The key to being a valuable batting practice pitcher, says John Yandle, is to throw the ball with firmness and control, but not too much heat; to get it over the plate but not always right down the middle. Don’t throw balls. Players only get 20 to 25 swings on the field before a game; they don’t have pitches to waste. The point is to loosen them up and get them ready for whatever the opponent is likely to bring.
Oh, and don’t hit the batters. Yandle, ’77, is in his 40th year of throwing BP for the San Francisco Giants, but even a remarkably durable fixture occasionally needs repair. When Yandle was recovering from rotator cuff surgery during the first half of the 2015 season, a recently released pitcher from AAA—the highest level of the minor leagues—was brought in to replace him. The adjustment from AAA to BP was more challenging than expected, and a few batters got plonked. The Giants called Yandle: How soon can you be back on the field?
It helps to be left-handed. Lefties are overrepresented among Major League pitchers (25 percent compared with around 10 percent in the general population), but they are scarce among the coaches who typically throw BP. (Those still throwing at age 69 are a category of one.) Before Bryan Price arrived as pitching coach this season, Yandle was the only lefty the Giants could warm up against when they were about to face a southpaw starting pitcher.
Also—it doesn’t hurt to be considered personally indispensable to one of the most successful sluggers of all time. “I needed John,” says Barry Bonds, who spent 15 of his 22 years in the league with the Giants and whose MLB records include most career home runs (762) and most National League MVP awards (7). “There’s no question he was a huge part of my career.”
‘The harder I get hit, the better I’m doing.’
Unlike most BP pitchers, Yandle isn’t a coach. This isn’t even his day job. When the Giants are facing a lefty starter at home, Yandle drives up to Oracle Park from his house in Menlo Park or his office in San Jose, where he is an executive managing director of the commercial real estate firm Newmark. He changes into his uniform and, about three hours before first pitch, gets to work. On a sunny April afternoon before the Giants faced Pittsburgh southpaw Martín Pérez, the lanky, silver-domed Yandle was behind the protective L-screen throwing strikes in metronomic cadence from 50 feet (the pitcher’s mound is 60 feet 6 inches from home plate) to two brawny right-handed batters, shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald and catcher Tom Murphy, who smacked one line drive after another. “I’ve always said the harder I get hit, the better I’m doing,” says Yandle.
His pitches, which leave his hand at about 70 mph, are hardly fat lobs. “Most batting practice throwers just try to throw it right down the middle so guys can hit home runs and stuff,” says Fitzgerald. “But it’s actually really challenging hitting off of John. He mixes it up and it’s not in the same spot every time. It’s kind of gamelike. That’s why I enjoy hitting off of him.”
Yandle doesn’t take his usefulness to the Giants for granted. He keeps in shape, is there when he’s needed, works late. “His work ethic is unbelievable,” says hitting coach Justin Viele. Special assistant to baseball operations Ron Wotus calls Yandle “a superstar.”
“Everybody’s really appreciative,” says Yandle, shaking off the praise. “I’m not here for myself; I’m here to help them. My days of showing off and trying to make it to the big leagues are over.”
‘CUTTER JOHN’: Yandle, whose four-seam fastball cuts toward the inside of the plate, also throws a curveball, a slider, and a changeup. (Photo: Andy Kuno/San Francisco Giants)
Like every pitcher with talent, Yandle once had dreams of pitching to Major League hitters like Fitzgerald—from 60 feet 6 inches. But after his first spring training with the Padres, in 1978, he was assigned to AA Amarillo by San Diego manager Roger Craig, who delivered the disappointing news with a prediction: “I’ll see you in the big leagues someday, son.” When Craig became the Giants manager shortly after Yandle started throwing BP in 1985, Yandle walked into Craig’s office and said, “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but thank you for the opportunity.”
Al Arthur, a pitcher who was two years ahead of Yandle at both Lake Oswego (Ore.) High and at Stanford and is now his best friend, says that Yandle didn’t exactly look the part of collegiate starter. “You’d look at this skinny guy who was maybe a touch over 6 feet and think, How did he get a scholarship?” recalls Arthur, ’75. “Then you’d see him throw his curveball. It’s magical to watch, to this day. His arms and legs would fly through his motion and release, and his hat would always fall off because his hair was so bushy. You’d see this scattered mess on the mound and then this beautiful pitch right where it was supposed to be—he has incredible accuracy—or a breaking ball that made batters just look silly.”
After leading the Cardinal in strikeouts and wins as a senior in 1977, Yandle was drafted by the Padres in the 11th round. He would make it as far as AAA ball, where he pitched one season (mostly in relief) before ending his career in 1981, after a mediocre season with the Angels’ AA affiliate in Holyoke, Mass. “It was time to see what my Stanford education could do,” he says.
By the summer of 1985, he had moved back to the Bay Area and started a career in real estate. One day, he was at Candlestick Park to visit Ricky Adams, a friend from AA ball who was playing for the Giants. It was deep into the season, and the coaches who threw BP had sore arms. Asked if he could throw BP for $20 a game, Yandle jumped at the chance. If being a big-league BP pitcher hadn’t been his dream job before, it was now. “I had been out of baseball for three years, and I missed it,” he says.
Early on, he got the nickname Cutter John, for a four-seam fastball that cut toward the pitcher’s glove side of home plate—and got even more movement from Candlestick’s notorious wind. “When I came here, I heard no one wanted to face Cutter John,” says Bonds, who joined the Giants in 1993. “I knew that was the man I wanted. Left-handed pitchers are difficult for left-handed batters, but I always wanted to play the difficult game. John could throw a curveball, a slider, and a changeup. He had four good pitches to keep me working on the things I didn’t do well.”
Facing each other in a batting cage out of sight of press, public, and opponents, Yandle and Bonds built a tight friendship as they talked smack. “Barry would spot me one strike, and we’d play nine innings,” recalls Yandle. “I’d throw hard, inside and outside stuff. I got to be the umpire, too. He’d crush one, and if I was losing, I’d go ‘Fly ball to left,’ and he’d be, ‘What are you talking about? That ball was in the 20th row!’” Yandle chuckles. “That was the funnest time.”
‘There’s not a lot of muscle to this body. It’s just about keeping the tendon working.’
It was Bonds who spearheaded the effort to get the Giants to bring Yandle on the road when the team was facing a lefty. They still do, even if it’s just for one game. In 2005, when Bonds was recovering from knee surgery in L.A., he called Yandle. “He flew down there, threw to me for a week, and I went back into the season,” says Bonds, who is now the team’s special adviser to the CEO. “I told the Giants I couldn’t do without him.”
After throwing to two or three groups of batters on the field, Yandle will grab a bite to eat and then descend into the cage, where, for another 45 minutes before the game, he’ll throw whichever pitch a player wants to work on. Before the April game against Pittsburgh, right fielder Austin Slater, ’15, wanted inside fastballs, a pitch favored by Pérez. Outfielder Mike Yastrzemski wanted sliders. In the cage next to Yandle is a pitching machine that spits out 95 mph fastballs. “Obviously, I’m not doing that,” he says. “I’m here for guys who want to see an arm.”
Forty years of BP hasn’t meant big bucks—Yandle’s pay has gone up somewhat since 1985, though he has never asked for a raise and gives most of his earnings to charity—but it has provided a lot of bonuses, including friendships, like the one he has with Bonds, and three World Series rings—“one for each of my kids,” says Yandle, referring to Jackson, 24, Nicholas, 22, and Evelyn, 19. “This job has been such a blessing, but I couldn’t have done it without the support of my kids and their mom, Heather Yandle. I was away from home a lot.”
As he approaches 70, Yandle often gets asked how long he’ll keep throwing. His left arm, which he calculates has thrown between 750,000 and a million BP pitches, shows little sign of wearing out. “There’s not a lot of muscle to this body,” he says with a laugh. “It’s just about keeping the tendon working.”
He says the coaches and players will let him know when he’s no longer needed. Making that call himself could be tough. “At times over the years, I’ve thought I was more important than I probably was at the office, and I’d say to myself, God, here I’m leaving again and driving up to the ballpark, an hour away from work. Maybe this will be my last year,” he says. “And then I step out in the field and think, This isn’t my last year. I love this.”
Kelli Anderson, ’84, is a writer in Sonoma, Calif. Email her at stanford.magazine@stanford.edu.
