SARASOTA, Fla. — Gunnar Henderson never experienced dorm life, foregoing his commitment to Auburn to sign with the Orioles as a second-round draft pick in 2019. The past few years, however, he’s gotten a taste of what it’s like living in close quarters with a group of his peers.
The Orioles shortstop and five of his teammates rented a beach house in Siesta Key, a barrier island adjacent to the team’s spring training home of Sarasota, for camp this season, carrying on what has become a tradition for several members of Baltimore’s young core.
“We started out living in a hotel and I was like, ‘We hang out pretty much every day,’ so whenever we had the opportunity to go find something else and all be at once place, it was kind of a no-brainer,” Henderson said.
The holdovers from last spring to this year were Henderson, outfielder Colton Cowser, first baseman Ryan Mountcastle and catcher Adley Rutschman. Third baseman Jordan Westburg then took the departed outfielder Kyle Stowers’ spot before veteran right-hander Zach Eflin joined in after they found a place that had a sixth bedroom.
This was no dorm Henderson picked out. They have a main house, where four of them are staying and a guest house for the other two. It came equipped with an indoor-outdoor pool, a dock behind the house with snook lights for fishing, a pool table, a grill and a bunch of TVs, one of which Henderson hooked his Nintendo Switch up to for “Mario Kart.”
They also set up a putting green in the main common area, where the players and their wives, fiancées and girlfriends all filter in throughout the late afternoons and early evenings.
“It’s just a good camaraderie thing,” Rutschman said. “Just everyone getting back together and everyone is in different spots from the offseason so it’s a good time to be able to spend some time together, especially since most of the schedule is early in the day. I don’t see a lot of position players during the day sometimes. So, we go back to the house and we can go fishing or go in the pool and stuff. It’s just a good way to reconnect.”
Eflin, who will turn 31 in April, might stick out among this group as he’s three years older than anyone else and he didn’t come up through the organization like the rest of them. However, he overlapped with Mountcastle at Paul J. Hagerty High School in Oviedo, Florida, and the two remained in touch even before he landed in Baltimore at last season’s trade deadline.
His wife was due to give birth to the couple’s fourth child just before spring training and Eflin knew that he would be reporting to camp on his own, so he told Mountcastle at the end of last season to keep him in mind if a spot opened up.
“I talked to Mounty and was like, ‘Hey, I don’t know what you’re doing for spring but if you got an open room or anything, let me know,’ because I haven’t really done spring alone since being with my wife,” Eflin said.
“This is the first year we’ve been apart so I knew I’d kind of be lonely, depressed, everything, away from the kids and her. Then Mounty said they might have an extra room and then eventually they said they had an extra room. And I showed up, and it’s this compound. It’s awesome.”
They’ve certainly had plenty to do to keep their minds occupied. Most of them brought fishing poles and they’ve reeled in quite the haul, catching snook, drum, mangrove snapper and red snapper. Westburg struggled to fit his poles into he and his wife’s already packed car for their 12-hour drive from Texas, but he’s already gotten plenty of use out of it and even helped his wife catch their first fish together.
“Just with the amount of stuff my wife and I were bringing it was tough fitting it in but I’m glad I did,” Westburg said. “But it’s been good. My social battery is not as high as some of those guys, so, yeah, when that runs out, I just go to the pier and fish and catch some peace and quiet. But it’s been fun.”
One of the early highlights for the group so far was Valentine’s Day, when they all teamed up to make a big steak dinner. Westburg manned the grill and served up a dozen New York strips, Rutschman cooked up marinated skirt steaks, Henderson’s fiancée made buffalo chicken dip and Mountcastle’s wife did pimento ham and cheese sliders. They also celebrated Westburg and Mountcastle’s birthdays, which fell on the same date of Feb. 18, with a shared cake.
Rutschman had to report to camp early for pitchers and catchers workouts, but the rest of the group — sans Eflin, who was a late report after his son, Hayden, was born last week — got there early as well. The time they’ve been able to spend away from the field has helped an already tight-knit group of teammates grow even closer.
“I think it’s awesome how close those guys are,” Eflin said. “I think often it gets overlooked, but these guys truly love each other and truly care about each other and have so much fun together. And I think when you combine those stuff then baseball becomes kind of seamless. It’s not something that consumes you. You don’t feel the added pressure or anything because you can trust everybody in the clubhouse and I think they’ve done a good job of establishing that culture. It’s a lot of fun to be a part of.”
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