Biagini awestruck at living MLB dream
DUNEDIN— Joe Biagini wasn’t quite sure how to take it, the fact he had made his first major-league roster.
He was still a little hazy and dumbstruck in the minutes after Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker gave him the good news. Biagini struggled to find the right words.
“It’s kind of a weird day,” the 25year-old admitted to the Star. “It’s been like a 20-year dream, so I need to make sure I’m appreciating it as much as I should be.”
The Jays announced their final cuts on Wednesday morning ahead of the team’s final Grapefruit League game, and Biagini — a beefy right-hander claimed in the Rule 5 draft from the San Francisco Giants — earned one of the final bullpen jobs.
“(Walker) said, ‘We want you with us,’ and I said, ‘Are you sure you’re talking about me?’ ” Biagini was kidding. The six-foot-four, 240-pound California native is prone to goofball sarcasm, but he genuinely seemed to be still adjusting to the news.
“To be successful at this level you have to convince yourself you’re good enough and convince yourself that you deserve it,” he said. “Nobody really deserves this anymore than anybody else, but you kind of have to tell yourself that to get your mind in the right place. So the irony is that once you get it it’s a relief instead of an out-of-nowhere-surprise thing — but I certainly wasn’t expecting it.”
Biagini said he would take some time to “think about the journey and all the years when I thought this was never going to happen.”
Even getting drafted to the big leagues seemed like a long-shot after he tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in junior college and was coming off Tommy John surgery in his draft year.
“I had, like, an 11-something ERA most of that year.”
But a Giants scout saw him pitch the last game of the season — his birthday — and liked what he saw, even though Biagini says he was getting hit around. After getting drafted, he struggled badly his first two years in the minors.
“I was just way up all in my head, no confidence.”
The big leagues seemed impossibly far away and Biagini was losing faith in himself.
“I got to the point where I said ‘You know, I’m sick of playing baseball if it’s going to be the way I’ve been playing, where I’m over-thinking it and fearful.’ I said, either I don’t play any more or I change.”
The changes he made were all men- tal. He used his bullpen sessions to practice focusing only on the next pitch, clearing his mind of the previous one. He avoided “mental ruts of negativity” and told himself he was better than the hitters. He had to work at it, but eventually it started to click.
“I had to learn the skill of being mentally tough,” he said. “I decided that my mechanics are good enough, my pitches are good enough, everything is good enough to trust it.”
In 2014, he earned a promotion to advanced Class-A, and although his numbers still weren’t great, Biagini says he noticed a big difference in himself. Then last year he was promoted again — to Double-A — and he enjoyed his best season yet, compiling a 2.40 ERA in 22 starts.
“You know they say the game’s 90 per cent mental or whatever? I’m not a big cliché fan, but I can’t help but think that’s true.”
Intended to prevent teams from hoarding talent, the Rule 5 draft allows players who have been in the minors for four or five years (depending on their age) but haven’t been added to their organization’s 40-man roster to be picked by another team. The drafting team pays $50,000 to the player’s original team and must keep the player on the active roster for the entire next season or return him back to his original club for $25,000.
Teams can also work out a trade after the fact. In any event, it likely helped Biagini’s case.
“It’s certainly a confusing blessing,” he said. “But I’m a fan of the Rule 5.”
“To be successful at this level you have to convince yourself you’re good enough and convince yourself you deserve it.” JAYS’ JOE BIAGINI