JUPITER, Fla. -- As the Cardinals and other teams try to determine what the next steps are amid the Spring Training cancellation and regular season delay, manager Mike Shildt and his staff are beginning to come up with plans for players to stay in baseball shape, both in Jupiter and at their respective homes.
There were already a few players at the facility Saturday morning for informal workouts.
After Friday’s announcement that Spring Training camps would close, the Cardinals initially expected 10-15 players to stay voluntarily in Jupiter to continue working out at the facility. That number increased Saturday; Shildt said he expects 15-25 players at workouts in Jupiter for the time being and a “good, healthy presence” of staff will stay, including Shildt.
Regardless if players stay or go, Shildt said they have his full support.
“No one needs to be made to feel like they need to be here to still work,” Shildt said. “Families first, big picture. Let’s figure out what this looks like for you and the safety of your family and just make sure everyone’s comfortable and confident with that, and support that 100 percent.
“We’re happy that guys are here, we’re happy that guys are able to get home. We hope they have the structure that allows them to continue to do what they need to do to stay ready.”
The Cardinals are planning workouts at the facility for Monday through Friday. Some players went in Saturday to play catch and use the weight room or training room, but Sunday will be an off-day. Weekday workouts will not be open to the public.
As far as what players are expected to work on, Shildt and his staff are putting together individual and group schedules to help players stay healthy and in baseball shape.
The challenge comes with not knowing when the season will open.
“When you look at putting together schedules individually, and then for a group, you do it based on a time, and you work somewhat backward from that,” Shildt said. “But we don’t have that end date, so right now, we talked through with the medical group, with the performance group and with our baseball group, about what it looks like right now for the short view and for the long view of the season. We don’t know the end date of the season, and we don’t know when it starts.”
For now, the Cardinals are creating individual templates for starting pitchers, relievers and hitters, as well as what the team thinks the volume should be with both throwing and hitting. Shildt said it’s not so much about maintaining as it is about not returning to the workload that players were at when Spring Training first started.
“We’ve got 30 days from our 40 days in our camp completed, so guys are fairly ramped up,” Shildt said. “We don’t want to go to zero. We don’t feel like we need to keep it at the same intensity, but we did gain traction with everybody and we do have clarity with everybody, individually. And that’s momentum that we don’t want to lose. So it’s been scaled back, but it’s not to zero.”
For example, the Cardinals are going to set up a schedule for starting pitchers that gives them a baseline of around 45 pitches for their workouts and has them throwing two times per week for bullpen sessions. That would allow them to ramp up quickly whenever a potential opening date is set.
The templates will also be individualized for each player, detailing what each could work on based on the first few weeks of Grapefruit League games.
“Irrespective of where guys finished, it will be individualized to say you need to work on 'X,' more or less, within that structure," Shildt said.
There are many moving parts to creating a schedule like this, especially with no known end date, players being in different places and plans changing as teams gain more clarity during this time. But Shildt is relying on his background in creating schedules in the Cardinals' organization. The second-year manager has had a significant part in helping create Spring Training schedules since his first time in charge of Minor League Spring Training in 2008.
“Just [been doing] schedules for years,” Shildt said. “I remember that year in 2008, creating a Spring Training schedule and being done with the schedule at 5:45 in the morning, and you want to get it posted at 6:15.”
He’s leaning on his staff -- like bench coach Oliver Marmol, bullpen catcher Jamie Pogue and many others -- to help, too.
“A lot of moving parts,” Shildt said. “But that’s our job.”