The Cardinals Way

by Howard Megdal

  Thompson knew enough to know he couldn’t yet set realistic goals for himself. “Obviously everybody wants to move up every year, you know? Hopefully a step or two every year. So I think my goal for next year would be to be in Peoria at the least. But as far as statistic goals, I don’t think I can put my finger on one of those yet. I haven’t really faced any of this caliber of player yet.”

  If Thompson was circumspect, Daniel Poncedeleon was ready to come out and dominate. He had the mentality Gonzalez described—it didn’t seem to even occur to him that he might struggle out of the gate or need to learn more than some fine-tuning from the Cardinals en route to the major leagues.

  “Oh, yeah. He means so much to me,” Poncedeleon said of Gonzalez. “I’m glad there’s a guy out there who could see my competitiveness. I just love competing. That’s what I thrive on.”

  It was obvious why Gonzalez had made sure Poncedeleon was the one pitcher at the combine who faced live hitting.

  “It’s just so different pitching just a bull pen. It’s like kissing your sister, you know? You’re not really competing. Like, when I pitch, I like to face batters. I like someone in there that wants to hit the ball so I can strike ’em out.”

  The Blue Jays, among other teams, had been in contact with Poncedeleon, but he was hoping it would be the Cardinals, for one reason. I asked him whether any other scouts he’d talked to sounded like Gonzalez.

  “No. No. Charlie Gonzalez is some other guy. He’s awesome.”Poncedeleon didn’t seem to think his trip up the ladder would take all that long.

  “I don’t know much about the minor leagues. I tried to learn, but it’s hard. And I got a few levels to go. You got to go to A-ball, then high-A, then Double-A, and then maybe to the bigs or Triple-A. I mean, it matters. So hopefully, within two years I’m guessing. Well, this year I’ll hopefully move up and maybe move up again. Hopefully less than two.”

  Nor did Poncedeleon believe the Cardinals would be changing him much.

  “No, no. Just throw and get your arm feeling good and get ready for the game. I mean, I don’t imagine they have much to tell me anyways. I mean, it’s hard to coach, you know, when you just get ’em. They might have a thing or two to tell me.”

  Poncedeleon was right about that. Mark DeJohn, the field coordinator, and Tim Leveque, the minor league pitching coordinator, were in the business of collecting information, not disseminating it.

  “Just to kind of observe the new players,” DeJohn said as we chatted in the cramped visiting coach’s quarters at Bowman Field. “What you’re basically trying to see is what the scouts saw in them. And you think back when you first signed yourself. Just how nervous these kids are. So sometimes you’ll see some really great things the first few days. And then you might not see it again. You just try to look for those tools. Just things that would get you excited. Things that you can project that would be big league tools. Whatever the scout has said about him, we try to make it fit.”

  Even so, the level of familiarity DeJohn, Leveque, and Marmol develop for the players, on and off the field, quickly outstrips what even the best scout can gather.

  “In these six days that I’m here watching the team, I’ll see them more than that scout has seen them,” DeJohn said. “In maybe two years or so, he might not have seen the kid six times. One of the things that you really kind of want to manage is to see the kid’s passion. You know, his determination. How much passion he has—if he really wants to be a big leaguer. There’s a difference between wanting it and really wanting it, you know? They want it—but sometimes you want something till it doesn’t go over well.”

  DeJohn and Leveque echoed what Turco said—players need to come to the staff looking for help, especially early on.

  “They’re instructed to not to even touch hitters for a month, and only then, not unless the guy comes to somebody and says, ‘Hey, I want help,’” DeJohn told me. “Then obviously we help. But we leave them alone to try.

  “They got here doing what they did. There’s a lot of guys that you don’t need to touch. You just leave them alone. And he’ll figure things out himself without changing. But if a guy’s really struggling, you let them struggle through it. And then if he wants that help, then you’re there. When a student is ready, a teacher will appear.

  “If the kid hit .350 every year in college, and now he’s hitting .210, and you go to him and tell him, ‘You need to change,’ he’s not going to really believe that, you know? He just thinks that ‘I’m just going through this period.’ They’re just going through a tough time. And he figures—‘I’ll be okay.’ But they’re coming into pro ball. Now you’re going to face kids that, on a daily basis, the type of competition that you haven’t seen day after day after day. And then you have to remember, I’m not sure of their schedule right now, but when I was managing this league, they played seventy-six games in eighty days. So they have to get used to a schedule.”

  For Leveque, the same held true on the pitching side, he told me:

  “A lot of it is, like, what DJ said, a lot of it is to observe. Obviously, the scouts saw something in these guys, right? So my job is to just observe them and watch them, see how they go about it. Their pitches. Whatever I would look for in a pitcher. It’s a blank slate. I don’t know these guys. So I just kind of want to see them—I want to see them in a game. Now, for the guys coming from extended [spring training]—this is a different environment. They’re out there under the lights. They’re not in Florida pitching at noon anymore. So a lot of it, too, is just seeing them in a different environment.”

  Two of those guys from the back fields who made it to State College were Chris Rivera and Rowan Wick. Rivera would stay for just a few days, before heading to Johnson City to be the regular third baseman, another new position. Wick would have one of the great seasons in recent New York–Penn League memory.

  “I think maybe just doing what I had to do in practice and in our extended games and not really trying to do too much,” Rivera said. “I think they notice that and they were confident in bringing me up here, and I just want to thank them for giving me the opportunity, and I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity that I was given.”

  His first call was to Angelia, his girlfriend.

  “I just told her, you know—she’s always the first person I call for some reason. ‘I’m going out to State College to start the year.’ She was real happy. At the same time, she didn’t know what to say, just because she was so happy.”

  To be clear, the hands-off approach to changing anyone didn’t mean the coaches shied away from the constant communication that is the hallmark of this organization.

  So it was with Rivera—his quick movements with the bat as he prepared in the on-deck circle, eyes always on the pitcher, working to be quick to the ball. But he fell behind 0-1 and popped up chasing a ball out of the zone. Smoky Ortiz talked him through the at bat immediately, as he handed Ortiz his batting gloves and got ready to take his position in the field.

  Austin Gomber sat behind the plate, dressed in a blue polo, with another young Cardinals hurler, Ian McKinney, a fifth-rounder back in 2013, and Leveque. There, the instruction began as well. Leveque notes it when a pitcher throws a fastball to the third batter of the inning, after the first two make outs, each on the first pitch.

  “Throw a fastball there,” Leveque says, noting the unlikelihood the third batter will follow suit and swing at the first pitch. “It’s a free strike.”

  Thompson, preparing for his first professional at bat, takes a strong, sweeping swing through the imagined strike zone from the on-deck circle. He stretches, holding the doughnutted bat over his head, feet spread wide. Thompson is meticulous, measured, sweeping some of the warning-track dirt with his feet from the circle before strolling to the plate.

  He strikes out looking, and for Leveque, it’s another teaching moment.

  “I love left-on-left changeups, right-on-right changeups. You know why? Hitters don’t see it,” Leveque told his
young pitchers. “Look at the numbers—same-side changeups get offered at like four percent of the time.”

  Wick, meanwhile, told me before the game he knew the decision makers were present. It was true—LaRocque brought cherry fruit snacks for the group. Wick fell behind on a 1-2 pitch, then crushed a nasty pitch—down and away, with movement—over the center-field fence.

  Something similar happened in the ninth—Wick fell behind 0-1, hit the next pitch, a slider, well beyond the right-center-field fence. An audible “Whoa” came from LaRocque. Wick registered another 2-homer game in his first four with State College, then a third just over a week later. He set the State College record for most home runs in a month—and he didn’t start playing until June 13.

  It was the beginning of a championship season for Marmol, who’d won the 2013 George Kissell Award from the Cardinals. He’d made the decision, like LaRocque, to be a young coach, rather than an old player.

  “That’s a good way to put it,” Marmol said when I brought up LaRocque’s quote. “Sometimes you have to be realistic. I asked myself, was I going to be a big league player for five, ten years? And the answer was no. So I decided it was time to start my career on this side of the fence.”

  Corey Baker said that’s as much a product of the organization’s ethos as it is Marmol’s own decision, citing Marmol as one of those who made the jump in 2010. He played under DeJohn. His first hitting coach was Mike Shildt.

  “So that [process of] grooming people who [stay] in the organization and become part of the Cardinals is basically visible everywhere you go in the organization,” Baker said.

  After coaching under Turco in the GCL, Marmol managed in Johnson City, then came to State College. And he brought George Kissell with him.

  “When you’re around guys like DJ, and Gary, and Vuch, he comes up a lot,” Marmol said. “It’s making sure you are thinking more about the players around you than your own career. You’re here for a reason, and that’s to develop the next players who are going to help the major league team.

  “One thing we try to stress is not only a certain attention to detail, but competitiveness and focus throughout these drills, making them as gamelike as possible. So when they do get in the game, that sense of pressure is familiar to them. Whenever we take an infield, there’s a certain amount of pressure behind it.”

  Ollie’s wife, Amber, arrived during the opening game. They met when they were sixteen and got married when Marmol was twenty-one. Amber travels with Ollie during the season, the way George and Virginia Kissell did for so many years. During the off-season, they live in Jupiter.

  “We’ve been able to experience some pretty neat stuff in some different cities,” Marmol said. “And this organization, there’s none like it. I’ve been entrusted with about thirty men. They’ve trusted me to develop these guys, and I have a job to do, my staff has a job to do. And I intend to try and do it well.”

  The End of the Beginning

  In July, Sam Tuivailala got the call to go to Double-A.

  It was a surprise to no one. Over his last 28⅓ innings, he’d walked only 9 batters—he’d struck out 47. The last 102 plate appearances against him at High-A included just two extrabase hits, both doubles. It was time.

  “Well, for many of the players including, in this case, Sam, the process actually starts right after spring training,” LaRocque told me in a July 2014 phone interview. “The players are assigned—in this case, he was assigned to Palm Beach.… But if you domino back and you say, ‘How did it happen?’ It happened because the projection started to turn to performance. Most of these moves are—in the full-season levels, are designed because their project—player’s projections start to turn into performance. They move themselves ahead of the level of the league he was at. In Sam’s case, that started to occur in May and June.

  “Sam experienced a few things in the Florida State League. He experienced for the first time where he pitched back-to-back, meaning two days in a row. He experienced where he pitched multiple innings. Now, as a conversion player coming from third base to the mound, these were all built-in benchmarks that we knew he had to reach for in order to move him up. So one of our goals back in April, a few of our goals, was to accomplish that. He did. He did and we felt very comfortable with how he was then producing. You look at his body of work over three months. Those benchmarks were reached. Clearly, his performance was reached. The combination of it—the combination of it led right into he needs the opportunity to be challenged at the next level.

  “I mean, he was in that period of time with, like—if I’m correct—he was in sixteen games, as I see it, during that—from May tenth to July tenth. Let’s say two months. He was in sixteen games. And what was interesting was, we have over that time set up a—really, a focus on, and he’s focused on the idea of how to get ahead of hitters. How to throw to the glove and get the ball in the strike zone. Get outs in the strike zone. During that stretch of time, he hit the benchmarks we felt he needed to for throwing—and he’s still learning. But for throwing and getting his fastball command in order. And that’s a big thing for him and he understands that. So he improved at that. And as we saw that improvement, clearly along with the results, but as we saw the improvement on a variety of benchmarks, one being fastball command, we also recognize that in his performance. I mean, during that stretch of time, it’s really something that he struck out forty-seven percent of the hitters. His walk rate was eight percent.”

  For Tuivailala, it was nothing less than reaching the goal he’d set for himself—to earn that promotion.

  “In June and July, I definitely think it was in the back of my head, where you want to end this year,” Tuivailala said in a July phone interview just after it happened. “I definitely wanted to be in Double-A. But in June and July, I tried not to think about the future. I kind of just take one day at time, like I told you. I wanted to make sure that when I did get the call, I was ready and I have all pitches and command where I wanted it to be.”

  Finally, on a rain-swept Florida night, Tuivailala’s future merged with his present.

  “One of our games got canceled and it was raining hard. And then I finally got called into the office and we had Gary LaRocque there and all of our coaching staff and my manager, Dann Bilardello. He told me that there’s good news and that I was getting called up to Double-A. It was kind of a weird feeling. I had the goose bumps at the same time. I was superpumped. And they all told me they believed in me and they told me it’s the same game. Just go out there and compete. So I just shook all their hands and I was ready to go.”

  Then Tuivailala got to make the call home.

  “I think once [my mom] answered, she was at the store with my sister. And then I just said, ‘Guess what?’ And she said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘I’m getting the call up to Double-A. I’m leaving tomorrow morning.’ And then I could just—I could hear my sister in the background. I think she heard it through the phone and she’s just screaming and they’re all so excited for me. So then after I hung up the phone with them, I instantly got a call from my dad maybe a minute later. And he’s all excited. So it was definitely a good day.”

  The transition was also eased, said Tuivailala, by the continuity in the system. He’d known Shildt, his Double-A manager, for years.

  “I definitely think it’s an easier way,” Tuivailala said. “Spring training, they definitely mixed it up a lot. And that’s what makes it a little bit easier for the transition. They tend to have a Triple-A coach, he’ll help out lower guys, and the Double-A will swap every now and then. I definitely think that was a lot easier so that we got to know a lot of the staff members even through we’re not at their level yet. I think that was a pretty good idea of theirs.”

  I listened to Tuivailala’s first game with Springfield on an Internet broadcast, coming back from an assignment in Fenway Park. The announcer struggled with Tuivailala’s name. Then he marveled at the radar-gun readings. He’d once sat 95. Now he was frequently hitting 1
00, 101, 102, and sitting 99.

  “After playing in front of attendance of maybe one hundred to two hundred, to, man, like three thousand to five thousand in the house,” Tuivailala recalled of his Double-A debut, “it was definitely different. But I was definitely juiced and pumped. When I got out there, I tried to breathe and just think of one pitch at a time. It’s the same game I’ve been pitching in. And then when I got my first strikeout, I think that’s what really got me going, and I felt confident up there.”

  Tuivailala faced six Double-A batters in his debut. None of them reached base. Half of them struck out.

  “I know that I’m throwing hard and everything. I made those typical pitches where I definitely feel like I threw a little bit harder. But after the game, I know a lot of the people—they tweeted me about the 102, and I’m not sure if the gun was a little bit juiced, but it was definitely good to get the attention of everyone after that.”

  Tuivailala mentioned tilt again and pointed out that his teammate Nick Petree had also helped him to incorporate it into his delivery. Petree, who tops out in the eighties, couldn’t be more different from Tuivailala as a pitcher. But that constant communication, in this case, allowed Tuivailala to discover what worked for him.

  For Baker, another voice in Tuivailala’s development, the joy was tempered, naturally, by frustration, the kind of natural tug between collaboration and competition that is the Cardinals’ minor league system.

  “I’m really happy for him,” Baker told me in September. “I was talking to Jenna about this last night, and I was, like, ‘I’m so happy for him.’ He’s borderline uncomfortable with how good he is. He’s so humble. So that’s awesome. But I think it’s both. I think it’s inspiring and demoralizing.”