De Jong could fill number of pitching roles for Pirates
BRADENTON, Fla. — Not long ago, Chase De Jong was throwing tennis balls at a chalked target on the side of a highway.
The Pirates right-hander didn’t have a throwing partner during the pandemic, so living in Southern California, that was how he stayed fresh.
De Jong got going soon after that, pitching for the Houston Astros in three games and making their American League Championship Series roster last season. He’s currently pitching for the Pirates in spring training, but his journey to this point has been anything but easy.
He was drafted in the second round of the 2012 MLB
Draft by the Toronto Blue Jays out of high school. He has moved from the Blue Jays to the Los Angeles Dodgers to the Seattle Mariners to the Minnesota Twins, then the Astros and Pirates. The seven games he appeared in for the Mariners in 2017 are the most he has pitched in a season, though. He’s struggled to find a lot of playing time wherever he’s been.
Still, he spent a good portion of 2020 with the Class AAA Sugar Land Skeeters in the Astros organization. The time wasn’t spent rehabilitating or finding an old form, it was spent fine-tuning his arsenal and figuring out how to make it to the big leagues.
“I wasn’t hurt. I was just a bad pitcher,” De Jong said Wednesday. “So I had to figure out, ‘Hey, I’ve got to get my curveball back. I’ve got to be able to go to the top of the zone. I’ve got to be able to command it and have the conviction up there and throw my other stuff off it and not walk guys.’ ”
De Jong has been good so far for the Pirates. He’s thrown the second-most innings of any of their pitchers, and while it’s been just eight innings, he’s only allowed one run and six hits over that span.
Where he fits into the Pirates’ plans this season is anyone’s guess. He signed a minor league deal with the Pirates this offseason, and will likely begin the year in the minors, but he could warrant a call-up depending on how things shake out on the big-league roster. He’s mostly been a starter in his career, but he could fit into a long reliever role if necessary.
“I just know that I’m here to be a starting pitcher or be stretched out and be able to cover multiple innings at a time,” De Jong said. “Whether that’s as a starter, whether that’s out of the bullpen and throwing three innings twice a week. I told [pitching coach Oscar Marin] today, ‘I’m going to be your Swiss Army knife. I’m going to be whatever you need me to be that day, that week, that series.’ I’m just here to be a pitcher. I’m here, and I’m ready to cover innings and help this team win ballgames.”
Marin and manager Derek Shelton were big reasons he signed with the Pirates. He worked with Marin when they were in the Mariners organization and Shelton was bench coach for the Twins when De Jong pitched there.
Plus, Shelton understands where De Jong has come from. He said Wednesday that De Jong has taken “the tough road” to this spring training.
That is certainly true. At the beginning of 2020, with no minor leagues and De Jong out of a job, the Constellation Energy League was born in Texas. He pitched with the Skeeters at that time.
De Jong said that he wasn’t sure baseball would work out. He discussed, with his wife and family, whether it was time to hang up the spikes and start working a 9to-5 job. He had had some offers from junior colleges asking him to be their pitching coach, and since he was drafted out of high school, he could still go and get his college education and work from there.
Instead, he put his nose to the grindstone and tried to work out his arsenal to make him more attractive to bigleague clubs.
“I couldn’t get anybody to give me an invite to camp or minor league camp or anything,” De Jong said. “So I had first right of refusal to go play [with the Skeeters], because I finished in 2019 there, got to show off my new arsenal — throwing the ball harder, doing what I do now. Called my agent after the first couple of outings and said, ‘Hey, I throw hard now.’ And he was like, ‘You do?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And I sent him the Trackman numbers, and my next outing, there were four scouts there. The outing after that, I think the same four scouts were there, and then ultimately, we agreed to terms with Houston.”
And all of that stems from the absurd work De Jong was doing on the side of the 405 freeway in Southern California when he didn’t have a job. He said he could feel the spin of his fastball better with a tennis ball, so that was how he worked.
It’s strange, but it’s a piece of how he’s worked himself to the Pirates, with a chance now to make it back to the majors.
“Just trying to utilize that backspin of a four-seam fastball, because you can actually visualize it better with a tennis ball,” De Jong said. “So just really driving that point home and being able to command that top of the zone across, because I was made aware that I have 20 inches of vertical break or carry or however you want to say it differently. ... And then just over the last year or 18 months, working with Houston, they made me aware of it, too. They’re like, ‘If you do this well, you’re an everyday pitcher in the big leagues. If you don’t do this well, I’ve already been released.’ So I had to get good at that, or it was time to get a 9-to-5 [job].”