52 CARDINALS MAGAZINE @CardsMagazine
mechanics, which would ultimately help
him improve his command and maintain
velocity without overthrowing. He also
benefited from a full season with a new pitch
- a slider, which he’d experimented with as
far back as college but without results.
Mikolas’ final outing that year turned
out to be a preview, four years early, of his
capabilities as a starter: eight scoreless innings,
three hits allowed against the Mariners.
Maddux’s take? “We were onto something.”
The 26-year-old righty just needed time –
and a guaranteed schedule of reps.
Mikolas believes the Rangers would
have kept him following the 2014 season- but because he was out of options, he
couldn’t be sure. And with his November
wedding approaching, financial stability
was becoming more of a priority. When
the Yomiuri Giants made an attractive offer
and guaranteed him a starting job, Mikolas
and his new bride decided to make the
7,387-mile move to Tokyo from their
home in Jupiter, Fla.
The Rangers, who were compensated
by Yomiuri, agreed to release him and
Mikolas was on his way – and also on a
mission to return.
“I think the mistake a lot of guys make is
they go over there with the firm belief they
still belong in the major leagues. They’re
upset, they’re angry and all they think is,
‘I don’t belong here,’ ” Mikolas maintains.
“But my mindset was, ‘If that’s where you
are, that’s probably where you belong.’ I was
of the mindset of working harder to get back
to where I want to be. So there was a lot of
extra work to get back.”SELF-STUDY ABROAD
In the U.S., Mikolas had Maddux.
In Japan, he had ... his instincts and
independence.
With access to few English-speaking
personnel other than club interpreters and a
handful of players, Mikolas was forced to be
self-reliant, though he wasn’t totally without
support from his pitching coaches.
“If they saw something (mechanics,
routine, whatever), they were quick to
ask, ‘Try this,’ ” Mikolas says. “They never
pressured me to do this, but would say this
is the way some of our guys do it.”
He worked to keep his release point more
consistent, building on the delivery overhaul
he’d made in Texas. He relied on his own
preparation and instincts more than his
catcher’s to call a game. He learned how to
set up batters more effectively, and how to
exploit counts and situations. And, out of
necessity, he dialed in his command. Given
the discipline and contact-first mentality of
Japanese hitters, especially with two strikes,
Mikolas needed to hit his spots.
As a reliever, he hadn’t relied much on
scouting reports, but as a starter engaged
in a chess match multiple times through
a batting order, that wasn’t an option. So
Mikolas set about mastering when and
how he wanted to show hitters his pitches,
analyzing whether they’d made adjustments.
Step by step, tweak by tweak, he chiseled
the skills he had begun to uncover stateside.
“It really wasn’t a magic pill that I found in
Japan,” he points out. “It was a sharpening
of the blade, so to speak.”
And he did it all under the very bright
spotlight of the Giants’ diehard fans.Mikolas called his own games in Japan, but now that he and the Cardinals speak the same
language, the lines of communication are always open.