When I encountered him covering (the first) 2020 spring training, Ryley Gilliam cut an interesting profile in the Mets’ clubhouse. While other players were on their phones or chit-chatting with their teammates, Gilliam was reading Don Quixote while sitting at his locker. This intrigued me enough to talk with him about it, where he discussed having heard the term ‘Quixotic’ applied to baseball before, and wanted to get a better understanding of what the term meant.
For the Clemson-educated Gilliam, the mental part of his game never seemed to be what has limited his success; his lack of fastball control has been much more of the culprit.