Work from home? Even pitchers are finding new ways to do it

From an aesthetic point of view, it’s hard to beat Yankees right-hander Marcus Stroman’s solution for baseball’s version of “work from home.”

The days of ballplayers showing up to Spring Training with belly fat are (mostly) long gone, so it takes a good pitcher’s mound to properly prepare for the start of camp. Pitchers choose from a variety of strategies, from investing in sessions at high-performance labs stocked with the latest technology, to throwing off mounds on college campuses or their old high schools and public parks. And, sometimes, right at home.

That’s where Stroman’s Instagram followers found him in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the game and necessitated creative approaches to staying ready. Stroman showed off a truly spectacular setup on a dock behind his Florida property that was just the right size, with a raised mound on one end and a catcher on the other. He threw pandemic ’pens in style.

“I think guys are coming in more and more ready,” Brewers right-hander Brandon Woodruff said during a recent telephone chat. “The way guys throw now, you have to get prepared for spring, because with injuries and everything, the spring is a big time to get your body used to that ‘intent’ and used to that load. You can’t just ease into it anymore.”

Like Stroman, Woodruff’s amenities took a leap forward during the pandemic, when his father-in-law helped him construct a mound at home in Saltillo, Miss. It came in handy later that summer when Woodruff went home for the birth of his first child and was able to throw his usual between-starts bullpen session.

When that makeshift mound rotted out, he purchased a more professional moveable mound and shifted his garage gym to a 35-by-40 foot shop in his backyard, with a door he can roll up to throw from the inside to the outside. Woodruff is in the process of building a new home with an even larger auxiliary building, outfitted with a mound for himself and a batting cage and other toys for his two young children.

“It all changes as you start to get older, man,” Woodruff said. “With two kids, you don’t always have time to get up and go to these facilities. I have to make sure I get my work in.”

Likewise, Royals pitcher Michael Lorenzen is building a setup for the present and the future. After he bought his Southern California home in 2022, when he pitched for the Angels, he asked the team’s grounds crew to come out and build MLB-caliber pitching mounds. Now Lorenzen is building a gym and adding other features, including some of the technology you see at performance centers and Spring Training complexes.

Like Woodruff and many other pitchers, Lorenzen has a high-speed camera from Edgertronic. But Lorenzen also has the pricier Trackman system at home, which uses radar to measure the flight and rotation of a baseball. Over time, he’d like to build out a true motion capture lab open to other players in the area.

“It’s all an investment,” said Lorenzen, who is coming off his best season as a starter at age 32, and recently signed back with Kansas City on a one-year deal for his age-33 season. “And here’s the thing: I don’t like to rely on other people when it comes to my career. It’s like, I understand that I’m responsible for my success and failure. I make sure to do deep dives on everything. I don’t need to be an expert on all of the tech, but I should be able to speak the language.”

Lorenzen, who was a two-way player earlier in his career with the Reds and is regarded as one of the best athletes in MLB’s pitching ranks, honed that independent approach during offseason workouts in Malibu with surfing legend Laird Hamilton, who opened his gym to elite athletes and military. Lorenzen thrived during winter workouts under the California sunshine.

So, he eyed a similar setup at his own home. With college and independent league catchers on hand to help, a handful of Minor Leaguers and college pitchers – not to mention infielder-turned-knuckleballer David Fletcher, a former Angel – have been by this offseason to work out. Once Lorenzen’s buildout is complete, he expects a much busier scene next winter.

He’s also built a baseball training app called WorkMode, which Lorenzen just converted to a free resource for young ballplayers to learn how to properly prepare.

“There’s no real offseason anymore,” he said.

That, of course, has its pluses and minuses, the likes of which occupy the thoughts of pitching coaches like the Braves’ Rick Kranitz and the Reds’ Derek Johnson.

“If I had my druthers, we would keep them in Arizona full-time and I would move down there and keep an eye on all of them,” Johnson said. “But that’s not going to happen. They live all over the country and sometimes all over the world. So whether it’s me or my assistant or our bullpen coach, we’re spending a lot of time communicating. ‘Where are you at?’”

Technology can help. Rather than simply trust that a pitcher is doing his work, coaches commonly solicit data to check in on players who have access to private pitching labs or have at-home tech. The devices keep getting more convenient, including wearables like the PULSE and the Motus sleeve, which measure stress on a pitcher’s arm. It’s come a long way from the first time Kranitz started seeing cameras around baseball complexes.

“My concern then – and still – is that guys would try to ‘throw to the machine,’” Kranitz said. “They rip their breaking balls harder than they would need to at that time of year, you know what I mean? But these guys adjust so well that they hopefully have a pretty good feel for it. That’s some of the data we’re still looking for in terms of arm injuries: Are we ripping it too soon?”

Teams are steadily acquiring data to answer those questions as players’ offseason programs get more sophisticated.

Then there is the other type of at-home throwing session: The desperation bullpen. When the Dallas-Ft. Worth area shut down after the New Year because of snow and ice, Rangers left-hander Cody Bradford stayed on schedule at home in nearby Midlothian by leaning a mattress against a door at the end of a hallway.

Anything to get his work in.

“There was no snow in Midlothian, just a little bit of sleet so … no building snowmen,” said Bradford, who reported to the team’s Winter Caravan this week ready to get back to work in front of crowds. “[Doing] things around the stadium with fans, it just starts getting you ready for the season. It gets you excited.”