Both Brant “Brownie” Brown and Jon “Chief Justice” Jay have been hard at work before camp even began.
In the seemingly long wait for the regular season, yesterday was the first important date to reaching games that matter. And that was that pitchers and catchers reported to spring training camp. This is not an actually important date, more of a symbol than anything. Several players have been at camp already and most of the rest were already doing spring training related things to improve their game.
That includes talking with coaches already. The ostensible benefit of actually being in camp is being in contact with coaches. Except that Jon Jay and Brant Brown had already seen and talked to most of the hitters. When Nolan Gorman got married, Brown was in town to talk with Gorman and a few hitters invited to his wedding. Nootbaar is excited to meet him in person, but feels like he already knows him because he’s had conversations throughout the offseason with him.
“He’s done a great job of reaching out and building that relationship,” Nootbaar said.
Beware. Everybody interviewed calls Brant Brown “Brownie.” That speaks to baseball players’ inability to not add a “y” to a common name. Pedro Pages apparently calls bullpen coach Jaime Pogue “Poguey” and I doubt he’s the only one. But aside from that, it also speaks to the success Brown has had in contacting players.
“A lot of credit to Brownie,” Marmol said. “He has been incredible this offseason. He brings energy for everybody. He’s traveling around, he’s gone and seen players. He’s hitting with them, they’re making adjustments. He’s gaining their trust early on, he’s super knowledgeable and he’s able to speak to different hitters based upon what they need.”
No need to take Marmol’s word for it. The players can attest to that. Jordan Walker has been working with Brown all offseason. Walker emphasized that his swing went a little backwards last year and he’s working with fusing the swing he had in the AFL in 2022 and 2023 with lessons he learned from last year.
“I’ve been working with Brant Brown on trying to get back to my swing there,” Walker said. “I feel as I was more comfortable hitting that way. In 2024, it’s no secret, I didn’t make a lot of contact. I want to start there. As the offseason went on, as I get more comfortable with that swing, then we start working on what’s the most consistent way for me to hit.”
All of this work, which is still continuing, was started well before Winter Warmup. Brown was hired on October 22nd, and nearly immediately was contacting players. Gorman in fact contacted him before Brown did. Unfortunately, Gorman was not available for comment at Winter Warmup. But Alec Burleson shed some light on it.
“Brownie has been sending me videos of Gorman,” Burleson said. “Me and Donny have been talking with (Gorman) a little bit. I’m excited. He’s very excited. He’s been kind of leading the charge with me and Donny. I’m super excited to see what that guy has.”
Perhaps the most important element of being able to improve at the plate is a willingness to improve. You have to believe you need to change. If you’re doing something that you believe works, why would you change?
“You can hear it from a coach and it could be exactly what you need to hear, but if you’re not ready to hear that, it doesn’t matter what they say,” bench coach Daniel Descalso said. “Until you realize ‘hey this is not working, I need to do something different,’ then it doesn’t matter who your hitting coach is.”
While Gorman wasn’t there, it is a reasonable assumption that neither he, nor Walker, nor Victor Scott have that issue. In Scott’s case, it means going back to class.
“Talking to Willie (McGee, as if you needed to know that), you got to study the game as it’s a classroom, so how you went to school at West Virginia, do the same thing here,” Scott said.
He clarified what treating baseball like a classroom actually looks like. For one thing, it’s looking at video.
“Learn how my body moves and understand what my misses look like and understand if I hit a foul ball how can I hit a line drive on the next one,” Scott said. “Talking with Brownie and BA (assistant hitting coach Brandon Allen) helped me understand this is what I need to be able to do to have more success to be a hit collector instead of a guy who is popping out. We don’t want that.”
Brant Brown is not the only new coach of the Cardinals. We are very familiar with the other new face in the dugout this upcoming season, old friend Jon Jay. There are similar stories of players already well into the process of working with Jay.
“He’s really excited about the outfield,” Walker said. “I remember the first time he came in with all these different drills, all these different balls I’ve never seen before. I can already tell he loves to teach.”
The very first day involved putting Walker and Scott (and possibly others, but those I know for sure) in front of a pitching machine and launching 100 mph balls at them. They also worked on how to stop the right way, and get in a good position to throw. If you remember Jay, he probably had the weakest arms in baseball so you know how vital positioning was for him.
He was also not particularly fast, and yet at the end of the season, his defensive numbers in CF were respectable. Imagine a player with Scott’s speed who runs the routes Jay did.
“On the defensive side, talking with John Jay, just learning how to take better routes, and how to get better first steps,” said Scott. “He showed me a couple drills that I know do daily so that’s helped me improve those things.”
It’s an oversimplification to say Jay is just here to help with outfield defense. Jay wants to work with everybody. Descalso also specifically mentioned Jay will help with the baserunning.
“Jon is one of the smartest players I’ve ever been around,” Descalso said. “As an outfielder, he would help position the other outfielders, one at the best at putting himself in the right spot, getting a good jump. The guy has hit .300 in this league, the guy has stolen bases. He’s going to be a really big asset this year, not only with helping some of our young outfielders in the outfield, but helping some of these guys with base stealing, base running.”
Jay just wants to help develop players to reach their full potential.
“Every player is different, but how do we reach that player?,” said Jay. “How do we develop that relationship and use our experiences to help them out? I think that’s going to be one of the biggest things this year is just using our experiences to help these younger guys and getting the best out of them.”
The players sure seem thrilled to have both Jay and Brown on the coaching staff.
“I think it’s really the energy they bring, they’re excited to get after it,” said Walker. “How can you not be excited to follow them? I just like the way they both approach the game of baseball. It makes me really want to fight.”
That energy and excitement seems to have translated to Marmol, who said he was more excited this year than any other season.
“There’s buy-in from our entire staff,” said Marmol. “Our staff is truly equipped to what we’re about to do. You go down the list, and these are guys who love developing players, and that’s a lot of what this year is going to be. They’re built for exactly what’s about to happen in 2025. That’s why I’m pumped.”
The main theme of the weekend was youth, which presents an opportunity and risk. The risk is that they fail and hurt the team, but the veteran players understand that. And they are fully on board with giving young players a chance.
“I think it gives you a chance to go out there and fail, which is hard to deal with in this game, but it’s also vital to learn from that, to grow and get better, and I think with the direction they want to go this year and let the young guys play, I think it’s great,” said Ryan Helsley.” “They need to get reps, they need to get comfortable out there, and that’s the only way they’re going to make that leap and become the players they want to be.”
If it doesn’t happen immediately, so be it. Both Helsley and Sonny Gray understand that and want patience if they struggle.
“You would have to have guys step up, but whether that happens the first month of the season or the second or the third month, I think you can’t panic about that, because the whole idea of it is to let them play and let them figure it out and that doesn’t happen overnight for everyone,” Gray said. “Some guys, it does.”
I’ll say this much. As it pertains to 2025 itself, it does not appear that communication is a problem. The players and coaches alike were saying pretty much the same things. They were on message. They have clearly communicated with each other. There is, as Marmol said, clarity on 2025.
“Baseball here is not like baseball anywhere else,” Marmol said. “This organization is truly in the fabric of this city, it is what this entire city cares about. And they understand that responsibility and they want to answer the bell. It’s meaningful to play for this organization and there’s clear direction in where we’re headed.”
(Programming note: obviously I intend to write more season previews, but I don’t know how many or when I’ll post them. I will only interrupt the voting process two more times, if I even do it two more times. I haven’t decided if I’m posting one on Monday. I’ll definitely post one before spring training games start. However many I do after that will definitely be after the voting is over.)