“We’re talking practice. I don’t want to sound like Allen Iverson, but it’s practice.”
Serving as a graduate assistant at the University of Washington during Nick Madrigal’s freshman season at Oregon State, and having the misfortune of coaching against him in a summer collegiate league, White Sox scout Mike Gange was plenty familiar with the man he would recommend as the fourth overall pick. But saddled with the task of discerning whether Madrigal was just a hyper-productive college player or a legitimate future star, Gange figured he needed every look he could get, should interview as many of Madrigal’s teammates as possible, and yes, even show up for a preseason intersquad practice. He happened across a telling moment.
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“First to third is what we thought he was doing on the single to left,” Gange recalls. “Which is already, I don’t want to say it was a ballsy play, but it’s a hard-nosed play to go in practice, intersquad. It’s Nick Madrigal, he just got back from Team USA and maybe shouldn’t even be playing, he goes first to third and winds up scoring because the left fielder wound up throwing the ball to second to keep the runner from advancing. His innate ability, his instincts, they’re just in him, man.”
A year later, now in big-league camp, Madrigal is essentially again at practice. He’s starting occasionally, but mostly subbing in halfway through, playing alongside other prospects wearing uniform numbers in the 90s, when the typically low intensity of spring training games has shifted down yet another gear. Placed in this environment, he stands out a bit.
Madrigal was vocally bummed when the Sox lost in his Cactus League debut, a split-squad game, by a single run to Oakland. A few days later against Kansas City, after reaching across his body to snag a throw drifting toward the third base side, Madrigal spun around to put a tag on Nicky Lopez as he tried to steal second. When the umpire ruled Lopez safe, Madrigal eagerly showed him the ball in his glove in case he had missed it, or made a mistake. Against San Francisco, Madrigal implored the home plate umpire to appeal to first base after he ruled his check-swing a strike. Pushed to an 0-2 count, Madrigal was forced into a defensive swing to protect the corner on an outside pitch, popped it up weakly to right, and flung his bat in such frustration it nearly rolled into the Giants dugout. It was nothing unusual to see in the ninth inning of a tied game, it’s just unusual to see in February.
“A loss still hurts just as much as a regular season loss,” Madrigal said. “If someone’s keeping score, if someone’s out there watching, especially people in the stands, I’m going to try to go as hard as I can. That’s the way I was raised.”
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White Sox player development director Chris Getz is cautious about comparing intensity levels of different players in camp. Veterans are understandably more concerned about where they’re at by the final week than anytime before then; some players’ games look incomplete because they’re working on specific things; most first-timers are looking to impress major-league coaches as much as they can; and a precious few are literally competing for jobs.
Still, even with all that context and individualized assessment, when there’s a second baseman intentionally dropping a soft liner because he spies the batter loafing up the first-base line and thinks he can savvy his way into turning a double play — again, in February — it gets noticed.
“That’s just the way Nick plays,” Getz said. “That’s one of things that made him so attractive to us.”
For a while, it was the thing that made Madrigal attractive, a carrying trait that indicates he can always be counted on to hit his potential. While his contact-oriented plate approach and hard-charging style of play reads as old school, the most traditional scout thing is to rule out the guy who brings no standout physical tools beyond a max-effort scamper that pulls above-average run times.
“Most of the best players we’re scouting are the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, they stand out,” said White Sox amateur scouting director Nick Hostetler. “They get off the bus and you know which ones you’re there to see. Nick was not that guy. Nick got off the bus and he blended in. If anything he stuck out for the opposite reason in that he was the smallest guy. He plays with a chip on his shoulder and a fire and intensity that I don’t want to say that I’ve never seen, but I can’t pinpoint a guy that I’ve seen play with that level of fire. It’s what makes him, him.”
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Between travel ball, playing for a college baseball powerhouse that regularly makes deep playoff runs and Getz’s regular bonding retreats for the organization’s core prospects, Madrigal was very much a known commodity by the time he set foot in the major league clubhouse this spring. In a daily routine-oriented game like baseball, there’s room to appreciate a guy who is the same every day, from intersquad practice to the College World Series, even if that everyday routine is turned up to eleven.
He’s positioned just two lockers over from fellow Californian Blake Rutherford, who played alongside him in international tournaments for Team USA, and has long since adjusted to Madrigal’s presence as another thing holding him accountable.
“He’s always locked in and just kind of ready for the next play and he’s been like that since he was 15,” Rutherford said. “Just kind of making sure we’re giving it our all, from practice all the way through the game. If one of us takes a play off or feels like it’s not full effort, we’ll make sure we’re all over each other.”
Over the past few weeks, it’s been interesting to watch Eloy Jiménez adjust to Madrigal, since the pair arrived to their status as prospects with such different processes. Blessed with prodigious natural strength and bat speed, Jiménez’s key to greatness is often cited as his ability to relax and keep his process uncomplicated and unforced. With few exceptions, Jiménez excels at shrugging off bad results and staying out of his own way.
At their initial meeting in the Dominican Republic in January, Jiménez poked fun at Madrigal’s intense distaste for strikeouts, accusing him of crying the first time he finally punched out as a professional. Less than two months later, the man who believes he’s destined to win has found an appreciation for the one who hates to lose.
“His mind, it’s champion mind is the word,” Jiménez said. “It’s really good. That is the only thing I can say.”
It can be hard can separate the signal of Madrigal’s constant playoff-level intensity from the rest of the noise. If he can’t hit at the higher levels, all the reports about his work ethic will understandably read as eyewash, the rationalization of disappointing results from someone the White Sox believe can be a stalwart second baseman for years to come.
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But for the Sox, the intensity is a big part of the appeal, and for Madrigal, the hitting is only a means to an end.
“He brings something to our organization I don’t know we had a lot of, and that’s that glue guy, that true winner, the guy who just takes it to another level and really only cares about winning,” Hostetler said. “You can ask him about his College World Series experience. He did not play to the level that he thought he was capable of. He couldn’t care less. They won.”
(Top photo: James Fegan/The Athletic)