The Cardinals Way

by Howard Megdal

  The promotion still felt surreal for Tuivailala.

  “At this level it’s kind of crazy how fast this happened. Just going from spring training, back then I was just thinking, ‘Man, I don’t want to go back to Peoria.’ And then the next thing you know, I’m looking at myself now that I’m in Double-A. It’s crazy how things happen.

  “I told my parents and all my friends and everyone. They’re all juicing me, telling me, okay, I’m going to be in the big leagues this year and I’ll be there by around this month, you know? I just tell them I want to end strong and just keep playing hard and then I’ll just—I’ll see how things end up. But I definitely just want to end strong.”

  It’s fair to say he ended strong, and things got even crazier. His parents and friends were right. Tuivailala pitched through July and August for Springfield, notching a 2.57 ERA, a strikeout rate of 12.9 per 9 innings, and keeping his walks to just 3.9 per 9 innings. That got him a quick bump to Triple-A Memphis, where he struck out three of four Triple-A batters he faced, and then it was on to St. Louis.

  “Sam hit all the benchmarks we set out for him,” LaRocque said of Tuivailala in a September 2014 interview. “Our conversation a year ago focused on what he could be if he accomplished certain things. So this was within the realm of what we had for him in terms of goals.”

  In the realm, maybe. But was this the best-case scenario? “Absolutely.”

  By January 2015, Tuivailala, who’d been trying to locate his command and an off-speed pitch less than a year earlier, found himself among the Cardinals big leaguers in the team’s winter caravan, preparing to come to big league camp and win himself a bull-pen job. He’d pitch intermittently in St. Louis in 2015, while spending the bulk of his time with Triple-A Memphis. And he’d catapulted all the way onto the team’s Top 10 prospects, according to Baseball America. Derrick Goold, in his write-up of Tuivailala, talked up his curveball:

  “With the frame of a power forward, Tuivailala is the Cardinals’ latest converted power pitcher after Jason Motte and Trevor Rosenthal. Fine command is all he lacks with the heat. In the Arizona Fall League, Tuivailala’s curve advanced. He throws [it] hard and with a sharp drop.”5

  As for Rowan Wick, he doubled and tripled on July 21 in support of Daniel Poncedeleon in a game in Troy, New York, against the Tri-City ValleyCats, the New York–Penn League entry from Jeff Luhnow and Sig Mejdal’s Astros. Wick’s demeanor couldn’t have changed more since that May day in Jupiter when he had to explain his decision to even keep playing the field, instead of leveraging that arm and giving pitching a try.

  “I’d like to say we saw something different, but we didn’t,” Marmol told me in the dugout before that July 21 game in Troy. “I know when we were getting on the plane, leaving Jupiter [back in June], he came over, put his arm around me, and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll hit at night.’ Because he had a really tough extended.… The biggest thing we’ve seen with him is, he’s gotten a taste of success, and it’s brought him more confidence. There’s a presence to him.”

  Wick talked about his goal of making the NY-P All-Star team, and I laughed, telling him I thought he was pretty safe, seeing as how he’d put up a 1.290 OPS, and nobody else in the circuit had cracked 1.000.

  But Wick was right, and I was wrong. There’d be no New York–Penn League All-Star Game. The next day, he was off to Peoria, and full-season A-ball.

  “You know, when we work with these players every single day, we constantly in our minds hope for their ceilings and hope that they reach their ceilings,” LaRocque said of Wick. “And as players come through the system and do that, we’re thankful that they’re getting it, and he’s clearly put himself in a position to be watched.

  “But back in May three of our staff members came to me and said that Rowan had talked to them about stepping on the mound, meaning a bull-pen type of thing. And when it got to me, I said, ‘Turco, please sit with Rowan and find out what he’s really thinking.’ You know, the best way to communicate is, let’s be transparent. Let’s talk to the player.

  “And it’s just the way we do business. And Steve sat with him and said, ‘Hey, listen. Is this something you’re really thinking about?’ He said, ‘Oh, no. I said I want to hit.’ And from that moment forward, there was never any other discussions from Rowan or anybody about him potentially even looking ahead into being on the mound. I mean, we’re talking about eighteen- to twenty-three-year-old young men. And we’re trying to help them through the grind of this. And he, Rowan, put the focus on ‘I’m going to hit.’ And the rest, in the last two months since that time in late May, it’s been pretty well documented.”

  Wick struggled when he reached Peoria. His K-rate spiked, to nearly 40 percent of his plate appearances. His power remained, but the .220/.299/.433 line meant he’d probably need to go back and master Peoria before moving ahead. Wick headed to Instructional League this fall down in Jupiter, where George Kissell once ruled and where Steve Turco now presides.

  The Cardinals didn’t get a breakout from Rowan Wick in State College, whatever happens next, because they were certain he could hit. This wasn’t scouting. This was listening. And so, too, was the two-way conversation that followed, when Rowan Wick decided to transition to the mound. Turco had him with the Gulf Coast League Cardinals by August 2015, Wick starting that process of climbing the ladder once again, in a new way.

  Poncedeleon, too, got stronger as the year went along. In his first six starts, his ERA was 3.63, with a 20/9 K/BB rate in 17⅓ innings.

  He revealed himself to be confident, but coachable.

  “It’s been fun,” Poncedeleon told me before his July 21 start. “I’d say you get to see a lot of new places. I’ve been listening, picking the minds of the coaches, and they tell you things that I’m still kind of learning today, after twenty years of baseball. I’ve been around for a while. These guys always have something new to tell you. How to approach and stuff. So that’s good.”

  In his last six starts, his ERA was 1.67, with a 32/5 K/BB rate in 27 innings. Then he threw six shutout innings on September 9. State College captured the league title. By August 2015, Poncedeleon had conquered Peoria, and posted a 1.17 ERA over his first six appearances with high-A Palm Beach.

  Nick Thompson homered in that game. He’d struggled early on, and when I saw him on July 21, his season line was .236/.308/.358. He wasn’t interested in waiting to seek out the coaches—the would-be premed student instead found Smoky Ortiz and got to work on remaking his swing.

  “Smoky and I have been working a little bit in the cage,” Thompson said that night, as we stood in front of the visitors’ clubhouse in Troy. “I’m just trying to get a little more balance, a little more flex in my hips, and trying to get just a little lower so I can reach that lower pitch, the lower outside pitch, a little better than I had been in the past. So it’s been working pretty well so far. But he said I was standing up a little too much, that he wants me to flex my hips a little more. So we’ll see how that goes today.”

  Between Ortiz, and a reading regimen that featured C. S. Lewis and J. D. Salinger throughout August, something clicked.

  “I think that was definitely the start of everything,” Thompson told me in September, a week after he, Poncedeleon, and Marmol celebrated that New York–Penn League title. “And I think if I looked at my splits, I think in the month of June I hit like .170, and then the months of July and August I hit over .300. And that was about the time that we kind of changed it up a little bit. It was at the end of June. And so I think after that, having a little success at the plate, and I think that made everything else a lot easier. Just the adjustment, and I feel like my body was more used to playing six to seven games a week. And I had acclimated to the applicable competition. I feel like, yeah, that was definitely the start of things. I think the success brought on by that was definitely a big help and a big motivator.

  “In August, Ollie talked to us all and he said, ‘Hey, nobody’s coming up. Nobody’s going down. This
is what we got and this is what we’re going to win with.’ And then we did. We put it together.”

  From the moment Thompson and I talked in late July through the end of the season, his line was .339/.469/.470. He was a big reason why the Spikes won. And Thompson believes that winning, even at that level, matters.

  “I think that it’s definitely significant. That’s kind of something that they preach. The championship team. The championship club. And I know [DeJohn], he always talked about ‘We’re not breeding you guys to just become major league players. We’re breeding you guys to be major league players on a championship-level team. And we expect our players to play through September and our major league players to play in October. So that’s what we breed you guys for and that’s what I want to see out of you guys.’ But it’s definitely an awesome experience winning the championship my first year out. It’s just a wonderful experience.”

  Down in the Appalachian League, Chris Rivera got off to a roaring start. His OPS in Johnson City in July was a blistering .860. But it dropped to .574 in July and .535 in August. He’s still young—he didn’t turn twenty until March 2015. And so the Cardinals moved him to catcher, where the cerebral Rivera not only excelled, throwing out 42 percent of would-be basestealers through August 2015, but posted an OPS of .778. Maybe he’s the next Kissell and Turco, but maybe he’s the next Yadier Molina, too.

  As for Corey Baker, he finally earned that promotion back to Double-A. Baker looked at it as a reward, though it meant pitching on three days’ rest. Bilardello and Leveque were there in Palm Beach to give him the good news.

  “I mean, I would hope that’s what it was,” Baker told me when we talked about it a few days later. “I feel like I did earn it. It was described to me as I’ve kind of vocalized that I wanted this opportunity, and now I was going to get it and it was a chance to start, so it was guaranteed innings because one of my issues was if I was going up there for twenty games, I wasn’t getting twenty games’ worth of innings.”

  But Baker understood the moment he received: a chance not only to pitch at a higher level after a strong season with Palm Beach, but to Yadier Molina.

  “I think it was—he’s probably going to be a Hall of Famer. And this is something I want to be able to soak in and enjoy. As opposed to ‘Hey, it’s just another game. I’m going out there. It’s the same thing as A-ball.’ And it is. That’s the approach that I spoke to you about and I wanted to take.

  “But I wasn’t throwing to a Double-A catcher. I’m throwing to the best catcher in the game. Probably a Hall of Famer. And so I think that changed a little bit. But I did think I did a good job with my approach.

  “We went up there, last home stand of the season. Ten thousand people. Yadi’s there. Wacha [also rehabbing] was there. Just the environment was so much, and I think it was good for me to prove that, yeah, I can handle that. It was no big deal.”

  Baker pitched 4 innings, striking out 4, though he did allow 3 runs. A few days later, pitching in relief, he picked up his first Double-A win.

  Baker knew if this is going to happen for him, needed to graduate permanently to Double-A in 2015.

  “Yeah. I think twenty-five in A-ball would be—at least for me. I can’t speak for anyone else. It’s hard to make these statements because there’s guys that are twenty-five in A-ball and have no problem with their timetable, their career path. For me, I don’t think twenty-five in A-ball would be something that would be good for what I want to do. I’m not saying if I go camp in high-A, I would be, like, ‘Okay. I’m done.’

  “But I would have to think about it. I would have to talk to them and see where they see me and—yeah, it would be tough. I think at this point, not only have I earned it, I think it’s time. I think they should want to know, too: ‘Hey, can he do it or not?’ And obviously they’re probably not going to find that out with another go-around in the Florida State League. So, yeah, I would think that Double-A is where I need to be.” In March 2015, Baker found out: he’d be getting his chance to prove himself at Double-A Springfield. Not only did he stay all season, he held his own, pitching in every role possible, to a respectable 3.86 ERA through August 2015, and with the best strikeout rate of his career, 8.8/9.

  Baker is, at once, the embodiment of the positive and the negative that goes along with participation in the St. Louis Cardinals farm system. The consistent communication allows him to set goals, and coaching continuity allows him to pursue those goals wherever he’s assigned.

  But Baker is in a system overstuffed with young pitching. Through 2014, he’s pitched 109⅓ innings at high-A ball. His ERA is 2.80, his strikeout rate is a reasonable 6.6/9, the walk rate is an excellent 2.1/9. Baker’s worked hard at his craft, and his fastball is up to 92/93, the kind of velocity that can at least get him in the door at higher levels. He’s working hard at improving his slider, that third pitch. He showed throughout his career that he can start, he can relieve, and now at his highest level, he even struck out some hitters.

  It just all might not be enough.

  “I think it’s not something we talk about too much, because I don’t think she would ever sit there and say, like, ‘Hey, you’re struggling. I don’t think you’re going to make it. I think it’s time for you to stop,’” Baker said back in 2014 of his conversations with Jenna about his career. “But I think we haven’t touched on it because I think she knows where I am in terms of being realistic and that I don’t want to play in the minors until I’m thirty. You know, if I don’t think I’m going to make it, if I’m doing terrible over an extended period of time at a level where I need to do well and I think the end is coming, I don’t think I’ll have any regrets at that time. We’ll see and say, ‘All right. I gave everything I had.’ So we haven’t talked about it too much.

  “Like I said, I’ll be twenty-five next season. I don’t think she’s, like, ‘We’re so old. I think you need to move on.’ But I think it’s something she thinks about. I think she thinks about more in terms of, like, ‘You’re not really starting your career until you’re twenty-seven. How is that going to affect us, more so now than in ten years? Are you going to have enough money if we want to buy a house?’

  “And things like that. But, for now, she is behind me. This season, she got really into it. She watched every game on her phone. She still, last night, she was looking up the Florida State League championships to see who won. So she’s really into it, and I think if I quit now, she would disagree with that.”

  Every player, whether a prospect such as Taveras whom the Cardinals planned to make their right fielder in 2015, or Baker, who continues to fight against the odds a forty-ninth-round pick faces, understood precisely what he needed to do to take the next step in the Cardinals system.

  That’s particularly notable for Baker—Taveras received guidance from a face-to-face meeting with Mozeliak and Matheny at the end of the season. But Baker, too, heard from his manager, coaches, and LaRocque.

  Are the major leagues a long shot? Absolutely. No one believes otherwise, Baker included. But they also were for Nick Greenwood, a swingman who came up and pitched 36 innings for the Cardinals in 2014, debuting at age twenty-six.

  “I think someone like Nick Greenwood getting called up this year did a lot for me,” Baker said. “I think he was a guy that in my head, I would never vocalize to anyone, ‘Man, he is really good and probably deserves a chance.’ And to be honest, I was one hundred percent wrong. ’Cause in my head, I was, like, ‘There’s a zero percent chance he’ll ever pitch in the big leagues with the Cardinals.’ And then he got called up and it was, like, ‘That’s how I’m going to get to the big leagues.’ It’s force their hand. Get to Triple-A. Prove I can help, you know? And I think Nick Greenwood making it is the most inspiring.”

  LaRocque, too, had Greenwood in mind when he discussed Baker with me in September 2014: “Can Corey Baker be another Nick Greenwood for us? Absolutely, if he continues to grow and develop. Mo, our GPS, told me about a month before we called him
up, ‘We’re going to need some relievers who can stretch, go long innings, maybe even spot start. So we discussed who we had at Triple-A, and soon enough Nick got the call.

  “I tell the older guys, in the lower levels, it’s about projection and talent. Once you get to Double-, Triple-A, it’s about production, period. How your fastball moves in the zone. Once you get to Double-, Triple-A, it’s time to get outs. We don’t just plan a path for future stars. We have a plan, a way forward, for everybody in our system.

  “We thought that Corey deserved it. We knew we had an opening for a start that week, and we wanted to make sure Corey got that chance.”

  So Baker continues on, battling the odds, with that vision of Busch Stadium in his mind. “I don’t know if it’ll happen with the Cardinals, but I hope it does,” Baker said. “But I don’t think I’d be playing if I didn’t think I could see it anymore. Minor league baseball is an awesome job and a great experience, but I’m not playing minor league baseball to play minor league baseball. So I think if I couldn’t see myself in St. Louis, I would probably end my career.”

  For Oscar Taveras, the results on the field in 2014 were mixed. His first call-up in May lasted just under two weeks before he returned to Memphis. He came up on July 1 for good, and on July 31, Mozeliak traded away Allen Craig to open up right field for Taveras. Still, though, Taveras wasn’t hitting in St. Louis the way he had at each minor league level. Matheny would sit him at times (with Mozeliak’s full support), infuriating the Cardinal fan base, with a long-term goal of trying to instill better habits into Taveras ahead of what everybody hoped would be a long career in St. Louis.

  Yet, Taveras hit a game-tying home run in Game 2 of the NLCS against the Giants. After rounding the bases, he slapped hands with all of his teammates except for one: Carlos Martínez, his fellow Dominican, who gave him a half chest bump, half hug.