Pitchers & Catchers Report Today

There are many big dates in the baseball year. Opening Day, the All-Star break, the amateur draft and others but the one phrase that equates to the beginning of the baseball season is “pitchers and catchers report today.” It is irrelevant that most of the hurlers and back-stops have been in Goodyear for weeks, with some younger players working out most of the off-season, there is a specific date that the fans revere and this year, for the Cleveland Indians, that date is February 18th.

Even though many different players are already in camp, the focus should stay on the pitchers to this point as they are the players who need the most time to get ready for the regular season. One of the biggest changes to the Indians pitching staff this year will largely go unnoticed as the off the field role of bullpen coach has been given to former Indians pitcher Jason Bere. Bere has some big cleats to fill as a couple recent bullpen coaches have been particularly fantastic, with Scott Radinsky, the architect of the “Bullpen Mafia” starting in 2010 and Kevin Cash continuing that legacy. Radinsky was promoted to pitching coach, where he was not as successful and was eventually let go, while Cash has recently been signed to be the manager of the Miami Marlins.

Whether the success of the bullpen over the past five seasons has been because of good drafting and trades prior to that, great minor league development or intelligent promotion, the coaches mentioned above have had at least some part in the construction of these relief corps. Most recently, Cash took a group consisting of returning veterans, like Bryan Shaw and Cody Allen, rookies, like Kyle Crockett and C.C. Lee and aging free agents, like Scott Atchison and allowed everyone to reach their maximum potential, creating one of the best bullpens in baseball.

Outside of Bere, most of the Indians pitching staff will be returning this year, including two pitchers, Cody Allen and Corey Kluber, who will be playing their first full season with a target on their back. It will be up to Mickey Callaway and Bere to begin preparing these two and the rest of the staff for the 2015 season. Callaway has already made tremendous leaps with a few pitchers who have been infamously difficult to work with (like Ubaldo Jimenez in 2013 and Carlos Carrasco in 2014) and 2015 will be his first real test in maintaining that success across multiple seasons.

While the season doesn’t actually start for more than a month, the physical and mental preparedness begins today. The Indians have not had a pitcher undergo Tommy John surgery since Carlos Carrasco and Josh Tomlin both had it at the end of the 2011 season and while this could be luck, it likely has a lot to do with the physical preparation pushed within the organization.

Staying healthy is always a major goal during Spring Training, especially in the rotation where each pitcher makes up such a large portion of the production output. In addition, pitcher injuries tend to last an incredibly long time so it is even more important to stay healthy than to pitch effectively, especially in February. By turning things up slowly over the course of a month and a half, the Indians pitchers have a great opportunity to be both physically and mentally prepared by Opening Day in Houston.