Reitz Lends Fundamental Perspective

In his career with the St. Louis Cardinals, Ken Reitz played 1100 games and earned a reputation as one of the best defensive third basemen in the game. Fundamentals still matter to him, which often adds to his frustration watching the team this season.

“The players don’t seem to want to settle for singles and doubles anymore,” points out Reitz, who notes it’s not just the Cardinals that employ some of these habits. “With two strikes, they’re swinging as hard as they can. In our day, we’d get one good pitch to take a good hack at and we did. Then we’d cut down for the second strike and make sure we didn’t strike out for the third strike. Kind of like Yadi does–Yadi is a very, very professional hitter.”

The acceptance of striking out and the difficulty in laying down a bunt or launching a sacrifice fly, are all hard to accept.

“It’s just the way I guess these guys are being brought up in the minor leagues,” said Reitz. “Put up stats. The more home runs I got, that’s an easier RBI than a sacrifice fly. Looking for a pitch above the belt, with the way the bats are and the balls are now–the balls jump off these bats, it shouldn’t be that tough (for a sac fly). But like I said, they’re swinging at one speed. You’ve got to change to swinging about three different speeds with a baseball bat. One is when you get a hitters count, you take a really good rip but then you’ve got to cut down and you take a semi-good rip. And when you’ve got two strikes, you’ve got to get that ball in play, somehow.”

While frustrated, the feedback from Reitz is not all negative. In particular, the play of Jedd Gyorko has impressed.

“I think he’s done a really good job,” said Reitz. “He comes up to the plate and he takes really good swings. He doesn’t get cheated, but he also doesn’t look bad on some breaking balls like some of the guys do. And I was one of the guys who looked bad on breaking balls, but he has good swings. Everywhere you put him, he does what a pitcher wants–he’ll make the routine play and he’ll make the sensational play once in a while. He’s just a baseball player. I love the guy.”

Like the rest of the team this year, Gyorko has still made some mistakes–most notably the other night when he misjudged what turned out to be a fair ball and only made it to first base. But because of the track record, Reitz agrees that an overreaction from Matheny wasn’t warranted.

“There’s certain nights, you play so many games and travel so much now, that there’s some nights your mind’s just not in it,” said Reitz. “You’ve got to force yourself to get your mind in the game. He probably was just having one of those off-nights because I never really saw him do something like that. The base running on the Cardinals has been pretty bad to say the least. You’re right, you’ve got to give him a pass on that. You watch, it won’t happen again this year to him.”

So with the extra emphasis in the off-season and Spring Training, the added pregame meetings and drills, how do the Cardinals get these fundamental mistakes turned around?

“We took infield every night–infield, outfield practice every single night,” said Reitz.

Players still shag and take grounders, but infield/outfield has changed across the board in MLB over the last couple of decades from the more extensive workouts of years past. Besides getting loose for the game, it was also a chance to learn and emphasize fundamentals like hitting the cut-off man.

“If you didn’t, you got yelled at by Kissell or whoever was out there,” said Reitz. “You can go over these things til your blue in the face, but if you do it early in the afternoon, it’s basically forgotten by game time. I’ve watched Martinez, who I think swings the bat really good, but on defense when he’s in the outfield I’ve seen him airmail three throws over the cutoff man’s head. That shouldn’t happen.”

“They throw the ball over the cutoff man’s head and probably less than 10% of the outfielders throw a runner out at home.”

Surprisingly, the man nicknamed “The Zamboni Machine” and winner of the 1975 Gold Glove shares he wasn’t a good fielder when drafted by the Cardinals in 1969.

“I would take between 50-70 ground balls every day before the game and throw to first base,” said Reitz. “If it was 100 degrees or whatever, I did it. If we were 23 games out and it was the last game of the season, I still did it because it was going to help me the next season.”

And while this Cardinals team has yet to find the traction to but together consistent wins, Ken Reitz is not ready to put all of the blame on Mike Matheny.

“It’s not like Mike is not out there trying to not do anything to make this team better,” said Reitz. “Mike is one of the best people you’ll ever meet and he’s a hard worker. He just gets bashed all the time because of the moves he makes and things like that. Mike is a good baseball guy and he’s good with people. I believe that before this is over with, he’ll turn this thing around.

“They got a heckuva team. They got a great lineup, great starting staff. If you could just get your middle relief straightened out and get maybe one or two guys to come off the bench–nobody’s running away with this.”

Opening play on Wednesday, the Cardinals were 4.5 games in back of Milwaukee in the National League Central.

“The guys on this team, they’re trying–probably trying too hard,” said Reitz. “Carpenter, his base-running has been really bad but I don’t think he’s a bad baserunner. I think he’s probably trying too hard.”

“Everybody needs to be given an agenda of what to work on,” continued Reitz. “From your superstar down to your 25th player, that’s what they should be working on everyday. But I don’t think they could have a better field general than Mike. Everybody just jumps him left and right–they do not realize the work he puts in. He hurts worse than those guys. I just think that Mo’s got to give him a little help. Somewhere along the line, he’s got to find some guys that will help.”

photo credit: STLBaseballWeekly.com; Scott Kane, Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports