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Hey, I remember reading articles seemingly every spring training a few years ago that the Cardinals had invested in a bunch of high tech equipment and were planning on making a pitching lab at their spring training complex. The problem was that their lease agreement with the Marlins stipulated that facilities had to be equal and the Marlins were too cheap to buy the same equipment for their organization and I guess were hoping the Cardinals would pay for their upgrades as well. Dewitt apparently balked at this, so we ended up with a bunch of fancy equipment sitting in a storage room. I think after a few years they considered buying a facility off site so they could get around the lease agreement but then COVID hit and impacted spending drastically.
Brian, do you have any updates on the status of this situation? I ask because the Brewers and Dodgers have pitching labs and they have had a tremendous impact on the pitching for those organizations. Sounds like just what we need.
With COVID, back field access to the Jupiter facility was cut off since I was last there early last year. At that time, the Cardinals were completing construction on a new set of state of the art batting cages for the minor leaguers along with the aforementioned pitching lab at the far end of the new building pictured. I reported on this for subscribers during the last instructional camp, held in January 2020, but do not have an update on how it has been utilized since. In a general sense, COVID led to staffing and expense reductions across player development – and the entire organization.
FWIW, I am aware of the need to coordinate with the Marlins on the proposed $100+ million upgrades to the Roger Dean complex, but I had not heard anything about the pitching lab being tied up in that – and I would be skeptical about that rumor without substantiation.
Thanks so much for the update, Brian! I had been wondering about this for awhile. I think it was Goold who I remember reporting about the lease situation with the Marlins being the reason they hadn’t installed the equipment yet, but this was admittedly a few years ago so I could be misremembering. It could have just been a financial situation and the team gave a made up reason when they were being asked why the equipment wasn’t in use yet? Or goold was speculating rather than reporting actual info? Anyway, glad to hear it sounds like the equipment is actually in use!
I don’t want to misrepresent the situation. A completed building does not mean it is fully operational. I will ask around about that.
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