Mounds of fun: Visiting pitchers can be a hoot

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Always looking to whittle away at game times, Major League Baseball next year might cut down or even do away with one of the more under-the-radar but fascinating aspects of baseball: the mound visit.

Fans often don’t notice the interactions between the pitching coach and pitcher, or the catcher and pitcher, but there is an art to trotting out for a chat when the opponent is threatening. And most have some good stories about particularly bad visits or ones that went awry.

“You’re thinking, ‘This guy is all over the place, and I’ve got to make a trip because he’s not throwing strikes,’” A’s pitching coach Scott Emerson said. “But the worst thing to do is to go out there and say, ‘Just throw a fastball down the middle and let them hit it.’

“I did that once, to (former A’s minor-leaguer) Travis Banwart, and before I hit the top step, the guy hit a homer. So I told myself, ‘I’m never doing that again.’ He did throw it right where I told him. I was like, ‘Well, I didn’t really mean that, but I guess I told you.’ I took that as a learning experience.”

A lot goes into the psychology of the mound visit — when to go, how to handle the pitcher, what knowledge to impart. Sometimes a visit is simply to slow the pace of the game, interrupt an opponent’s momentum or allow time for a reliever to warm up.

Sometimes, though, mound visits can create confusion they are intending to clear up.

A’s pitching coach Scott Emerson meets with pitcher Sonny Gray and catcher Josh Phegley during a game in June. A’s pitching coach Scott Emerson meets with pitcher Sonny Gray and catcher Josh Phegley during a game in June. Photo: Jason O. Watson, Getty Images Photo: Jason O. Watson, Getty Images Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Mounds of fun: Visiting pitchers can be a hoot 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A’s manager Bob Melvin recalled a time when he was catching Mark Grant with the Giants, and manager Roger Craig called for a pitchout against the Phillies with a 3-2 count and a runner at third.

“I looked over at Roger, sat there for a moment, looked over again,” Melvin said. “Now Roger is fuming. I went to the mound, and said, ‘Hey, Mud, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a 3-2 pitchout a walk?’ And Roger was going ballistic — because he was just looking for the squeeze bunt.

“I was a young catcher at the time, so it was the blind leading the blind. Roger is throwing stuff around the dugout, like, ‘These two freaking idiots.’”

Grant, now a Padres broadcaster, said, “Bob’s all confused, he’s in his crouch, puts up his hand, comes out and gets right in my grill, still has his mask on and says, ‘Mud, what’s the count?’ I said, ‘It’s 3-2.’ He said, ‘That’s what I thought.’ It broke the rhythm so much, Roger took the pitchout off — and I wound up walking the guy anyway.”

Coaches and catchers have to know the personalities they’re dealing with. Sonny Gray is famously intense. “Most of the time when they come out, you’re not doing well, so you’re not in a good mood,” said Gray, who was recently traded by the A’s to the Yankees. So Melvin used to handle many of the mound visits during Gray’s first few seasons. That led to one memorable trip by Melvin at Anaheim.

“We were winning pretty handily, two outs in the eighth inning, I’m right at 100 pitches and BoMel comes out, and there are times if he comes out, I know I’m not necessarily coming out of the game,” Gray said last month.

“I thought it was one of those times, and I wanted to stay in the game so bad. I heard him say, ‘Are you good?’ or something, and I said, ‘Yeah, I’m good.’

“And then he pointed to the bullpen and I looked up at him as he’s pointing and I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘I just told you, ‘That’s going to be good,’ and you said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘No! I thought you said, ‘Are you good?’ I walked off the mound like, ‘What just happened?’”

Making a trip to visit A’s starter Chris Smith, however, is quite an opposite experience. He’s quick with a joke even when in massive trouble.

“He’s about the goofiest guy I’ve ever caught,” Bruce Maxwell said. “He’ll go, ‘Yeah, they’re hitting me hard, aren’t they? Hey, let’s not do that again.’ He has a comeback for everything. It’s awesome.”

Smith said the standard line most pitching coaches provide is, “I’m just giving you a breather.”

“You know what, I don’t need a breather — I need Billy Wagner’s fastball or Trevor Hoffman’s changeup right now,” Smith said with a cackle. “Or it’s, ‘Hey, what’s going on out here?’ ‘Well, I’m obviously in some trouble. You’re out here for a reason. You’re not checking to see where I’m going to dinner.’

“I like having a pitching coach give you something to do. ‘If you give me your best fastball down and away, your best slider, we’ll get out of this.’ So the last thing you hear is a little bit of confidence and you have a task at hand, and you have to execute.

“But if they say, ‘Hey, what do you want to do here?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know! I want to be in the dugout! I don’t want to be here. I want to go home! Bases loaded and no outs, you know?’”

Emerson appreciates an amusing moment or two now and then himself.

“One time in the minors, I was going out to talk to Ben Fritz, I hit the foul line and he said, ‘I love you, Emo!’” Emerson said. “It just took out the sting of what I was going to say. It was pretty funny. I was like, ‘Oh. ... All right, Ben, let’s go get ’em!’ and turned around and went back.”

Recently released A’s reliever John Axford said that pitchers also have to learn their coaches’ quirks. Some pitching coaches always want to stand higher on the mound than the pitcher, for instance.

“Others engage contact. They want to hold your shoulder and talk to you and discuss things that way, I don’t know, maybe to gauge if you’re trembling a lot,” Axford said, adding that former A’s pitching coach Rick Peterson, Axford’s coach in Milwaukee, “was a big toucher. My favorite thing was when guys would touch him back, so they’d be embracing each other.”

While baseball officials discuss the fate of mound visits, one thing is clear: Players would prefer to skip the routine altogether by pitching well in the first place.

“The best-case scenario, you don’t get a mound visit,” Gray said. “That means you haven’t had a long inning, you’re not in trouble. The best games involve no mound visits.”

Susan Slusser is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sslusser@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susanslusser