Second to None

Once called "the Major League's best backup catcher,"
Mike Redmond is now in charge of the Lugnuts

by Jesse Goldberg-Strassler

First-year Lugnuts manager Mike Redmond worked hard for every inch of success he could squeeze out of the national pastime. Grinding, baseball players call it. Pushing through adversity. Maybe it’s the catcher in him.

In his very first Minor League season in this very same Midwest League, he didn’t receive regular playing time and struggled offensively in the shadow of future All-Star Charles Johnson. In the Majors, he backed up Johnson, Ivan Rodriguez and Joe Mauer, some of the brightest talents to ever put on the tools of their trade.

And now Michael Patrick Redmond comes to Michigan’s state capital with a World Series Championship ring on his finger, 13 seasons of Major League experience under his belt and a pair of distinguished Major League defensive records to his name.

He was born in Seattle in May of 1971, three months before Sal Fasano, his predecessor as Lansing manager, and six minutes after his twin brother, Pat Jr.

Undrafted out of Gonzaga University, Mike signed a free agent contract with the expansion Florida Marlins in 1992, a year before Florida started play in the National League. The Marlins, to put it bluntly, were loaded to the gills with talent. Amidst enough prospects to make a scout forget his appetite, Mike Redmond made his professional debut for the Kane County Cougars in 1993. “It was really the first year professionally that actually seems like baseball,” he says, thinking back on that initial year. “You’re playing in front of fans. The games start to count. You start feeling a little bit nervous.”

He served as the #2 catcher, backing up Charles Johnson, the Marlins’ 1st round pick in 1992 and rightfully touted prospect. Their paths quickly diverged. By the end of the next season, Johnson was in the Major Leagues with Florida. As for Redmond, he batted just .200 with a mere two doubles in 43 games. Not too promising.

“It was a big test for me,” he recalls. “But I was fortunate enough that they saw enough in me to go back and get a chance to play.”

Thus it was that 1994 found Redmond back in a Kane County uniform, but with the difference of increased playing time in the role of Cougars starting catcher. With a year under his belt, Mike raised his batting average to .271 in 92 games, smacked his first professional home run and continued to showcase his stalwart defensive ability, instincts and high baseball IQ. He played briefly the same year with the Brevard County Manatees, receiving a taste of High-A ball in the Florida State League. The Manatees finished in first place in the East Division, but lost in the 1994 FSL Championship Series.

The next season, Redmond earned a regular starting role with Portland in the Double-A Eastern League, batting .255 in 105 games. The first place Sea Dogs were a powerful bunch. They boasted 17 Major Leaguers on the season’s roster (including shortstop Edgar Renteria) and torched the Eastern League for 86 wins, though they were eliminated in the Eastern League’s playoff semifinals. Among the Portland coaching staff was an assistant coach named Ken Joyce, who would later serve as manager of the Lansing Lugnuts for the 2005 and 2006 seasons.

Ken Joyce was back in Portland as the hitting coach in 1995, and Mike Redmond was back behind the plate. This time the Gonzaga Bulldog hit at a fine .287 clip in 120 games. A Sea Dogs club featuring 21 different Major Leaguers over the course of the year sailed to 83 more victories and another regular season title. Still, glory would not be theirs; Portland lost in the Eastern League Championship Series to the Harrisburg Senators.

After two years in Double-A, Mike made his first excursion into Triple-A in 1997. But that season also saw him deal with his first major injury, ending his time with the Charlotte Knights at just 22 games.

The ailment was serious. He had a torn labrum in his right arm, his throwing arm. By the end of the year, his place had been filled on the Charlotte roster. Fully rehabbed by August, he finished the season back in Brevard County.

At the age of 26, he had come to a crossroads.

“I came into spring training and they didn’t really have a spot for me,” Redmond remembers. “They actually gave me the option of becoming a player-coach, and I said, ‘Well, I think I’d rather give it one more shot.’

“They didn’t want to send me back to Double-A again because I’d already been there a couple of years, but I said, ‘Send me back there. You can play me, you can do whatever. I’ll sit on the bench, whatever you want.’ I just wanted one more shot as a player.”

Sure enough, as the curtain went up on the 1998 season, there was Mike Redmond back in the teal and white of the Portland Sea Dogs. He had played eight games in the Eastern League, collecting nine hits, scoring seven runs and driving in seven, when word came down of news from Triple-A. Randy Knorr, a former Toronto Blue Jay, had been injured. There was a spot open for a catcher.

Mike was called back up to Triple-A Charlotte. “And the next thing you know,” he summarizes in understated fashion, “about three weeks later, I was in the Big Leagues.”

The Marlins had just traded perennial All-Star slugger Mike Piazza to the New York Mets and now needed someone to assist Gregg Zaun with the catching duties.

On May 31, 1998, Mike Redmond made his Major League debut for Jim Leyland’s Florida Marlins. For a man owning just a .241 average in Triple-A, Redmond fashioned a mighty fine Piazza impression. He hit safely in all three of his at-bats, swatting his first MLB home run in the sixth inning off Milwaukee Brewer starter Scott Karl. It was a game-tying homer, completing a Marlins comeback from four runs down, but it all went for naught. The Brewers scored an unearned go-ahead run in the bottom of the eighth, Zaun pinch-hit fruitlessly for Redmond in the late-going, and Florida lost 7-6.

It was the Marlins’ fifth straight loss, part of a skid would stretch to 11 straight defeats. At last a slim victory was captured against, yes, the Toronto Blue Jays, to temporarily end the frustration. That was the tale of the season for Florida. All of the organization’s success in the minors aside, the Marlins finished with a 54-108 mark to forget.

But it was not a season for Mike Redmond to forget.

A .263 career hitter in the minors, his offense blossomed in the majors. In 37 games in the National League in 1998, Redmond batted .331. He followed up with a .302 performance in 84 games in 1999, and would never play another game in the Minor Leagues.

Meanwhile, an unpleasant game of musical chairs was playing in the dugout for Marlins managers. Following the 1998 season, Jim Leyland left to become the Colorado Rockies’ manager. John Boles replaced him – and was fired 47 games into 2001, replaced by Tony Perez on an interim basis. Jeff Torborg was named manager for 2002 – and only lasted 38 games into the 2003 season before he too was fired.

Torborg’s replacement was Jack McKeon, 73 years young. McKeon took over a 16-22 team and won 75 of the next 124 games to capture the National League wild card. Momentum firmly seized, the Marlins eliminated the Giants in four games in the NL Division Series, outlasted the Cubs in seven games in a dramatic NL Championship Series, and upset the New York Yankees in six games to win the World Series.

Mike Redmond, along with all of his comrades in teal, black, and white, now had his very own Championship ring. The feeling was bittersweet. “I didn’t get to play a whole lot that year, so it was rough that way,” he admits, and it’s true. The Marlins rode Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez as their starting catcher for the better part of the season and very nearly the entirety of the postseason. Redmond, who played only 59 games all year, had exactly one at-bat in both the NLCS and World Series.

“But you know what?” he asks. “I was cheering those guys on; I was helping them out, trying to figure out how to get hitters out and trying to help Pudge with the game plan.

“With every good team, it takes 25 guys, 25-plus. You can’t just do it with nine players on the field. Your bench guys, the guys who don’t play a lot, they’ve got to be into the game. They’ve got to contribute. There’s a role for everyone on a team.”

Following the conclusion of the 2004 season, Mike Redmond found a new role. It came on a different team, in a different league.

“I’d played seven years [in Florida],” Redmond says. “They weren’t planning on bringing me back, they had some young guys ready to come up and it was really time for me to move on. I got the opportunity to go to Minnesota and play behind Joe Mauer. [It] ended up being an even better situation than I thought.”

Away from sliding Florida (his spot taken by inaugural 1996 Lugnut Matt Treanor), Mike Redmond’s career was reinvigorated. The 34-year-old Redmond seconded 22-year-old phenom Joe Mauer in the young Twin’s first full season in the Major Leagues. It was successful for both of them; Mauer batted .294 and collected the second-most base hits on the team. Redmond, meanwhile, watched his batting average zoom upward to .311, highest among all Twins with at least 150 plate appearances.

In 2006, Redmond stunned everyone by posting a career-high .341 average. Not to be outdone, Mauer put up a .347 batting average and .936 OPS helping Minnesota finished atop the AL Central Division with a 96-66 record. The Twins returned to the postseason in 2009 and Mauer was honored as the American League’s Most Valuable Player.

For Redmond, affectionately known as the “Red Dog” by the Twins’ faithful, those seasons in the Twin Cities were unforgettable. “I got around a great group of guys,” he explains, “a great group of young players, and I kinda got my energy and enthusiasm back. [I had] probably the best three years of my career in Minnesota, a couple runs to the playoffs, and got to play with great young players like Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer and Joe Mauer. These guys are superstars in the big leagues now, and I was fortunate enough to be around them when they were 22, 23 years old.”

In 2010, telling himself and everyone around him that he had reached his final season, Mike signed a free agent contract for one more go of things with Cleveland. He played 22 games for the Indians before receiving a mid-summer release, but still found time for some history.

Unbeknownst to most everyone except the alert and the statistically-sensitive, the Washington native had been putting an impressive streak together since July 22, 2004. For 253 straight games played, lasting through his entire tenure in Minneapolis, Mike Redmond achieved every fielder’s dream: He did not commit an error.

The streak came to an end on May 22, 2010, a full six years later. Cincinnati’s Jay Bruce took off for second base on a stolen base attempt and Redmond’s attempt to nab him went awry. It was the eighteenth and final error of his career, but the first in 1,589 fielding chances, another Major League record.

There is one more place Mike’s name can be found in the record book, under the best career fielding percentage for a catcher. He currently ranks second, behind only Pittsburgh’s Chris Snyder. Third on the historic list – no coincidence this – is Joseph Patrick Mauer of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Mike Redmond was given his release by the Cleveland Indians on July 16, 2010.

On October 4th, at the age of 39, he officially announced his retirement from baseball, having persevered his way through 13 seasons and 764 Major League games.

“A lot of people say, ‘Hey, Mike,’ if you hadn’t played behind such great catchers, you would’ve had the chance to play more,” Redmond says. “I’ve thought about that a lot, but at the end of the day, I was like, well, maybe it’s because I played behind those guys and I didn’t play as much, maybe I was able to play longer.” He adds, “I hope those guys learned something from me along the way.”

When Mike Redmond retired, a significant man in the Toronto Blue Jays organization picked up the phone. There was no doubt in the mind of Doug Davis, Toronto’s Minor League Field Coordinator and a catcher in his own right, that he wanted his up and coming Blue Jays also learning from the baseball veteran.
“I had known [Doug] from my Marlins days,” Redmond relates. “We were together in 2003 when I had won the World Series. He was the bench coach… He called me literally hours after I retired. I wasn’t ready at that time to make the commitment. We stayed in touch, kept talking. Eventually, after about a month or six weeks of conversations, I started thinking about it and it sounded good. [I] wanted to take that Lansing job. I’m excited. I was fortunate enough to have a lengthy career, and now hopefully I’ll be fortunate enough to have a lengthy career as a manager or whatever my future holds. I was fortunate enough to have some incredible managers… I’ll take a little bit of all of them and then start to incorporate my style.

As for the 2011 Lugnuts, Redmond is optimistic.

“I think the fans are going to really love the players we’re going to bring up there. I think they’re going to play with a ton of energy… They’re going to be impressed hopefully when they walk out of that ballpark, see some future big leaguers and see some guys play the game the way it’s supposed to be played, all out and having fun.

“It’s going to be a big test for a lot of our young players. The big thing is that I remember what it’s like to be in A-ball. I played A-ball, I played in Double-A, I played in Triple-A and I played in the big leagues. I know what these guys are going through every step of the way. I had success. I struggled. I was cold out there. You name anything that came up that these guys are going to go through, I’ve already been through it.”

There is a grand baseball tradition of catchers becoming managers, from the legendary Connie Mack to such recent luminaries as Joe Torre, Mike Scioscia, Joe Girardi and Joe Maddon. The Lugnuts have carried out their own side of this tradition, featuring such catchers-turned-managers as Brian Poldberg (1996), Clayton McCullough (2007-2009) and Sal Fasano (2010).

Make no mistake: You can add Mike Redmond to the list. He’s earned it.

Lansing Lugnuts Baseball

Second to None

Once called "the Major League's best backup catcher," Mike Redmond is now in charge of the Lugnuts

by Jesse Goldberg-Strassler

Once called "the Major League's best backup catcher,"
Mike Redmond is now in charge of the Lugnuts