April 6, 2022

By J.P. Antonacci

Canadian Baseball Network

Cade Smith is picking up right where he left off.

The 22-year-old pitcher from Abbotsford, B.C. ended his first professional season in the thick of a pennant race with the High-A Lake County Captains. This week, the Cleveland Guardians announced the tall right-hander would start the 2022 season back in the Cleveland suburb of Eastlake, Ohio.

Reached at home in the offseason, Smith told the Canadian Baseball Network that joining a playoff push to end the year and locking down several big saves for the Captains was “super exciting.”

He was promoted for the final week of the minor league season after impressing with the Lynchburg Hillcats, Cleveland’s Low-A affiliate, where Smith’s pro career got off to a sterling start.

It was May 23, 2021, the day after he was assigned to the Hillcats. The righty exhibited pinpoint control in striking out seven of the nine batters he faced over 2 2/3 scoreless relief innings, allowing a lone single and picking off a baserunner who reached on an error for good measure.

“It was a lot of fun. It was the first baseball game I’d played in probably a year and a half, since March of 2020,” said Smith, a Junior National Team alumnus who excelled with the Division I University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors before signing with Cleveland in June 2020 as an undrafted free agent.

“We had some fans in the stands, and it’s like, right, this is what was so much fun in college. I didn’t forget, but man, having a quarantine year and not being able to do this was boring.”

His second appearance three days later was a little too eventful. Smith struck out two but was batted around to the tune of four runs on three hits and three walks in a performance he candidly described as “pretty brutal.”

“That outing, I think I was timid,” he said. “I didn’t want to throw really anything in the zone that would get hit hard, because the team we were playing was full of really good hitters. So it was just missing fastballs outside again and again.”

Those first two games reminded Smith of the importance of having a short memory out of the bullpen.

“You learn as much as you can from the day before and then you forget about it, good or bad, and you look forward,” he said.

Before heading to Ohio, Smith saw some action with the big league Cleveland Guardians at spring training (See video above). He retired the side in the eighth inning against the Arizona Diamonbacks at Chase Field in Arizona on Tuesday, collecting one strikeout and touching the mid-90s with his fastball. Photo: Baseball Canada

Thinking like a pitcher

Smith notched 33 appearances last year, tops among Canadian pitchers in the minor leagues. He was a reliever all season, deployed as a longman, setup man and closer.

As the season progressed, the 22-year-old said he learned to think like a pitcher. That meant instead of repeating the same pitch and expecting a different result – his downfall in that rough second outing – he worked all sides of the strike zone.

“If you want a guy to chase the outside fastball and you throw it again and he doesn’t swing, don’t throw it a third time. Try something different,” Smith said.

“If you go two fastballs hard in, now do something soft and away.”

Leaning on his fastball, Smith adopted what he called a “confidence-slash-aggressiveness approach,” looking to make hitters “uncomfortable” at the plate by changing speeds and eye levels.

“It was just being aggressive enough to throw a lot of strikes and see what happens,” he said. “Because I’ve got a professional defence behind me. That’s what they’re here to do.”

Trusting his fielders freed him from the pressure to strike everyone out, though his strikeout numbers remained impressive, with 68 punchouts in 43 innings to go along with a 1.09 WHIP.

“Over the course of the season, you really see the value of efficient innings,” Smith said. “If you have a game where you use four bullpen arms because everyone’s throwing 35 pitches an inning, it hurts the team for the rest of the series.”

Smith said he kept his pitch count down by inducing ground balls on low strikes and jamming hitters inside to get weak pop-ups. But sometimes a strikeout made the most sense.

“Say I’ve been watching a guy (from the bullpen) and notice that he’s chasing our starter’s breaking balls in the dirt over and over again. Like, this guy can’t hit a slider. That’s something to know,” he said.

“I’m in a two-strike count against him (and) I know he’s had trouble with that (pitch), so I can try that because I’ve seen it. That’s also part of developing, in the sense of learning how to read swings and read hitters and watch for tendencies.”

A bullpen education

Smith was drawn to Cleveland because of the organization’s track record of developing young pitchers. From spring training on, he took full advantage of the analytics tools and expertise at his disposal, peppering his coaches with questions.

At the Guardians’ spring facility in Arizona, coaches taught Smith how to simplify his mechanics and his thought process.

“There’s conversations too about the mental aspect of it and just competing, and not trying to do too much,” he said.

His education continued in the Hillcats’ bullpen, where Smith compared pitch grips and release points with other young pitchers learning their craft.

“There’s lots of good conversation. Sometimes it helps to bounce those ideas off of teammates,” he said.

“Because maybe I wrestled with something that’s important for me in my development that I can share with someone else. Not everything that worked for me will work for them, but maybe there’s something that’ll be helpful.”

Smith said his first few games in the bullpen felt “frantic,” but he soon learned how to “stay focused in and pay attention,” especially if that day’s starter was running up a high pitch count, a sign that the bullpen phone might ring earlier than expected.

“I just think that it’s a new level of concentration, almost,” Smith said.

“From a mental standpoint, you can start to get ready to go into the game four innings before you actually even start to get loose. You want to expect to go in so that you can prepare yourself.”

Picking his spots

After tweaking his mechanics in spring training, Smith focused on developing his pitch mix, which in college consisted of a fastball, cutter, curve and changeup.

“I have to learn the roles of my different pitches,” he said.

“Maybe my fastball’s good at getting swing and miss, but it’s not good at getting weak contact. Okay, so then what pitch am I going to throw to get weak contact when I want a double play or a two-pitch out?”

Used to spotting his fastball on the outer half, Smith practised pitching inside at the top of the strike zone to generate swings and misses.

“And then if I can pitch to both sides of the plate, pitching in opens up the outside corner. So you start to see little things like that,” he said.

A quick study, Smith took notes throughout the season, typing them up on his laptop to reference later.

“The coaches have so much knowledge and so much experience, and their job at this level is to develop you (and) communicate that knowledge,” he said.

Smith said longtime minor league pitching coach Tony Arnold, who has spent three decades working with Cleveland’s up and coming hurlers, was particularly generous with his insights.

“I tried to pick his brain and ask him a whole bunch of questions. He’s got that wisdom to see things through a different lens, so the things that he said are really valuable,” Smith said.

“It’s so cool to even watch the coaches watch the game and to get a sense of how they’re thinking. There’s still a ton for me to learn.”

Pushing his limits

One difference between college ball and the pro ranks that Smith has embraced is having to be accountable for his own work ethic.

“In college baseball, if you miss your lifts, if you’re not working hard, well, everyone is lifting at the same time, and if you miss it there’s going to be consequences,” he said.

“In pro ball, it’s not the whole pitching staff lifting. It’s me lifting. With my throwing, my lifting, my running, I’m given a program, but getting it done is my responsibility.”

Armed with an offseason training program supplied by his coaches, the onus was again on Smith to report to camp this month fit and ready to take the next step.

“I have so much more freedom and control over my development and my career. But you know, that’s also a challenge, because there’s days when I’m tired, I’m sore, maybe I don't want to lift, I don’t want to run,” he said.

“It’s my decision then if I want to skip it or not work as hard. That’s the challenge – to decide to go against that (temptation), to do it well, and do it with high intensity and a level of focus that’s really going to benefit me.”