During our global crisis, how does communication continue to flow for a Major League Baseball organization that includes as many as 300 players from top to bottom as well as close to 200 coaches and staff across the system?
For the St. Louis Cardinals, personal contact remains first and foremost, but with the daily assistance of critical tools including TeamBuildr and Teamworks.
Three weeks to the day from when spring training games were officially halted due to the coronavirus outbreak and the scheduled time of the home opener, Cardinals vice president of baseball operations John Mozeliak fielded media questions via video chat on Thursday. Not surprisingly, the focus was on how his organization is coping with a situation new to everyone.
“The most important thing for our coaching staff from Mike Shildt on down is to try to keep open a very healthy communication tree,” Mozeliak said.
“In other words, just staying in touch with the players. There are certain things we try to check in daily on. A – How are they feeling? What is their health status? Are they able to work out? Are they doing some form of baseball activity? And really just making sure that we are staying connected.”
The team is engaged with the physical as well as the mental well-being of its employees.
“I am sure players – just like all of you (referring to media members) – might find yourself feeling like you are on a bit of an island during this period of isolation and really sort of public distancing or people distancing,” Mozeliak said.
These efforts to remain in close communication have a much larger focus than just the major league players.
“So we are just trying to make sure that we are engaged on that side of things,” he said. “Not only are we doing that on the 40-man roster side, but we are also trying to do that on the minor league side and also really with all of our employees to just make sure that they stay connected.”
Mozeliak briefly outlined the key tools being deployed.
“We are using two forms of communication – Teambuildr and Teamworks,” he said. “Teambuildr is a weight training and physical training tool that our strength coaches can use to build programs that are personalized to each individual.”
The reporting capability enables coaches to keep tabs on disbursed players who can no longer work out in large groups and travel to gyms and health clubs. Given what the player has in terms of equipment available at home, the app enables the coaches to structure customized workouts for each and make adjustments to maximize effectiveness.
“We try to get everyone a program,” Cardinals strength and conditioning coach Lance Thomason told Forbes. “There’s some guys who have the opportunity to work with their off-season trainers. We obviously allow those guys to work with them. But for everyone else who doesn’t have access to a gym, then we’re still providing workouts through the Teambuildr platform.”
The Cardinals are one of 10 Major League Baseball organizations to utilize the online strength and conditioning app and one of about 100 to do so across various professional sports, Forbes reported.
“We have a Teambuildr site that we are all on, and we get sent workouts that way,” Cardinals minor league pitcher Tyler Statler told the Beloit Daily News. “Everyone is in a different situation as far as what equipment they have, so every workout is different based on what’s available.
“And you play catch every day, just trying to stay as ready as you can. They haven’t told us anything about when we’d be going back, but when they do I want to make sure I’m prepared,” concluded the 18-year old right-hander, selected by St. Louis in the 14th round of the 2019 draft.
In terms of pitching workloads, Mozeliak acknowledged that some have “hit the brakes”. Multiple St. Louis starters had ramped up to five innings when play was halted. Mozeliak likened the current preparation level targets as having a “mid-January feel”.
That touches on the physical conditioning side from an individual perspective, but the organization also has the need to communicate efficiently and effectively on a broad basis at once. The Teamworks app enables this connection and collaboration across varied groups of individuals spread across the globe.
“That is something that we can use to flash out quick messaging to large groups,” Mozeliak said. “We can subset these groups by 40-man, non-40-man, and we can send it to everybody – put it in Spanish, English – we just have a lot of flexibility.”
“And that is one of the main tools we are using to communicate with 250-plus people,” he said.
As they remain separated indefinitely, the Cardinals organization and their players have all they need to remain in lock step.
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