San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
YOUNG RELIEVERS SEEK TO BE READY
Making roster one thing, but making it last something else
Emilio Pagan was optioned to Triple-a last March, two days before the start of the season.
He was recalled less than a month later and never went back down. He spent the final two months as the Tampa Bay Rays’ closer, finishing with a 2.31 ERA and 0.83 WHIP, ninth-lowest and second-lowest, respectively, among qualifying American League relievers.
He has lived the cliché, and sometimes that is what it takes.
It’s not the 25 men on the opening-day roster. Making the team out of spring training is just the beginning. Especially for a relief pitcher, it’s a long season.
“For me, my first few spring trainings, as soon as I stepped foot in camp my thinking was I want to try to show the coaching staff and management I’m ready to compete right away,” Pagan said recently. “As I’ve been around, I’ve learned it’s more important to be leaving camp ready to dominate your games . ... Last year I was in a really good spot
physically when camp ended. What do my pitches look like? Do they have the consistency I want? Am I locating the fastball in each part of the zone like I need to be? As long as you understand the end game of what spring training is, as far as making the club that's out of our control. If you set yourself up to be competing in games when spring training becomes the season, then the rest of the stuff will take care of itself.
“I thought I was going to be on the team. I really did . ... It's very tough. But none of this stuff is in our control. But if we focus individually and as teammates — How can I get better? How can I help other guys in the bullpen? — these six weeks, that sets up the team to be more successful in September and into October.”
So Trey Wingenter not only has a lot of competition but plenty of help this spring as he aims to both make the Padres roster and stay on it.
Wingenter accomplished one of those last year but not the other.
“I came into spring training looking to compete, looking to earn a spot, and I was fortunate enough to do that,” Wingenter said this week. “I didn't know what was behind the curtain after that, what the workload was going to be for a guy who was pitching late in games and for a team that was playing close games every day. So that was an adjustment.”
The jump from Triple-a to the major leagues is like nothing ballplayers have experienced to that point. Not from high school to college or Single-a to Double-a. Not even close.
The major leagues are bigger and faster and louder. Times 10. Every player has to catch up and learn to navigate the new level of pressure and greater demands. Even Mike Trout got sent down three weeks after his bigleague debut.
For position players and starting pitchers, they are at least still playing the same game.
For relief pitchers, it can seem as if they are largely learning a new game when they make the jump — and particularly if they stick around.
Especially on the Padres in recent years, with pitchers zooming through the minors, relievers go from regimented programs to the Wild West essentially overnight. In the minors, relievers mostly know when they will appear in games (and, thus, when they will throw on the side and how often they will warm up). In the majors, they have to be ready almost every game in what can be a wildly varying set of circumstances.
Wingenter arrived in spring training last year having made his major league debut the previous August and pitched relatively well in 22 appearances. His high-90s fastball and developing slider made him one of the team's core group of promising young arms.
After 91⁄3 scoreless innings in the Cactus League last February, in which he allowed four hits and struck out 16 of the 36 batters he faced, Wingenter departed Arizona as one of the eight members of the team's bullpen.
By mid-april, he was sputtering. By the beginning of May, having already pitched in 15 of the Padres' 30 games, he was gassed.
His command had waned. A shoulder strain sent him to the injured list on May 4. The season would for him, literally and figuratively, be up and down.
After posting a 2.41 ERA with 26 strikeouts and allowing a .284 on-base percentage in his first 20 appearances (182⁄3 innings), Wingenter had a 7.52 ERA with 46 strikeouts and a .322 OBP allowed in his final 31 games (321⁄3 innings).
“Last year was a great learning experience for me,” he said. “… Now I get to apply all that stuff I was learning.”
During the month-anda-half Wingenter was up in 2018, he essentially remained on a controlled schedule. He rarely pitched back-to-back days, was not asked to warm up multiple times without the guarantee of entering a game. He was not familiar with what it took to be nowhere near 100 percent and have to pitch on little more than a moment's notice — and then be ready to do it again and again and again.
Unaware what was really ahead, he arrived in Peoria a year ago with a focus that spanned just six weeks.
“You're putting everything into making the team,” Wingenter said. “It's make the team, make the team. You do, and it's like, ‘OK, put that aside, now we've got to win games.' … That was new. It was something I've always known was the expectation, but you don't really know how to handle it until you experience it.”
Learning how to manage and work through the aches and pains that arise as a reliever is an art of discipline. Just like in anything, extra concentration is required when tired. Focus on mechanics becomes more crucial.
Having learned the wrong way, Wingenter months ago began preparing for what he will face months from now. He paid attention to his body. He ratcheted up the intensity on his bullpen sessions as spring training approached, focusing on what was sore and figuring out how best to deal with the soreness.
“I learned about what I need to tweak my in-season routine,” Wingenter said. “It took a little bit of failure, a little bit of shoulder troubles to … let me know the in-season routine is important. Taking care of your body and getting yourself as close to feeling good as you can is the most important thing for a relief pitcher.”
As Cactus league games begin, Wingenter is in a competition with at least five others — David Bednar, Lake Bachar, Javy Guerra, Luis Perdomo and Gerardo Reyes — for what could be one available spot in the bullpen to start the season.
A focus on the long game is easier said than done for these players, all in their early- to mid-20s.
“For the young guys, the first big-league camp or whatever it is, when you see (manager Jayce Tingler) back there watching your bullpen, it's no different than a stadium full of people,” reliever Matt Strahm said. “You're going to try to impress him. But you have to think of 162 and how we're going to attack that rather than these 40 days.”
Craig Stammen, something of a godfather to the rest of the bullpen, has been through the spring competition/season readiness balance a couple of times — as a young player with the Nationals and when returning from a serious shoulder injury in 2017 as a non-roster invitee with the Padres.
“It's definitely different,” Stammen said. “For a lot of them, they do have to try to make the team. … You're competing every single day, no-holds barred. But there is also a component of getting your body ready to last the season also. And there is a really good chance of a letdown in April. I'll say, ‘Hey, you still got to get in the weight room, got to get your extra lifts in. You've got to do your extra conditioning early, because that stuff pays off in September.' And they'll say, ‘Yeah, I've got to make the team, so I'm going to make sure I'm fresh.' That's why it's both. They have to figure it out.
“It should take one time of doing it the wrong way, and you're like, ‘All right, who cares if I make the team if I suck for six months?' They start to realize, ‘Even if I go to Triple-a and dominate and pitch to my potential I will be where I need to be.' And it will be a heck of a lot more fun pitching good, I promise you.”