JUPITER, Fla. — As an assistant basketball coach all winter for the varsity Putnam High Kingsmen, Keynan Middleton set his phone aside so he could scout an upcoming opponent’s game, and he didn’t immediately see all the messages about an offer for a new summer job.
Late into the bidding, the Cardinals made a fourth-quarter push this past month for the part-time basketball coach and full-time big league reliever. He said they came to an agreement quickly, and he still studied the game, wrote up some notes — and the Kingsmen later won, too.
“Sounds like we’re pretty like-minded,†Middleton said of his talks with the Cardinals. “This is my eighth year, and I haven’t been to the playoffs. Anywhere I could contribute to do that. The Cardinals are the place for me.â€
Middleton, 30, missed the first official workout Wednesday with a stomach virus, and he darted around the clubhouse and weight room Thursday saying he had some “catching up to do.†The Cardinals intend to ease him into the throwing program after the illness, and when he takes the mound in the coming days, he’ll be the second Cardinal ever to wear No. 99, joining So Taguchi. Middleton split this past season with the White Sox and Yankees before becoming a free agent for the fourth consecutive winter.
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But this free agency was different.
After years of recovering from elbow injury and bouncing around big league bullpens, Middleton developed a wicked change-up this past summer, and it may have altered his career and put him in position to solve one of the Cardinals’ late-inning openings.
“I think there’s room to see another level,†Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “He’s a huge basketball guy. Grew up playing basketball. Loves the game. And isn’t fully developed from both a physical and mental standpoint on how he approaches hitters. I think there’s room there. And he’ll tell you there’s room there. So that’s exciting when you have that firepower with room to understand how to attack hitters and use your stuff properly.â€
Or as Middleton put it: “When I came up, I was just a guy with a hard fastball, and now, that’s the last thing I worry about.â€
Reunited on the south side of Chicago with Ethan Katz, the White Sox pitching coach and one of Middleton’s first pro coaches, the right-hander was encouraged to pick up his change-up again. He used it less than 13% of the time in 2021 and threw it 41 times total in 2022. This past year, he upped that use tenfold. For the first time in his career, he threw more change-ups (42.9%) than fastballs (26.3%).
And no wonder. Opponents hit .209 against the change-up and slugged .396 with 37.7% whiff rate, per Baseball Savant.
The inverted use also maximized his fastball, which averaged 95.5 mph and suddenly was holding opponents to a .122 average, down from .294 the previous season.
“I think at times I leaned on it a little too much,†Middleton said. “When I went to New York, they told me (that), and I changed some stuff. I thought I had it all figured out. Don’t we all sometimes? And I didn’t. There’s a little bit of critiquing that we can make, and I’m going to throw what I did in New York at the end of the year. I’m going to continue to make a little bit of changes and see if I can’t keep taking off.â€
The Angels selected Middleton, a 6-foot-3 right-hander, in the third round of the 2013 draft out of Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. He played baseball and basketball there.
He loved basketball and was still learning baseball.
That came up Thursday at Cardinals camp as he talked about his fondness and knowledge of one game and having another as his profession.
“If I could coach baseball and I had the knowledge to coach baseball, I would do that during the offseason,†he said. “But I coach basketball instead.â€
Under one of the temporary tents the Cardinals constructed to give them more room to spread out, to eat, to work out, Middleton popped on his iPad Thursday to go over some video ahead an upcoming game for the Kingsmen back home in Milwaukie, Oregon. The boys varsity basketball team at Putnam High is one of the state’s best in Class 5A. He was scouting an opponent for a pivotal game when the Cardinals made their late rush to sign him to a one-year, $6 million deal with a team option.
Middleton debuted with the Angels in 2017, had a 3.86 ERA and closed a few games. He had taken over as closer when his elbow unraveled early in 2018. His recovery overlapped with the shortened 2020 season, and that limited him to 19 2/3 innings in the majors between his injury and his move to Seattle as a free agent. He had limited innings before he was drafted and now limited innings into his late 20s. He pitched for four teams in the past three seasons.
“I remember him early on his career and you were looking at a guy who wasn’t scared of anything in the back end of the bullpen,†said Lance Lynn, a teammate last year with the White Sox and this year with the Cardinals. “He was becoming that closer. He was becoming that guy. And then he got hurt. When you’re hurt and you’re trying to get back to being that guy again, you have to find yourself again. I think he’s finally there.â€
The Cardinals see newcomers Andrew Kittredge and Middleton as additions to the competition to be Ryan Helsley’s setup man. The goal is to have Giovanny Gallegos and JoJo Romero hold onto that role so that any of the four could be available on any given day. If all four thrive in their assignments, Marmol agreed that a goal would be to use high-leverage relievers in late innings even when the team is down to freeze the game.
Marmol invited Middleton over to his house in St. Louis after the right-hander finalized his contract. Middleton said it was the first time he had done that — met the manager at his house, sat with his family. Marmol was struck by Middleton’s “edge.†The Cardinals believe he has the late-game temperament and the pitches that play off his new teammates. A handful of the new relievers are fastball-slider right-handers.
And then in comes Middleton with that plunging change-up, the one that drops and dashes from an unusual arm angle and has just enough deception that hitters are slow to react.
“Last year, people weren’t really expecting it,†Middleton said. “This year, they’ll be expecting a little bit more. But I’ve got a wrinkle for them.â€
The scouting report will have to change.
But that change-up could be for him and the Cardinals a game-changer.
“We’ll see,†Marmol said. “Yeah.â€