8 Biggest Observations Visiting Guardians Spring Training in Goodyear
"Pitchers and Catchers Report" are possibly the best four words in sports. Here's a few things that happen only during spring training.
By Jeff Mount
Any baseball fan should make it a point to go to Spring Training at least once. It's an opportunity to get a closer view of your favorite players than you'll ever get during the regular season, and also to get a first glimpse of guys who are going to be the future stars of your favorite team.
I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Goodyear this week, and had much the same impression as anyone who watched the games on TV - that this is a team that will again struggle to score runs. I did see a couple of other interesting things, though:
1. Priorities
One thing that is interesting to watch is what the players spend time on, which is a reflection of what the team thinks is important.
On Tuesday they spent about twenty minutes on a drill where baserunners try to time a pitcher's release and get the best jump they can. They even lined four bases down the right field line so multiple runners could do the drill at the same time. Then Jose Ramirez got picked off in the game a couple of hours later.
2. Confusion
Something that is different in spring games is that when the players are done playing they actually leave the stadium.
For a home game this means they just go back to the training facility a half mile away because that's where they get treatment or work on whatever they didn't get to do during the game. Between innings there are always a couple of guys walking down the right field line because that's where the gate is that they go through to get driven back to the facility.
On Tuesday Hunter Gaddis (who looked great on the mound, by the way) headed that way between innings, but he went to the wrong gate, so he was still standing on the warning track, with whatever staffer had told him which gate to use, when the inning began.