Johnstown’s McGough shines in Altoona
Left-handed starter improves since promotion from High-A ball
Baseball has always been Trey McGough’s first love. But it may have been hockey that truly shaped him.
Growing up in Johnstown — where the iconic movie “Slap Shot” was filmed — McGough fell head over skates for hockey as a teenager, playing on travel teams and for his high school, Ferndale Area. It was the sport McGough and his friends grew up playing in their neighborhood. He found its pace and excitement a natural fit.
That love of hockey formed a workmanlike mindset that has served McGough well, from his blue-collar upbringing to a college career at Mount St. Mary’s to fighting for every inch in professional baseball as a 24th-round pick in 2019.
“I truly believe God gave me this path for a reason,” said McGough, a 23-year-old left-handed pitcher with Class AA Altoona. “If that means I have to work a little harder than somebody else, then so be it.”
The road McGough has traveled actually hasn’t taken him terribly far from home, a mere 40 minutes, as he’s been filling up the strike zone and the stands at Peoples Natural Gas Field with plenty of family and friends eager to watch him pitch.
McGough called the entire experience “surreal” and said his parents, Scott and Lori, have made every home game because it’s so close. And they’re hardly ever alone.
The sizable contingent has seen McGough take several strides forward, although he’s been under the radar because of the Pirates’ other pitching prospects. In 14 starts this season for the Curve, McGough has a 3.55 ERA in 76 innings, with 59 strikeouts and just 15 walks. McGough’s work at Class
follows a high Class A
Greensboro placement to start the year, where McGough pitched to a 2.00 ERA in six games (one start) before he was promoted.
McGough technically throws five pitches — fourand two-seam fastballs, plus a curveball, slider and changeup — but one of the most beneficial things for him this season has been having more of attacking mindset.
Earlier this season, McGough described a talk from coordinator of pitching development Josh Hopper that really resonated with him, one that outlined the advantage pitchers gained by throwing strike one.
Hopper also urged McGough and others to not worry about being so fine, to live on the outer or inner thirds of the plate and to ensure they challenge hitters instead of nibbling.
“I really just focused on throwing quality strikes instead of trying to paint corners and miss by a little bit,” McGough said. “Once I started doing that, I had a lot of success and a lot more control throughout the game.”
Of course, McGough’s success this season involves more than a pep talk. One of the things that was oddly helpful was the COVID-19
shutdown and how it allowed him to take a step back.
At the recommendation of a good friend, High-A Greensboro pitcher Garrett Leonard, McGough spent two months in the DallasFort Worth area at Zero Limits Performance. His training was obviously an emphasis, but so was McGough’s diet.
After weighing as little as 185 in his first year of pro ball, McGough took the COVID-19 break to revamp his diet, focus on eating cleaner foods and try to pack on some good weight. It worked. The Pirates supplied McGough with nutritional information, but he also ate a lot of venison that he hunted himself, surrounding it with plenty of rice and sweet potatoes.
As a result, McGough has upped his weight to 205 and feels much more durable and powerful on the mound.
“This is my first full season,” said McGough, who had a 3.86 ERA and 42 strikeouts in 32⅔ innings with Bristol (rookie) and West Virginia (short season A) after he was drafted in 2019. “I feel really good. I feel healthy. I feel like a lot of it can be attributed to that.”
McGough may only be getting started, too. Growing
up in Johnstown taught McGough to love hockey, but it’s not exactly a baseball hotbed, the same for Mount St. Mary’s. In fact, McGough never threw into a Rapsodo — which gathers data on such things as spin rate, body movement and hand position — until spring training last year.
A math major in college who wanted to become an engineer, McGough has enjoyed getting nerdy about pitching analytics with minor league operations assistant Jack Cecil, learning more about what he’s doing, what the numbers mean and how they might help his performance.
“I do gravitate toward it and love learning more,” McGough said. “But I would say I’m definitely in the infancy of knowing exactly what’s going on with the numbers.”
There’s still plenty of time for McGough, who has a 2.78 ERA in his past four starts and has allowed more than three earned runs just once this year. And there’s also more work to do, which seems to suit him.
“I would definitely say that I do have more of a grinder mentality, an outworking mentality because of the path that I’ve had,” McGough said.