Peter Gammons MLB reports on Grady Siezemore

Peter Gammons: Determined Sizemore returns to major league stage

March 30, 2014 by Peter Gammons 0 Comments

Mark Shapiro was watching a spring training game between the Indians and Angels when his son Caden said, “people say the same things about Mike Trout that you used to say about Grady Sizemore.” As ever, Caden was right. His father, then the Cleveland general manager who traded for Sizemore when he was a 19-year old playing for Brevard County in the Expos organization, in 2006 called Grady “one of the greatest of his generation.”
And meant it, for what Shapiro says “is the person as well as the player.” This spring, Shapiro was texted an iPhone picture of Sizemore’s first at-bat since Sept. 21, 2011, and before the at-bat had finished, Mark had returned a text of thanks. No regrets. “Anyone who ever cross Grady’s path felt nothing but pure joy when he heard that John (Farrell) had announced Grady is the opening day centerfielder,” Shapiro said Saturday. “Coaches, trainers, teammates, ballpark workers, clubhouse kids…he always treated everyone with respect.”
One of those persons whose path he crossed was Farrell, who was the Indians farm director when Sizemore was traded to the Cleveland organization on June 27, 2002 and assigned the teenager to Kinston in the Carolina League. And Farrell knows the anecdote Shapiro, Chris Antonetti and everyone in the organization used to define Grady Sizemore. “He would never come into the clubhouse, take off his uniform and whatever he had on underneath and leave it on the floor for the clubbies to pick up, like everyone else,” says Shapiro. “He would take all his stuff and put it in the laundry bin himself. Even his towels.”
Marlins pro scouting director Jeff McAvoy was pitching in Brevard County on a rehabilitation assignment in 2002, with Sizemore. “He was really young (19), raw, but obviously was a great athlete, a football player learning baseball,” says McAvoy. “He was extremely respectful, wanted to learn about everything, and while he was a bonus boy because of his football commitment (the Expos bought him out of his commitment to the University of Washington as a quarterback), he acted he was the last guy on the team. He was clearly special, but never acted as he were special. It was impossible not to really like him.”
From the beginning of the 2002 season, Shapiro realized that he had to transition from the glorious, powerhouse Indians of the 1990’s to a new, younger, less expensive team. Expos general manager Omar Minaya was trying to save the Expos for Montreal, was looking for a frontline starting pitcher, and in mid-June the two general managers began trying to put together a deal for Bartolo Colon. “Tony LaCava knew Grady because he was working for Montreal (and Jim Beattie) when they drafted and signed him,” says Shapiro. “Our scout, Dave Malpass, had put in very good reports on him. So as we worked on the deal, we insisted on Grady.”
The big name in the deal was infielder Brandon (Dat Dude) Phillips, a Baseball America headliner prospect. The second player was double-A pitcher Cliff Lee, described by Shapiro as “the rock solid guy.” And, eventually, one of the best pitchers in the game. Then, Sizemore. They also took on veteran first baseman Lee Stevens. “We got killed, because to the fans it was Colon for Stevens and we were giving up,” says Shapiro. “When the deal came across the scroll on ESPN, it read, ‘The Indians traded pitcher Bartolo Colon for first baseman Lee Stevens,” says Shapiro.
Three years later the Expos moved to Washington. Imagine how different that initial season at RFK Stadium might have been if Sizemore, Lee and Phillips were Nationals.
After playing in AA Akron in 2003, Sizemore played 101 games in Buffalo, then moved up to Cleveland for the final 41 games. At the end of the season, Farrell and his assistant Mike Hazen held meetings with all the rookies who’d come up for the final month. Farrell made it clear to Shapiro and Antonetti that Sizemore was not only an extraordinary athlete, but a special individual.
In Sizemore’s first four full seasons, beginning 2005 at age 22, Sizemore averaged 158 games, 41 doubles, 8 triples, 27 homers and an .868 OPS. He won two gold gloves and a silver slugger award. In 2007, his Indians were up 3-1 over the Red Sox in the ALCS.
“I was the roving hitting coach with Grady in the Florida State League and the Eastern League, and I had never met anyone like him,” says current Rays hitting coach Derek Shelton. “He never had any fear. Remember, I was with him all those great years in Cleveland, and I can tell you that in all the years I was with him, he never took a play off. Never.  He always competed, he was always striving to improve and learn and not only be the best, but be the best he could be on every play.
“Some guys get to the big leagues and take a deep sigh of relief,” says Shelton. “He got to the big leagues, he wanted to be an all-star. He became an all-star, and immediately wanted to win a gold glove. He won a gold glove, and he wanted to win a silver slugger. And from the day he arrived, more than anything, he wanted to win a World Series. It really matters.”
In 2006, Sizemore was the fourth player to hit the 50 plateau in doubles, 10 in triples, 20 in homers (53, 11, 28). The other three were Chuck Klein, Joe Medwick, Lou Gehrig. “That meant nothing to him,” says Shelton. “What mattered was playing the game right and winning the World Series.” Which he nearly did.
Shapiro has two distinct Grady memories. The first came, in all places, Winter Haven. “First exhibition game, no one in the stands, no one cared,” Shapiro says. “He leads off, gets jammed and hits a little roller to second base. He tore down the line like he could win a World Series game. I turned to Chris and said, ‘That’s Grady Sizemore’.”
The second incident came when Sizemore dove across a brutal warning track in a spring training game, scraping up his arm. “Eric Wedge told Grady, ‘you need to pick your spots, you don’t have to do that kind of thing here.’ Grady looked at Eric like he had three heads. He had no idea what he was talking about because he didn’t understand playing the game without a disregard for his body.”
Shelton got to see Sizemore this spring and says “I wish he were in another division, but because he is who he is I am really happy to see how he looks. His swing is practically the same. It’s uncanny how short, quick and direct to the ball his swing is, consistently. The only other lefthanded hitter today who has that same kind of short, simple, quiet, direct swing is Joe Mauer. But Mauer is a little different in that he keeps the bat in the zone a little longer, which enables him to take the ball the other way so well.
“What is really unusual,” says Shelton, “is that he’s a lefthanded hitter and thrower with that swing. Mauer is a righthanded thrower, which means that he’s naturally stronger with his front shoulder and his bottom hand. Grady is left-left, which means he has to do it with his top hand. The only other player I can think of that was left-left and had that kind of quiet swing was Paul O’Neill. “
What also stands out about Sizemore’s swing is that is so flat. Before the string of injuries began, opposing pitchers talked a lot about how unusual it was to pitch to someone with so flat a swingpath. From the beginning of spring training, it was clear that that swingpath was back.
Sizemore told Shelton more than a year ago that he was going to get his body back in order before trying to come back from seven different, complicated operations. Hence, he sat out all of 2012 and 2013, rehabbing to get his body back in alignment. The Red Sox signing and the immense respect for Dan Dyrek, who is the director of medical services, and trainer Rick Jameyson, whom Sizemore knew from their Cleveland days. Over two years, Grady was confident that his body would tell him when he was ready to resume his career at full tilt, and wanted to sign with a team with the right medical staff. “This isn’t someone trying to come back at the age of 35,” says Shapiro. “He’s 31, in the condition of someone far younger.”
Monday, in Camden Yards, Grady Sizemore returns to the major league stage, back with Hazen, Farrell, Torey Lovullo and Jameyson from his Cleveland days.  They saw him when Shapiro called Grady “one of the greatest of his generation.”
Brian Butterfield says “you can judge the character of a baseball player by the way he runs the bases,” and they saw that character, daily, by running his hardest on every play, and early on this spring they saw him run into a wall with no regard for more than two years out of the game.
When he was one of the greatest of his generation, what Indians people remember about him was running out the first ground ball of spring training in an empty Winter Haven park, that he would never allow a clubhouse kid to have to pick up his dirty laundry after him, that he never took a day off.