kind of how I feel. I don’t know if it’s just because we’re bigger-bodied guys or just a feel or we pitch better when we’re a little bit tired. I don’t know. Just the way I’m built, I guess.”
Lester’s turnaround also coincided with one change Maddon made with him: he stopped trying to cure Lester of his curious case of the “yips” throwing to bases.
A young Lester was a difficult study for any baserunner. From 2006 to 2011 with the Red Sox, Lester allowed only a 67 percent success rate on stolen base attempts and picked off 24 runners. From 2009 to 2011 he made 247 pickoff attempts. But late in that 2011 season Lester suddenly and without explanation developed a mental block about throwing to bases.
“It started surfacing when I was there,” said Indians manager Terry Francona, whose last year as Boston manager was 2011. “It was nothing like what it is now, but we did some things to cover for it.”
Lester virtually stopped throwing to bases altogether. Francona’s successor as Boston manager, Bobby Valentine, had Lester work on his awkward pickoff throws in spring training, but with no progress. That year, 2012, after averaging 82 pickoff throws per season over the previous three years, Lester tried only 5 pickoffs all year. The next year, 2013, Lester tried 7 pickoffs through April 10, then completely stopped trying. He didn’t make another pickoff attempt the rest of the season, nor in 2014.
His throwing issue gained national attention in the 2014 American League wild card game when the Kansas City Royals easily swiped three bases against him.
Cases of the yips are equally rare and mysterious. The cause and cure of the malady are predominantly unknown. Pitchers Steve Blass, Rick Ankiel, Kevin Saucier, and Mark Wohlers developed the yips when it came to throwing strikes. Catchers Mackey Sasser, Mike Ivie, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia incurred the phobia throwing the baseball back to the pitcher. Second basemen Steve Sax and Chuck Knoblauch had trouble completing a routine throw to first base. The most similar pitchers to Lester, as it relates to throwing strikes on the mound but hitting a mental block throwing to bases, were Matt Young and Matt Garza.
When Lester and Maddon joined the Cubs the following spring, Maddon’s first instinct was to “cure” Lester of this phobia. Under the direction of pitching coach Chris Bosio, Lester would retreat to a back field of the complex and try different ways of throwing the ball to Rizzo, the first baseman. They tried having Lester step off the rubber before throwing. They tried having Lester throw the ball to Rizzo on a bounce. They tried having Lester lob the ball to Rizzo.
“He would do well on the back field,” Maddon said.
But game situations produced a much different outcome. The mental block that prevented one of the game’s best pitchers from completing a routine throw to first base showed up every game. Maddon suddenly experienced a revelation in June.
“What are we doing here?” he asked himself. “Why do we keep putting these thoughts in his head?”
He sat down with Lester in his office. He told him about a new plan for him.
“Let’s get our concentration back on the hitter,” he told him. “Let’s work on what we do well, not on what we don’t do well. The more attention you put on what you don’t do well, the stuff you do well is getting away from you. And my contention is if you continue to do well in what you do do well, the other stuff is going to become moot.”
So Maddon convened with Lester, Ross, and Rizzo and developed a plan to defend against Lester’s throwing issue. Lester would not have to worry about throwing to a base at all. With potential base stealers at first, he would work hard to vary the time he held the ball before throwing home—a tactic to prevent the runner from timing his delivery for a fast start—and he would pitch out of a tucked position (80 percent of his weight on his back foot to start) and with a slide step (in which the stride foot stays close to the ground). With those tactics Lester could deliver the ball to the catcher in 1.3 seconds. Ross was the quickest catcher in the league with his transfer, the time it took him to catch and throw. Ross could catch the ball and get it into the infielder’s glove at second base in 1.8 seconds. The combined time of 3.1 seconds was faster than most runners needed to get to second base safely.
Moreover, Maddon empowered Ross to call disguised pitchouts to trigger pickoff plays to Rizzo as he saw fit. Maddon would also intervene if he thought a runner was getting too far off the base after a Lester pitch. Ross would go on to pick off 11 runners in two years, by far the most in baseball. Between Lester’s quick move home and Ross’s dangerous arm, Lester no longer had to worry about throwing to first base.
“I really believe that was part of the bad start in 2015, that his concentration was being split,” Maddon said. “So I got everybody together and formulated a much simpler plan in order to prevent this. At the end of the day, he’s much more difficult to steal a base against than a lot of our relief pitchers are.
“It was blown up in the media, rightfully so, but how do you fix it? ‘Oh, I’m going to give him this great move. I’m going to take him out there and he’ll get this epiphany to free his mind.’ No. That doesn’t happen. That’s not what happens when you’re 30 years old. It may occur when you’re a teenager and maybe later in life with maybe a different outlook on life. But when it comes to a physical concern and doing something different in front of 40,000 people, it’s hard.
“So my epiphany was just that. Let’s focus on what he does well, not on what he doesn’t do well. The other part is these guys are getting so far off first base they don’t know what they’re doing. And if he quick-steps, David is going to pick them off. It’s still not as easy as they think it is. At 3.1 seconds, you’re out.”
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In August, David Ross left the team to return home to Florida because of a family emergency. His pregnant wife, Hyla, was rushed to a hospital for an emergency cesarean section two months ahead of her due date because of a partial abruption, which occurs when the placenta separates from the uterus. Both Hyla, because of risks from bleeding, and their daughter she was carrying, Harper, their third child, were in danger. With Ross in the room, both mother and child made it through the procedure fine, though Harper would spend a month in the neonatal intensive care unit before she could come home.
Ross spent 10 days away from the team. During that time Epstein and Maddon called him almost every day. Epstein assured him that “every guy in the clubhouse” wanted him to be with his family, and to take as
much time as he needed. Maddon told him not to hurry back. “We need David Ross back,” Maddon told him, “not just a piece of David Ross.” The team arranged to send $500 worth of food to Ross’s house so that he and his children would be fed without having to worry about arranging for meals.
“That meant a lot to me,” Ross said. “They said, ‘Come back when you’re right—when mentally you are right.’ It made me think about that video they sent me, when I was a free agent, about the way they care about you and your family. It really was true.”
On August 29, Lester pitched in Los Angeles against the Dodgers without his buddy behind the plate. Miguel Montero took Ross’s place at catcher. Lester gave up five runs and lost, 5–2.
After the season the Cubs sent a video crew to Ross’s house. They taped a segment in which Ross talked about how the team cared for him during his family leave, and how the Cubs also had sent him home when his grandmother passed away just two weeks before the family emergency.
“Jason Heyward told me they used that video to show him when he was a free agent, and it meant a lot to him,” Ross said. “So that was kind of cool.”
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As the Cubs folded Bryant, Schwarber, Baez, and Russell into the lineup over the course of the 2015 season, the offense became more formidable. The team batting average improved from .239 in the first half to .250 in the second half. Less obvious, though of even greater import, was the improvement the Cubs made with their pitching and defense. That year the Cubs instituted a run-prevention infrastructure that was at the heart of the team’s turnaround.
