When Tommy La Stella thinks back to his baseball upbringing, he conjures images of the basement in his family home in New Jersey. He thinks of the holes in the sheetrock and the broken recessed lights and the carpet covered in gypsum dust. He thinks of his dad tucked behind a makeshift screen, feeding one dimpled plastic ball after another to his two sons.

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Mostly, he thinks of the Little Red Machine.

“We’d set it up and we’d bang away on that thing, me and my brother,” La Stella said. “Our parents were nice enough to let us turn that small little basement into a terror space. It was carnage down there, absolute carnage.”

La Stella graduated to better and more advanced training facilities at Coastal Carolina University and after he entered pro ball. But in 2019, when he was playing for the Los Angeles Angels and wanted to hone his swing against the backspun, high-velocity four-seam fastballs that had become common currency in the major leagues, he thought back to those wall-thumping sessions in the basement. He remembered how that little BP machine exaggerated backspin, and how your swing had to be almost perfectly direct to make squared-up contact — especially in tight quarters.

You might have heard about what happened next: La Stella found a version of the machine on Amazon, he brought it with him when the A’s acquired him in a midseason trade in 2020 and that’s how an inexpensive plastic kids’ BP device became a trusted development tool in a major-league clubhouse. La Stella posted the lowest strikeout rate in the major leagues in 2020. Current Braves first baseman Matt Olson credited the machine with cleaning up his bat path and reducing his strikeouts with the A’s last season, when he became an All-Star and finished eighth in the AL MVP balloting.

“There’s times when I foul under (a high fastball) and I tell myself, ‘Treat it like the red machine,’” Olson told The Athletic’s David O’Brien.

But that’s not the end of the story. It turns out the Little Red Machine — officially the Heater Power Alley Lite Baseball Pitching Machine, current retail price $119.99 on Amazon, balls sold separately, 4.2 out of 5 stars based on 188 verified global reviews — has more than one training use in a major-league setting.

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You just have to flip it upside down.

“Topspin grounders,” said Giants third baseman Evan Longoria, “are the toughest ones to judge.”

When Giants bench coach Kai Correa saw La Stella standing 20 feet from the Little Red Machine, training himself to hit backspun fastballs with a skinny training bat, he began to ask questions. And he began to think. If this machine was so proficient at producing exaggerated backspin, what if you cut down the legs and repositioned it? What if you turned it upside down? Would it generate exaggerated topspin, and if so, could it become a training tool for infielders as well?

Correa, who is renowned for his innovative fielding drills, already had repurposed BP machines calibrated to throw curveballs and incorporated them into fielding drills. What if he upped the degree of difficulty and alternated between using the curveball machine and the Little Red Machine?

Correa began experimenting with the machine last year. It remained hidden away, used out of sight in the former players’ parking lot under the oversized Coke bottle at Oracle Park, which had been repurposed into a gym and agility field during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. On the road, they’d set it up in an indoor batting cage or a hallway near the clubhouse.

“The super skidder,” Correa said. “Tommy’s toy.”

But the gym space is being renovated this season. So the Little Red Machine is out in the open now. And the Giants swear by it.

“A hundred percent, it’s making a difference,” Longoria said. “We’re catching the ball better than we ever have.”

“Definitely,” Wilmer Flores said. “The ball’s never going where you think it’s going. It’s good for your eyes.”

“You gotta be perfect to catch those things,” Mauricio Dubón said. “It’s helped me a lot. When you get a normal ground ball, it’s so much easier.”

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It’s all part of the Giants’ coaching philosophy: skill development happens when you make practice as challenging as possible. The Little Red Machine has become an everyday sight during batting practice, as infielders kneel on the grass in foul territory and try to field one skipping grounder after another.

“One of the most difficult things to judge is a top-spinning ground ball that hits grass first and then hits dirt,” Longoria said. “You don’t really know if it’s going to stay down or hop high. So this kind of creates that feel.”

The Giants aren’t the only team that saw the value in replicating topspin grounders. They just found a way to mechanize it.

The Rays were just doing fungos off front toss pregame. I asked Kevin Cash the thought behind it.

He explained it allows the coach to hit the balls a bit harder than a self toss and usually results in more of a top spin fungo that better resembles game action.

— Céspedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) October 11, 2021

Correa didn’t stop at introducing more topspin. He had a few more innovations up his sleeve. He introduced a literal mixed bag: foam balls of different weights, plus another ball that looks like a regulation baseball but weighs just 3 ounces. When Correa or Alyssa Nakken or one of the other Giants coaches are feeding the Little Red Machine, the infielders never know what’s coming. Which is the point, of course.

And infielders don’t use their regulation gloves. They use a white, 8-inch model that is 3 1/2 to 4 inches smaller than their gamers. Smaller pocket, higher degree of difficulty.

“The glove has a sweet spot just like a bat,” Dubón said. “So you gotta catch that thing on the sweet spot every time. It’s not easy! The balls are rubber so it bounces more than normal. You’ve got to be consistent and disciplined to catch it.”

Longoria likes the 3-ounce ball with seams because it helps him recognize spin just as if he were reacting to a pitch in the batter’s box. If it’s spinning straight over the top, he knows to expect a truer hop. And because the machine is firing balls at infielders from a distance of 20 to 30 feet, it makes reacting to a 100-mph line drive from 90 feet away seem a lot easier than it should be.

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“It really does slow the game down in real speed, because it’s coming at a much faster pace for a much shorter distance,” Longoria said. “So when it does come off the bat and you have more space, you can have a little bit more time to recognize the spin and help yourself create a better angle to ground balls. It trains your eyes and it trains your hands to react.”

Longoria couldn’t begin to calculate the number of ground balls he’s taken in a 14-year career that includes three Gold Glove Awards. He could’ve continued to prepare the way he always did from the time he was a shortstop at Long Beach State. Why embrace something new?

“Well, I’d like to take a hundred ground balls a day, but then, like, my legs are gassed and I gotta go play a game,” he said. “So what’s been best for me with that machine is it eliminates the cardiovascular aspect. You’re saving your legs and your back. You’re on your knees and the machine makes your hands work fast. I’m trying to put myself in a spot where I can take one step and backhand or one step and forehand.

“You’ve still got to have footwork and you’ve still got to throw. But catching the ball is the first thing you do, obviously. I could stand out there and put it in the perfect spot and just catch it every time. But the goal is to make it the toughest ground ball that I’ve ever seen every time. I’m almost trying to make myself miss.”

That’s by design, too.

“Ohhh,” Flores said. “For the first few days, it was tough. I couldn’t catch anything.”

Correa held a competition in spring training for the infielders. He held another for the pitchers, with Tyler Rogers, the king of comebackers, taking top honors.

Practice doesn’t make perfect in baseball. The Giants’ home loss Sunday to the Washington Nationals went off the rails three batters into the first inning when third baseman Jason Vosler turned a potential triple-play ball into a fielding error.

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But Longoria has been able to sit back and watch while he rehabs from finger surgery. And he’s noticing an overall improvement.

“If you just watch guys that have trained on it for a little while, their pre-pitch positioning is better, their position when they’re catching the ball is better, they’re more grounded,” he said. “You have to really work from the ground up to catch that ball because of the way it’s spinning. You have to focus on staying down and then adjusting at the last second. And I think we’re catching a little better, especially early on, than we ever have.”

Dubón takes the Little Red Machine one step further. He’ll prepare for a late-inning defensive assignment the same way he’d prepare for pinch-hitting duty.

“You swing in the cage before you go pinch hit, so I do this before I go in for defense,” Dubón said. “We find a place to set it up back there and that’s how I get ready.”

The Giants’ infield defense should get a boost when Longoria is ready to return later this month. He’s currently on a minor-league rehab assignment to get some semblance of timing back at the plate. But in the field, he’s confident that the Little Red Machine will expedite his defensive preparation.

All because a 36-year-old third baseman is willing to learn new tricks.

“That has to take place with any new idea,” Longoria said. “It has to start with guys that have been around and done it different ways and have willingness to evolve and to try new things. If you get a lot of pushback from those guys, then it’s really hard to get the younger guys to buy into it.”

La Stella laughs when he considers the missed opportunity. He and his brother, Mike, could’ve worked on their fielding in the basement all those years ago, too.

“It emphasizes the importance of getting your hands out in front of you, not let the ball get too deep,” he said. “It’s low impact and it’s challenging.”

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And it still works for getting geared up to hit the fastball, too. La Stella didn’t let Giants coaches commandeer his Little Red Machine. He made Correa buy his own.

“I never would have thought it turned into what it turned into,” La Stella said. “There are a few teams now that use them. It’s pretty cool. It just goes to show it doesn’t have to be the most high-tech stuff that can help you.”

As for the basement, his parents sold their house in New Jersey a few years ago — presumably with all those holes in the basement walls listed on the disclosure sheet.

“But yeah, before it sold, I did take one more peek down there,” La Stella said, smiling. “The walls were falling apart. Yeah, it was still an ugly scene.”

(Photo of the Little Red Machine: Andrew Baggarly / The Athletic)