Elk Grove coach has 4 big bats playing in major leagues, including his son
Each of them had a Major League moment under his watch.
Each made a play or crushed a ball with so much clout that their one-time Elk Grove High School coach Jeff Carlson took a moment to ponder, “Just how good can he be?”
There are four one-time Thundering Herd stars and Sacramento Bee Player of the Year winners toiling in the big leagues now. Each of them had head-turning moments in the Sacramento area that showed glimmers of what was in store in MLB.
There have been others who have been in the show before, eager to return, and others on the cusp of that call. On the eve of the shortened season, eight Elk Grove graduates dotted MLB rosters and 20 players in all in pro ball.
“It does all go by so fast, all those guys in the bigs, and it’s cool to turn on a Mets game and there’s J.D. Davis, or the Blue Jays to see Rowdy Tellez, or the White Sox and there’s Nick Madrigal.”
Or the Cardinals to watch Dylan Carlson.
Carlson is a proud papa to all of his former players, none more rooted than his own son, Dylan, who at 21 is one the game’s most intriguing young prospects. He is an outfielder for St. Louis. Carlson helped groom and mentor each of these four former Thundering Herd stars and he studied their ascent into the Major Leagues, the joys, the frustrations, the injuries, the works.
Imagine his glee when his own son got the call from the Cardinals brass.
“You have a lot of pride when a kid you coach makes it, and then when it’s your own son, that makes you speechless,” dad said.
Or emotional. Carlson is a barrel-chested fellow, a no-nonsense sort. His emotions could run hot to hotter. He also has a soft spot, approachable then and now for all of his former players.
Dylan made his MLB debut Aug. 15. One of the players he looked up to, Tellez, Facetimed his father to offer kudos — during the game. Tellez was in the Blue Jays dugout before a workout.
”Rowdy said, ‘Coach, it’s OK, you can cry, your son’s in the big leagues,’” Carlson recalled. “He was trying to catch me in a soft moment.”
Did it work?
”Oh yeah, I was a big baby,” Carlson said with a laugh, adding that the only bittersweet thing about having kids reach the bigs this season is not being able to watch them in person.
The coronavirus pandemic has left Major League teams to compete without the luxury of fans. The players feel the void, too. Dylan spoke for his parents after his MLB debut, when he had a double, saying, “it’s been everything you dream about.”
Program of tradition
Thundering Herd baseball has been a force for decades, including over 18 championship seasons when Carlson was head coach.
A common theme was the bond between the younger players and the older ones. Herd players grew up admiring their varsity peers, learning how to compete and conduct themselves.
”Kids would see what the other guys were doing, the time they put in on and off the field, from J.D. Davis, to Rowdy, to Nick Madrigal, all the way down to Dylan,” Carlson said. “It cycled down. That was the secret to how good we were as a program, the mentorship of the older players, always giving back, the examples they set.”
J.D. Davis goes deep
Davis is the versatile, 6-foot-3, 220-pound slugger for the Mets. In his fourth big-league season, he has four home runs and 12 RBI (and 31 and 81 for his career).
At Elk Grove, he looked the part of power pitcher and home-run masher. His Major League moment was a game as a senior in 2011 when, with the bases loaded in a home game, he blasted a pop up that seemed to reach orbit. By the time it landed near third base, Davis was chugging home.
”That was pretty amazing,” Carlson recalled. “The ball hung up there in the air for a day or two. You could tell J.D. was special.”
Davis, now 27, was drafted in the fifth round out of high school by Tampa Bay after hitting .484 with nine home runs and 45 RBI, but he wanted to play in college. He was a third-round pick by the Astros in 2014 out of Cal State Fullerton.
His biggest fan remains his father, Greg.
Tellez bombs
Tellez was born Joyn Ryan Tellez but became Rowdy because of his rambunctious nature while still in the womb, and then after.
Now a 25-year-old, 6-4, 255-pound designated hitter for Toronto, Tellez has slugged four home runs this shortened season and has 29 in his three-year career.
He had two Major League moments at Elk Grove, both towering “did you see that?” home-run blasts in 2013. One was a shot in the driving rain at Raley Field, home of the Triple-A River Cats. It landed over the right-field fence, on the berm.
In a Delta League game at rival Laguna Creek High, Tellez delivered a pitch that landed over the roof of a house and slammed up against a dog house.
”I’ve never seen a high school kid hit a ball that far, over a two-story house, just crushed it,” Carlson said. “At Raley Field, I was thinking, ‘Oh man, no one will come close to hitting one out in this big yard in this weather. Then Rowdy had a blast that landed up on the berm. Oh, man. Power. You just knew. Kids that age just don’t hit balls like that.”
Tellez was a 30th-round pick by the Blue Jays after batting .500 with nine homers and 46 RBI, a stunningly low pick. He dropped amid concerns of his signability. He still signed for a $850,000 bonus, a record for a post-10th round pick.
Tellez has been inspired by the loss of his mother, Lori, who died of cancer in the summer of 2018, just days before his MLB debut. His father Greg Tellez never misses a game.
”Rowdy’s parents have always been big followers, big supporters, and Lori is up there, an angel in heaven watching her son play,” Carlson said.
Nick Madrigal debuts
Nick Madrigal made his MLB debut weeks before his pal Dylan Carslon, as an infielder for the White Sox, but the second baseman was shelved with a sore shoulder sliding into third game in his fifth game.
He is expected to be called back into action any time, and if Monday’s simulated game was an indication, he’s good now. The 5-7, 160, 23-year-old clubbed a home run off the White Sox practice-field scoreboard.
Power is not what defines Madrigal. Speed, instincts and steals do. He was a four-year starter at Elk Grove, hard to strike out, even harder to keep off the base paths.
As a sophomore in 2013, Elk Grove played in a national prep showcase in San Diego. In one game, he faced a big lefty with an MLB following of radar guns.
“Dominating pitcher, and Madrigal led off, and that team thought they could dominate little Nick,” Carlson said. “He kept fouling off pitches, then, boom — a line drive up the middle. Nick made all the plays.
“He was electric. I never had in all my years of coaching had so many opposing coaches come over to compliment one player like they did Nick, calling him a pain, a nuisance, a guy who got in their heads when he got to first base, knowing he’d steal second and then steal third. They worried about him because he put so much pressure on teams. Scouts would say Nick played like he was 6-3. He was amazing.”
Madrigal as a senior hit .449 with 28 steals. He was drafted in the 17th round by Cleveland but he elected to go to Oregon State, where he was a three-year standout. He was picked fourth overall by the White Sox in 2018, a historic moment for Sacramento, as only Bill Cartwright of the NBA was ever drafted higher in any professional draft.
Cartwright, also of Elk Grove High fame, went third overall in 1979 to the Knicks before winning championships with the Bulls. Madrigal’s biggest fan has been his father Mike, who helped groom him and Nick’s twin Ty, since they were old enough to toss a ball. Ty, a pitcher, is in the White Sox minor league system.
Dylan Carlson’s moment
As a seventh-grader in 2010, little lad Dylan caught the attention of his father at an Elk Grove practice. It was not a major-league moment.
Dylan was horsing around, got caught up on a rolled-up tarp and fell on his back. The older players, including Davis, teased him. The old coach fumed at his son, barking, “Dylan, if you’re not mature enough to handle it out here, go sit over there!”
The kid grew in a hurry, mentally and physically. He was a four-year starter for his father, no easy task when people scream nepotism. By the time he was a senior in 2016, Dylan looked like a man, and scouts were drawn to his ability to switch hit, his power and his approach.
”That tarp, he was probably set up by the guys, like J.D. being sneaky,” Carlson said. “Dylan was the one who got caught. Playing for me, there was a lot of pressure on Dylan, especially when he was a freshman, and with so many big-league scouts and scouting directors at games there for awhile, it added to it, and things like others saying, ‘Ah, you’re just playing because your dad’s the coach.’
“Dylan handled it all extremely well.”
Dylan hit .407 as a senior in 2016 with nine home runs and 40 RBI (he also had a 6-0 pitching record). The Cardinals picked him in the first round, and he signed for a $1.35 million bonus.
His major league moment as a teenager? It wasn’t in a game.
”I can’t remember exactly how old he was, maybe 15 or 16, and he graduated at 17, but I was throwing Dylan batting practice, and he’s hitting the ball out of the yard with ease left handed,” Carlson said. “Then he did it right handed, with ease. I thought, ‘Man, not often you see that, a switch hitter with that power at that age. Then to see him throw 90 mph on the mound, you think, ‘Wow. This kid has some tools. He could go a long way in this game.’”
Carlson is most impressed with the mental makeup of his former stars now in the bigs, including Dylan. In a game big on failure at the plate, Dylan never lost perspective of what matters most.
While playing in championship tournaments at Elk Grove, Dylan always made sure that he was the one to push his mother, Caryn, in her wheelchair to her seat. Caryn, the spirited rock of the family, is a breast cancer survivor who for the past several years has been bound to a wheelchair while recovering from an inflammatory disorder that affects the spinal cord.
“Dylan watching his mother’s mental toughness definitely taught him life-long lessons,” Carlson said. “No matter how bad it gets at the yard, after a game, when you’re down, he knows his mother never felt sorry for herself, never a poor-me person. You just keep going. We can get better today. Today is a better day. That’s the approach.”
Carlson talks to his son every day. It’s a continuous treat. Younger son Tanner, a baseball player and scholar at Long Beach State, is also part of the family fun. Carlson and his family watched Dylan’s first major-league hit together.
”Here I am the coach and dad who tried to teach his son Dylan about the game, and now I’m learning so much from him every day about hitting, what he’s learned, his journey in this game,” Carlson said with a laugh. “Now it’s reversed. I’m loving it.”