Mariners Check-In: Mike Cameron on coaching with Ichiro and Guti, helping Mallex Smith
Apr 9, 2020, 3:33 PM
Ichiro Suzuki, Franklin Gutierrez, Mike Cameron. Though they never shared the Mariners’ outfield all at the same time, they now are part of the group that is helping guide the Mariners’ fleet of young outfielders.
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Throw in the occasional visit from Ken Griffey Jr. and it is hard to imagine a team boasting a better cadre of alumni instructors, yet there they all were in Peoria this spring, pitching in. At times the imagination ran wild wondering if this trio could get out there and play today because they certainly looked the part. Cameron, for one, was not getting too carried away.
“In an old softball game now, I think,” he said with a chuckle when asked about it from his home in Atlanta, where he is sheltering in place with his family. “It was kind of cool to be able to share those experiences out there again.”
In spring training, a tweet wondering what the configuration of that outfield would look like drew a good amount of interest. Who would play center field? On the Skype call, Cameron gave his unique perspective of the elite group of center fielders Mariners fans had the fortune to watch for the better part of two decades.
“We all just had unique presence,” he answered when asked to break the group down. “I think Junior just had this electricity as far as how he went about scaling walls and everything else. And the energy that he provided for the great northwest from the age of 19? When I was 19 I was in extended spring. To be able to kind of have a guy to look up to, he was just special in his own right, arguably the best player in the game.”
Cameron is clearly a fan of the man who preceded him in center. As for Gutierrez, who arrived in Seattle a few years after Cameron continued his career elsewhere, he sees a peer, someone he was able to appreciate from across the field.
“Franklin, I think he was just really smooth, I think the game transitioned. We were challenged to try to play as short as possible but the game transcended a little bit now because everybody tries to go deep. But Guti, he was known as ‘Death to Flying Things’ and that’s a bad nickname right there to have as an outfielder,” Camerson said, drawing out the vowel sound in the word “bad.”
Cameron has Ichiro firmly in right field, atop the class.
“Ichiro, he’s like a dancing ballerina that is fully suited in a baseball uniform,” he said. “He’s like the black cat, man. The dude was so silky, he was light on his feet, he could do everything but he never showed any emotion. That was something we tried to draw out of him all the time.”
And where does he fit into this group?
“Myself, I was just athletic enough to do all different types of things and I used the stadium as much as possible,” he said. “I could always jump, I used that to my advantage. I used to practice the stuff and people thought I was crazy, sliding catches and jumping over the wall. The padded walls helped out a lot.”
While he didn’t have current Mariners jumping over walls in practice drills this spring, the ante was upped for the young group in better game simulations. Rather than take fly balls off of the machine, Ichiro hit to them, and according to all accounts never missed his target.
“We talked about it a lot going into the offseason in meetings, guys brainstorming how the best way to get better in the outfield is. Obviously someone standing at the plate and hitting balls so you can get a true read,” he said. “To have a guy like Ichiro do that? Through a whole practice? That’s impressive. To hit the ball exactly where SS (manager Scott Servais) wanted him to hit the ball is impressive in itself.”
Servais felt the live drills benefited all of his outfielders. Cameron was particularly pleased with what he saw from one player he has been charged with since last year.
“Mallex (Smith) has been one of the lights, the improvement has been tremendous,” he said. “He’s starting to put things together, showed a lot of improvement and Chris Prieto (former outfield coach) contributed a lot to that as did the fact that Mallex works so hard.”
There is just one problem with Smith that Cameron would like to see solved.
“We have just got to get him to put some shoes on, man,” he said. “We’ve been telling him the whole spring. He wants to stay connected to the ground.”
If you ask Smith, he will tell you Ichiro is responsible for him not wearing shoes in outfield work. This is something we will leave to be worked out once spring training resumes. Regardless, even with the minimal challenges, Cameron has enjoyed working with the outfielders.
“It’s cool, it’s been a really good experience for me, learning,” he said. “I’ve asked a lot of questions along with the information I already have, the ups and downs. Being part of the staff as a Mariner makes it really easy for me because there is just a lot of information to go and look at and back it up. To be able to go out now and help the young guys and see some of the same thing that coaches saw in me at the same age, being the chance to give them some tidbits, share experience, it’s kind of cool.”
The full conversation with Mike Cameron – which includes his observations of Jarred Kelenic and Julio Rodriguez (hint, he’s still growing), the vengeance in which he played with any time he faced the White Sox, and his interesting and honest assessment of why the 2001 team fell short – can be found on the weekly Mariners Insider podcast/vodcast due out Friday on 710Sports.com, YouTube or your favorite podcast app. You can hear nine-plus minutes of the conversation in the video embedded in this post.
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