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JUPITER, Fla. — With the bright orange Nike shoe bag he carries with him every day out to the field, former Cardinals outfielder and newest Cardinals coach Jon Jay emerged from the team’s clubhouse, found a table and set the bag down, ready for its close-up.

It used to house a pair of shoes with that same swoosh logo, but it’s been converted since and stuffed with tools of Jay’s current trade: training.

One of his pupils referred to it as the “bag of tricks.”

“That’s what we’re calling it?” Jay asked.

He was asked for an alternative.

The coach shrugged: “Bag of tricks is fine.”

It’s also true.

Jay unzipped the bag to reveal a jumble of balls: bright yellow rubber balls with raised bumps to make them jitterbug unpredictably; classic blue racquetballs; and “good, old-fashioned, regular baseballs,” he said about to brandish one.

Each has a specific drill or two that Jay ran his outfielders through every day this spring. The yellow SKLZ reaction balls help with grounders, especially those that “snake” along the lines cut in outfield grass. The bouncy racquetballs aid with tracking and snaring fly balls. The baseballs are self-explanatory. But here’s the catch: Most of these drills are done in close quarters and without gloves.

“I’m always trying to figure out ways to get guys uncomfortable out there, right?” Jay said. “You’ll see a lot of the work I do is in short space instead of traditionally outfielders are standing really far away. I like to get guys at a closer distance so they have to react, they have to make decisions a little bit faster. If you can do that taking the same approach into a game, it should benefit you.”

Covering ground

Beneath the surface of the Cardinals’ “transition” — leadership’s word — toward youth is a goal out in the wide open for all to see: stronger outfield defense.

For a club with a spacious home ballpark to cover, that initiative to improve has become only more paramount as the team shifts its lineup plan with Nolan Arenado still at third base. That likely bumps Brendan Donovan to left field and turns to Lars Nootbaar in center field at times rather than left.

The club has also committed to Jordan Walker as its everyday right fielder, promising the former first-round draft pick two essential things for his potential: patience and playing time. Last season, the Cardinals were a minus-11 in defensive runs saved in right field, even in left, and plus-3 in center, where Michael Siani took a run at a Gold Glove Award.

Each of the outfielders has areas of the position they’ve been tasked with improving:

• Nootbaar is focused on his pre-pitch readiness and drilling routes — lowering his head and dashing to where the ball will be before picking it up again. That should extend his range and uptick his reactions for center.
• Walker is sharpening his angles and body positioning for plays from liners to grounders, all while gaining experience at a position he moved to as he reached the majors.
• Prospect Victor Scott II, the opening day center fielder a year ago, is improving his anticipation to hasten his jumps — a skill that combined with his speed would make him a top-flight center fielder.

“I’m more bullish on our outfield defense than I ever have been here,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “The work that they’re doing will lead to better defense. There is some low-hanging fruit for some of the guys and some process-driven that will take some time. They’re headed in a really good direction.”

'Deep bag of tricks'

There nearby is Jay’s orange bag.

“He has a deep bag of tricks for sure,” Walker said. “He has the snaking grounders you get from those yellow balls. He’s really about using your legs. To get to them, you have got to use your legs. They’re bouncing all over the place. If you want to be able to field it correctly, you have to be in your legs. So you can’t cheat on that one. I think that’s my favorite one. It is the hardest one for me. But it’s my favorite because of the competition. We’re all out there trying to field the yellow one.”

Early one morning last week on the turf field usually utilized by catchers and infielders, Walker was going through a drill with Jay, the bag and the yellow SKLZ balls.

Bent over as if to field a skipped throw in the dirt, Walker held out his arm to catch on his backhand — but without a glove. On a knee nearby to shorten the time Walker had to react, Jay rolled the SKLZ ball toward him. It would hop and skitter, bounce and bumble, and with each one, Walker would work to maintain the same positioning, the same reaction as he snatched it with his hand.

Another morning, the outfielders gathered near the right field line, and Jay pulled out handfuls of racquetballs from his bag. He had each outfielder run routes like defensive backs, darting from cone to cone and catching the bouncy blue ball whenever Jay fired one at them. The last route meant turning their backs to Jay, who would then loft or line a ball they had to pick up. The wind was swirling, adding another twist (or sometimes three) to the drill.

“With the racquetball, I can get close to you and just throw this as hard as I can,” Jay said. “Really focus on using your hands and being soft with your hands. It’s almost like you’re going after that ball in the gap and you’re running it down and it comes out of nowhere. You’ve got to get your hands on it.

“Trying to make things unconventional.”

Competition inevitably develops. The outfielders will see how many they as a group or as individuals can catch consecutively. They’ll wince as an individual or as a group on a particularly sinister hop from the bounding SKLZ ball.

“I say all the time if you miss this it’s OK,” Jay said. “With a glove, you’re going to catch the ball. If you catch these with your bare hand, with a glove there shouldn’t be any problem.”

That brings up the glove.

Scott spent more than a month of his offseason at the Cardinals’ training complex in Jupiter, and among the new tools Jay introduced him to was a training glove — or “baby” glove, as Scott called it. Siani has one as well. It’s too big to fit in Jay’s “bag of tricks,” so when the bare-hand drills are done, some of the outfielders will use the training gloves for traditional outfield workouts such as fly ball from a pitching machine or fungo grounders. The “baby” glove is 9½ inches long and, as Jay said, “that extra 3 inches you learn is a big deal.”

'Back to being a kid'

A second-round pick by the Cardinals out of Miami in the 2006 draft, Jay spent six seasons in St. Louis and became a core part of four consecutive National League Championship Series appearances. Several of his seasons began with the Cardinals looking to someone else to play center field, and several more ended with Jay once again starting in center.

He last played in the majors in 2021 and joined Skip Schumaker’s Marlins staff for 2023 and 2024. Jay had an offer to return there, but the Cardinals came calling — with an offer and an assignment.

As a coach, Jay will be involved in other aspects of game and player preparation, but his stated responsibility is outfield defense.

He packed his bag.

Some of the items in it date to when he was playing outfield for the Cardinals and kept experimenting with new drills to challenge himself and shake the doldrums of repetition. He watched other teams put their outfielders through different paces, and he borrowed and adapted what he saw. The SKLZ ball has its roots in ways he’d challenge himself as a boy — bouncing the wily rubber ball off a wall and testing his reactions.

“That’s how the yellow ball started,” he said. “Traditionally, if you want to do ground balls, I’m going to hit you ground balls. But with the yellow balls, it makes it kind of fun. You don’t know where the ball is going to go. It challenges you. It takes you back to being a kid. Anything to break up the monotony of every single day doing the same thing. ... Each drill I designed for something.”

And with that explanation he played the SKLZ ball back in the bag.

He zipped it up and carried it back into the clubhouse.

The next morning, it was back out on the field, outfielders stretching a few feet away and Jay considering which of the tricks he’d pull from his bag to throw at them next.

“It’s putting yourself in an uncomfortable environment like an outfielder gets put into in games,” Nootbaar said. “It challenges you early. You have to do each drill well or it will expose you — and quickly. It’s just a fun way to go about getting in the work, but during the fun, it makes sure you’re focused on the fundamentals.”