Pitching turned out to be more than a fling for this Newfoundlander
Mount Pearl’s Andrew Mercer is coaching at the U.S. college level, helping players get to the pros
It’s often been said, and with good reason, that no matter where someone’s travels takes him or her, they will bump into a Newfoundlander.
Like my friend, whose daughter was hiking a mountain — Kilimanjaro, or some imposing earthly feature like it — many years ago. Halfway up the trek, there was a rest area, and she elected to stop and take a break.
It was there she spotted a guy wearing his ‘Free Nfld.’ T-shirt.
Turns out he was from Stephenville.
True story.
Or the guy I bumped into in Torino while covering the 2006 Olympics. He was living in Italy — Milan to be exact — where he worked as a runway model.
A runway model. He was from the Codroy Valley. Seriously.
So there you go. We’re everywhere, and the sports world is no exception.
Like in Louisiana, where Mount Pearl’s Andrew Mercer is carving out a career as an NCAA baseball coach with Bossier Community College, near Shreveport.
Now, Newfoundland and Labrador is hardly a national power when it comes to Baseball Canada events, and we haven’t exactly been churning out coaches.
But it hasn’t stopped Mercer from enjoying his seventh year of college ball in the States. This season is his first as the pitching coach on Bobby Gilliam’s staff at Bossier, which is his second stop as a pitching coach, That all followed a four-year playing career at two NCAA schools.
“When you stop and think about it, it’s pretty cool,” Mercer said. “I was big into sports growing up and to do it now, as a full-time job, is pretty awesome. It’s something I love to do, and I get paid for it. But it doesn’t seem like work.”
Mercer arrived at Bossier last season after two years as an assistant coach at Central Methodist University, an NAIA school in Fayette, Miss.
While at Central Methodist, he helped develop Peyton Long, a draft pick of the Milwaukee Brewers who recently completed his Rookie League season of pro ball.
“He came to us (throwing) 90-92 (miles per hour),” Mercer said of Long. “We got him up to 95.”
Bossier is a junior college squad — or ‘JUCO’, as it’s commonly known — but don’t be fooled by the title. Or the distinction between Division I college ball and Division II.
“In the (MLB) playoffs this year, I think there were 30 JUCO guys on the rosters,” Mercer said.
“JUCO and DII college ball is a really, really good brand of baseball. It depends on where you go. Here in Louisiana and Texas — (in) the national Junior College Athletic Association — the talent is unbelievable.
“It’s arguably one of top three conferences in the country for baseball.”
Bossier is currently in its fall exhibition schedule (that will see the school will play upwards of 30 games), before playing for keeps starting in the New Year.
“We played a DI school a couple of weeks ago, the University of New Orleans. In the fall, these big four-year schools want to come out and watch our guys play. Then, hopefully, those schools can offer our guys scholarships.”
Mercer is busy setting up programs for his pitchers. One pitcher was topping out at 90 or 92 last spring. He’s been hitting 94 on the gun this fall.
“We used five arms against New Orleans, and all five arms touched 90 or better,” Mercer said.
“When the season’s over, we’ll have some guys hitting the weight room pretty hard — maybe four times per week — and still have some guys throwing, guys who don’t throw a ton of strikes will throw in the pen. Guys who do throw strikes are shut down and in the weight room.”
So, who exactly is Andrew Mercer?
Now 27, he’s a graduate of Mount Pearl Senior High, played for the hometown Blazers junior and senior all-star teams and club baseball for the Knights.
It was while he was in Grade 10 or 11 that he caught a break, when he was noticed at Baseball Canada’s Canada Cup tournament in Kindersley, Sask.
Playing for the Newfoundland team, the righty pitcher appeared in two games. Following the tournament, he got a call from Niagara University, a DI school north of Buffalo.
“I was on the phone with them for about 30 minutes of so,” he said. “But just like that, it kind of died off.”
And then, wouldn’t you know it, another school — Highland Community College, north of Kansas City — reached out to him.
Mercer would end up spending two years at Highland.
“I have no idea how they found me,” he said. “College coaches look online, especially with a smaller school like that. They don’t have big recruiting budgets.
“They know people who know people. Who really knows how I got there?”
He worked as a starting pitcher in Kansas, and was topping out around 87 as a freshman, until he hurt his arm. He finished with a 2-3 record and 5.40 ERA.
The next season, Mercer was in the bullpen, throwing at a different arm angle and his fastball reached the mid-80s.
In 2014, he transferred to the University of Southern Indiana, where he would find his greatest success. He arrived at Southern Indiana after e-mailing Screaming Eagles assistant coach Jeremy Kuester, then driving to Evansville in the summer for a workout.
In Mercer’s first year at Southern Indiana, the Screaming Eagles won the 2014 NCAA Division II baseball championship, edging the Colorado Mesa Mavericks 3-2 on a bases-loaded walk in 12 innings at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, N.C.
Mercer didn't pitch in the championship final, which tied the record for the longest NCAA Division II title game, but he did pitch three scoreless innings in two games in the tournament, adding to his season stats line which saw the 6-1, 185-pound righty lead all pitchers on his team with a 1.01 earned run average.
The stingy ERA is a school mark that still stands today.
In his senior year, 2015, Mercer made 17 appearances out of the bullpen for Southern Indiana.
After graduation, Mercer worked in Kansas for a spell, but when his time living and working in the States was up, he returned to Canada and served as an assistant coach for the U16 Ontario Blue Jays.
And then the phone rang from Central Methodist.
“I wanted to stay in baseball, and it was one of those things where I started applying for jobs online,” he said.
“They (Central Methodist) basically paid for my masters, and a living stipend on top of that, just to basically to coach for them.”
While at Central Methodist, the school’s pitching staff was ranked 15th in the NAIA (the NCAA’S little brother, it’s mainly an association for small colleges and universities). It was also a feather in his baseball cap to have a pitcher drafted into the major leagues.
After two years in Fayette, Mercer was lured to Louisiana and Bossier Parish Community College.
Mercer hopes to move up the ladder in U.S. college baseball, maybe landing a job someday with a proven, four-year NCAA Division One school.
Of course, there’s always the thought of turning pro — “if they ever call, I’ll listen,” he laughs.
Trends come and go, and for now, the trend with major league organizations is to dip into the college ranks to stock coaching positions in the minor league operation.
It’s about player development, the business of which college coaches are in. (The) reasoning is if you have a young pitcher with a live arm who can’t find the strike zone, who better than to work with them than the college guys?
For now, though, Mercer is happy just to be getting his name out there.
“A lot of bigger DI coaches have called and asked me about players,” he said. “I’ve already gotten text messages and calls from six or seven different DI schools.
“That’s how you make relationships.”
Goes to show, you never really know who’s watching, do you?
“I was big into sports growing up and to do it now, as a fulltime job, is pretty awesome. It’s something I love to do, and I get paid for it. But it doesn’t seem like work.”
Andrew Mercer