During spring training, the White Sox beat was trying to figure out: what is it about Kendall Graveman that made the Mariners clubhouse lose it when he got traded?
“When I played with him, he was always that fun-loving kind of guy,” his former A’s teammate Liam Hendriks said in spring. “Your personality can change when you go to the bullpen.”
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Another thing that can happen when you go to the bullpen is your arsenal can change. Most often it can shrink, as an inability to effectively command more than two pitches typically hastens the transition to relief work. This is not what happened to Graveman, who was, by his own description, already a two-pitch guy in the rotation, and his 2020 transition to pitching in shorter stints was driven by complications from a benign bone tumor in his cervical spine. And after 80 major league starts, it’s the weeks he spent getting back up to speed at the Mariners alternate site that year working with Rob Marcello Jr. (now the director of pitching with the Padres), where Graveman felt he truly got the feel for how to consistently get his fingers to the front of baseball and spin a slider well for the first time ever.
Then he dug into pitch data, watched high-speed video of himself and how he was releasing it, and validated how it was feeling.
“With TrackMan and things like that, it really showed that, hey, you are spinning it correctly,” Graveman told The Athletic. “And then it was a process of becoming confident throwing it.”
File that detail of his method away for later. Watching Graveman pitch, the first thing that jumps out is the arm-side run he gets on his two-seam fastball. The life on the pitch is such that he was a credible starter while throwing the pitch upward of two-thirds of the time at points, and it’s a standout offering amid a bullpen that will feature a number of remarkable sinkers once Joe Kelly is healthy.
But even employing a cutter alongside it, Graveman always posted reverse splits earlier in his career, and felt that right-handers were able to eliminate the possibility of seeing anything being thrown with spin that moved away from them. The horizontal movement on Graveman’s heater seemed like it would pair specifically well with a sweeping, horizontally moving slider. But initially, Graveman insists it wasn’t that deep.
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“I just knew I needed something that moved away,” Graveman said. “You talked about the sweep, you talked about the different types of sliders. I just wanted a slider.”
And if he could find the feel for spin and formulate a slider, it stood to reason that he could develop a curveball as well, or watch high-speed video to get a view of how to effectively backspin a four-seamer to pair with that curve against the hitters who might be vulnerable to it. A good changeup is something that’s a bit harder to refine, and has not always been consistent, but it’s part of the same approach Graveman has taken to relieving, which goes against the grain.
“We always talk about is the pitcher going to go to his strengths?” Graveman said. “Or is he going to go to the hitters’ weakness? And I’m trying to shore up all of my pitches where I feel like they’re all strengths, and then I can go to whatever pitch I feel is necessary to get a hitter out.”
Graveman’s starting experience is commonly cited for his special level (among relievers) of insistence upon mapping out a complete game plan for even a single inning out of the bullpen. He’d also add that the way his mind works, having a plan in place to exploit the opposition’s weaknesses is more relaxing than trying to be perfect with his sinker location. But true to his nature of quickly investing even in teammates he only had for a few months, Graveman points to observing the pregame work of Astros catcher Martín Maldonado; how much every sequence was dictated by his study of hitters. Building out an arsenal wide enough that allows him to do the same has led to Graveman retiring 16 of the 18 batters he’s faced so far in a White Sox uniform. But he’s trying to have a broader impact.
“One of my goals this year — and I have already started this process — is to allow some of the younger guys that are in our bullpen, and on our staff to continue to take next steps of how to pregame plan and plan for a series against hitters,” Graveman said. “I hope that I can portray that onto these guys that it’s important to be prepared. It’s our job. They’re paying us to do this. And not only to get outs, but also to plan ahead. And I think the guys have been receptive so far. I hope that as the season goes along, with more preparation, that they’ll start seeing the results from it.”
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“Every day I follow Kendall Graveman around, for sure,” said Sox reliever Kyle Crick, who has been trying to master the command of a two-seamer to pair with his sweeping slider. “He’s been a vital asset to me, because he’s doing exactly what I’m trying to do. And he’s been doing it at an elite level for a while now. He’s been an awesome resource to have. He’s taking me under his wing in that sense, as far as how he does things and he’s teaching me how to prepare in the bullpen. I watch him warm up, and I have a good idea of what I’m going to do.
“His preparation is probably at least as good or better than everyone else. He prepares very well. He watches video. He knows how to set people up before the series even starts. There’s confidence in that. Now when you’re out on the mound, you’re not thinking ‘How do I get this guy out?’, you already know. Which is kind of what he’s been preaching to the bullpen too, is that if you’re prepared, the confidence will come. He’s been helping the whole bullpen, not just me.”
The whole bullpen doesn’t necessarily need Graveman’s help. Hendriks’ level of process and dedication — where he goes to the bullpen with a Codify location map for opposing hitters, has reviewed the action on his pitches and can rattle off the last time he allowed a hit on a certain pitch in a certain location — doesn’t require any notes. A lot of major league pitchers walk in the locker room thinking they know what’s best. Having feel is necessary to make it useful.
“It reminds me a lot of when (Lance) Lynn showed up here last year,” manager Tony La Russa said of Graveman. “It’s a very mentoring kind of thing. Graveman, he knows how he got to where he is, and he shares it. He’s very smart about making it individual, he doesn’t tell the same thing to each guy. And he works with (pitching coaches) Curt (Hasler) and Ethan (Katz). He makes sure what he’s saying is something they co-sign.”
By that logic, what Graveman says about where Crick and Aaron Bummer are at in modeling a sinker they can command to get ahead in the count as consistent he has in the early going, is about what the coaching staff sees as well.
“Bum is shoring up his sinker right now,” Graveman said. “We’re all going to go through times where the ball isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. You’re talking about millimeters in the way the ball is spinning to create different types of movement. They say it’s a game of inches, but it’s even a game further than inches. He’s physically getting back to where he needs to be. I have full conviction and faith that he is going to get back to getting a sinker in the right location and the right movement. But that’s the positive thing about the technology. We can go hop on a bullpen mound and get feedback immediately.
“Just talking to Crick, I was like ‘Hey, my pitching coach said to me as a sophomore in college, if you can’t (command) that glove-side sinker, then the righties are just gonna eliminate that sinker down and away that starts as a ball and ends as a strike. Once he gets to that location consistently, it is going to change his whole game. He’s working really hard with that. And I have, once again, 100 percent faith that he’s already started to do it, and he’s going to be able to replicate that even more. It’s going to change what guys are going to have to go up there with an approach against him.
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“All these things as we go throughout a season, if we all continue to find ways to step and get better in the right direction, at the end of the year we’re hitting our stride at the right moment. But if we never take these steps, and we just stay where we’re at, at the start of the season, then we look back and say we’ve kind of wasted five months with not getting better.”
(Photo: Ron Vesely / Getty Images)