PENDLETON — Holidays can be a stressful time, even for those of us who aren’t major league pitchers with the type of production and team-friendly contract that tops the wish list of general managers across the land.

For Cincinnati Reds starter Dan Straily, seeing his name pop up in the rumor mill this time of year has become just another part of the routine. Since his breakout year in 2013 with the Oakland Athletics, the team that drafted him in 2009, Straily has been traded four times and played for three of those teams.

So naturally coming off a career year in Cincinnati in which he hit highs for innings pitched (191.1), wins (14) and strikeouts (162) while also posting a career-low ERA (3.76), the 28-year-old right-hander is once again seeing his name mentioned in trade rumors.

“It’s just part of the business, and until I get a phone call telling me I’m not, you know, I’m a Red,” he said during a youth clinic in Pendleton on Tuesday.

New York and Seattle are two teams rumored to have inquired about his availability, and although he can never be sure where his future allegiances will lie, Straily is making sure he doesn’t forget his roots.

That’s what brought him to Pendleton during this season of giving to teach the pitching portion of the Buckaroo Booster Fantasy Camp.

Straily, who lives in Springfield during the offseason, accumulated his earliest baseball memories and lessons on the Little League diamonds in Pendleton, and still feels a connection to the community despite having moved away as a high school sophomore.

“It’s just one of those things where giving back to the community that I really got my start in just means a lot to me, to not forget where I come from,” he said. “It is still the same system. It’s the same fields, they’re in the same places. We didn’t have this kind of (indoor practice) facility, but a lot of the same people are still in place who helped me along my away of coming up as a youngster.”

Straily said he owes an extra debt of gratitude to camp organizer Travis Zander, a longtime coach at various levels for Buckaroo baseball.

“He’s one of the people in my life that I would say that really helped me develop a work ethic, develop a sense of team at a young age,” Straily said. “And he really just has kind of a special place in my heart, and so when he asks me to come do something he kind of knows that I can’t say no to it.”

That must have been a sentiment shared by the rest of the fantasy instructors, because Zander said it took nothing more than a text message to enlist the talents of former PHS standouts Tommy Lane, Alex O’Rourke and Lane Richards to headline the hitting, catching and fielding portions, respectively.

Spots in the camp were limited to about 15 players, and were items placed up for bid at the Buck Booster auction held in February.

“This was something that the opportunity was afforded and we probably could expand on it, but it’s something we do to help promote Buck Boosters who support Pendleton athletics in general,” Zander said. “It’s something that we want to keep fairly exclusive to people who go to Buck Boosters and support Buck Boosters.”

With just a few hours to work with the players, Straily said he wanted to keep things simple and focus on showing them exercises and drills they could do on their own and indoors.

“You don’t need a big facility, you don’t need the Arizona weather. You can get better at baseball in a facility just like this,” he said of the cozy indoor practice facility at Bob White Field. “This has everything you need to get better.

“As long as these kids come here and I can motivate them, or teach them one thing, I feel like I’ve done my job. That’s all it’s really about for me, is coming back here and showing them something that I wish I would have known at their age.”

If that’s the case, Straily can mark this one in the win column.

Kyle Field, an eighth-grader at Sunridge Middle School, attended the inaugural fantasy camp in 2015 and said he asked his parents to bid on the item again this year.

“It was a no-brainer, I really wanted to come, it’s really fun pitching with Dan,” he said. “I learn a lot of stuff about training and recovery, not so much pitching in games but what to do before and after.”

Straily’s largest impact may have been not what he taught, but just his presence.

“It’s pretty cool just for him to come here to Pendleton. I mean it’s pretty small, so to have a big leaguer all the way from Cincinnati come over here, it’s pretty neat,” said Field, who also said he’d like to one day pitch in the majors. “I mean, if he did it why can’t anybody else?”

That’s a good question, and one Lane and O’Rourke are still pursuing the answer to at the collegiate level. They were both participating as instructors for the second time during their holiday breaks.

“I would have loved to have something like this when I was a kid,” said Lane, the PHS home-run record holder who is going into his final season at Marshall University. “I’m going to teach them the same thing I’m being taught right now, make them learn muscle memory and become good hitters.”

O’Rourke, who took a redshirt as a freshman at Oregon State, is playing a transition season at Linn-Benton Community College before transferring back to Div. I at George Washington University.

“It’s always important seeing the kids have fun, and they like hanging out with us so we try to be good role models and show them what it takes, and try to keep the dream alive for them,” he said. “It seems like I should still be in high school, and I’m still their age, but it’s fun to be back and help the kids get better.”

Richards, a four-year starter at shortstop for Notre Dame (2013-16) who now works for an accounting firm in Seattle, said these types of camps were crucial to his development as a player so he’s always willing to give his time when it’s available.

“Dating all the way back to Little League, every year I went to the local high school camp and I loved doing those,” he said. “I loved seeing the older guys and what they’re doing, just feeling like I was part of the community. And I think that’s just something that our community does really well with baseball. We grow as a whole and the older guys are always helping the younger guys.”

And at least in one way, the younger guys gave an assist to one of the vets as well.

“I’m learning a little bit better on how to coach and do a little bit of stuff like that, because that’s definitely not my forte,” Straily said. “But it’s helped me. Talking about baseball helps me become a better baseball player, a better pitcher.”

For Zander, watching that interaction play out has been the true dream come true during this fantasy camp.

“Nobody in Pendleton coaches for money,” he said. “It’s for the relationships they build with other people and the youngsters they help raise. And it’s nice when they come back and you can actually call them your friends and sit down and have adult conversations with them, and then watch them execute and pass down things they’ve learned to the future Buckaroos. It’s very, very rewarding.”

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Contact Matt Entrup at mentrup@eastoregonian.com or (541) 966-0838.