By Ryan Craighead
I-5 Sports
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| Chase D'arnaud, SS PIT |
The most important thing in professional baseball is attitude; not just how they feel about themselves, but how they feel about the game. For Chase D’arnaud, the game of baseball is fun. Admittedly it can be a grind, and times can be trying, but overall it’s still fun.
The average workweek during the season is an almost nightmarish onslaught of games on a nightly basis; they get only two days off a month. To stay in shape, D’arnaud works out twice to three times a week by showing up to the ballpark five hours before game time.
D’arnaud played for the Altoona Curve this past season, the double-A affiliate for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Not the ideal vacation spot, but it is a distraction-free environment that can be advantageous for people that need or want to focus.
The past year was not an ideal one for D’arnaud, and he said he was not happy with it. This lead to a discussion of the battle of complacency; at the start of the year, D’arnaud was a highly-touted prospect who was guaranteed chances to make the big league club and started to not play the day-to-day battles, but had the mindset of turning everything into the major leagues. The quest for the big leagues is a very big picture; it is imperative to leave that up to those white-collar office-holders to make those decisions. D’arnaud has been dedicating himself this offseason to getting back to the blue-collar, yeoman’s work that got him to this point.
D’arnaud has been invited to the big-league spring training this year, after 10 separate non-invitee visits last year. Keeping with the theme, all D’arnaud would say about expectations for this spring training is that he’s going to take advantage of big league coaching to help him get ready for this season. With a little encouraging, he went on to say that increased exposure means good things and is the reason why he was invited back so many times last year.
The atmosphere of a minor league clubhouse is as expected: 30 guys, all in their young adult life, being in close quarters everyday for long periods of time. The best teams, D’arnaud says, have the lightest-atmosphere clubhouses, where jokes run rampant and those that can’t take a joke are at the mercy of the majority. Hell, they are all big kids that do not need to grow up; it is baseball, after all.
He only had positive things to say about Andrew McCutchen, the phenom that currently patrols centerfield for the Pirates, citing his cool demeanor as the thing he would want to emulate most. D’arnaud has the goal of not letting his body language or demeanor give away what type of game he had; he doesn’t want anyone to tell whether he hit for the cycle or had a golden sombrero (he’s hit for the cycle already in his career and never a golden sombrero, which equals 0 for 4 with 4 k’s).
There is a group of players in D’arnaud’s draft class that he has grown with the past couple years that he enjoys playing with and can see himself at PNC Park with: Josh Harrison, Matt Hague and Anthony Norman. D’arnaud also has a great deal of respect for pitcher Rudy Owens, saying that his lower body strength is impressive.
As a kid, D’arnaud was just like everybody else and had his favorite professional ballplayers. He liked Omar Vizquel, the slick-gloved middle infielder who is a professional in every sense of the word. For the other half of the game, D’arnaud watched A-Rod and was enraptured by how easy the game comes to that guy. When asked if he models his swing, stance or playing style after anybody, D’arnaud said no, he does not, but has been working on his own style, which is respectable.
The thing that D’arnaud wanted people to know was that everyone’s path to the show is different; more often than not a minor leaguer will get to the bigs with a different team than what drafted him; his own brother, catcher Travis D’arnaud, has seen this happen when he was traded to the Blue Jays before last season. Then, on a more sober note, there are the long-term minor league guys, whom are known as 4-A players who spend an eternity in the minors. If D’arnaud is ever one of those guys, he said, who keeps getting jerked around and winds up playing nothing but minor league ball for years on end or when the game becomes just a job, he will hang it up and return to Pepperdine University to finish his degree; upon hearing Chase talk about his desire, drive and ambition, this is not what he has to worry about. It is more appropriate for Chase to continue his charity work that he started this year , as his ascension to the majors is all but assured.
