Pop takes a winding road to Marlins bullpen
The bullpen gate in left field opens, and Zach Pop makes his way to the mound at loanDepot park for his MLB debut. It’s April 3, three games into the 2021 season, and manager Don Mattingly is calling upon the quiet-yetconfident 24-year-old right-handed pitcher in the sixth inning of a tie game against the Rays as the Marlins search for their first win of the season.
Pop throws a handful of warm-up pitches to the sounds of Metallica’s “The Unforgiven.” He adjusts his pants, shrugs his shoulders, takes a deep breath and gets ready to dominate.
Seven pitches, six strikes, three outs. Pop promptly heads to the dugout, his job completed.
“When you get to the mound, you’re trying to slow everything down,” Pop said, reflecting on the moment. “At the end of the day, your head’s just spinning. And when you kind of look back on it, it’s still kind of spinning. It’s like ‘Wow. That just really happened.’ ”
It served as a prelude to Pop’s early season success with the Marlins. Heading into Saturday, Pop has held opponents scoreless in 11 of his 13 outings. His sinker has topped out at 98.2 mph. His slider is resulting in swings and misses 51.6 percent of the time — the 11th-best rate among relief pitchers this season.
But it was a moment
Pop wasn’t sure would come — at least not this early.
Not after the past couple years.
Friday marked two years since Pop underwent Tommy John surgery while still a budding prospect in the Baltimore Orioles’ system. He had accumulated just 80 1⁄
3 innings of professional baseball experience at that point and just 32 at the Double A level.
His 24 months since then included two years of rehabbing his right arm (the second of which also required him to maneuver around restrictions in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic while back home in Canada), being taken in the Rule 5 Draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks before being subsequently traded to the Marlins and, ultimately, making that MLB debut and flashing potential to be an in-house lateinning reliever of the future for the Marlins.
“It’s a growing experience, a constant growing experience,” Pop said, “coming off of Tommy John and then getting thrown right into the heat of battle.”
‘YOUR MIND GOES BLANK’
Pop didn’t think too much of the injury when it first occurred. He threw a pair of scoreless innings for the Bowie (Maryland) Baysox, the Orioles’ Double A Affiliate, on April 23, 2019, while they were playing on the road against the Erie SeaWolves.
He thought maybe he pulled a muscle. It felt “weird,” Pop said, but nothing extreme. Plus, he was still getting the results he wanted. Velocity was fine. Pitch movement was fine. Maybe it was the cold weather in Erie, Pop thought. Game-time temperature was 58 degrees with 18 mph winds at UPMC Park at first pitch that night.
He then made two more appearances at home for the BaySox, a scoreless eighth inning on April 27, 2019, and a one-batter appearance on April 30, 2019.
“At the end of it,” Pop said, “I was like ‘Hey, this just isn’t going away.’ ”
The MRI showed damage to the UCL in his right elbow. Pop, at 22 years old and as a burgeoning prospect in Baltimore’s farm system, was on his way to Tommy John surgery.
“Your mind goes blank,” Pop said. “I didn’t really have a reaction.”
Reality sank in shortly after visiting with renowned surgeon Dr.
James Andrews in May to confirm the operation was necessary.
“Three days later,” Pop said, “I’m on the table.”
‘IT’S TOUGH TO TAKE A BACK SEAT’
The thoughts crept into Pop’s mind in the days and weeks and months after the surgery. Will he still be able to accomplish his dreams? Will he be left behind? Will his sinker and slider still have the same bite that got him to this point in his career?
“It was just a whirlwind,” Pop said. “You’re there pitching well with aspirations of playing in the big leagues and it kind of just gets shut down and put on hold. You see your friends going up and you see baseball going on and you’re like ‘Dang. I want to compete at that level. I want to play there. I want to be with my friends. I want to be with my team.’
“It’s tough to take a back seat.”
It made him reflect on his early days growing up in Ontario, Canada, and the drive that made him want to pursue an MLB career in the first place.
It brought him back to his days with the Canadian Junior National Team, where his early career overlapped with the likes of the Braves’ Mike Soroka and the Indians’ Josh Naylor.
It brought him back to admiring Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera and how he wanted to follow in his trajectory.
It also brought him back to the mindset he had from the start: He’s going to succeed.
“You always feel like you can make it to the big leagues,” Pop said. “As a kid growing up, you never really think ‘Do I have the chance?’ It’s always “I’m gonna play in the big leagues.’ Take the ‘if’ out of it.”
That led him to the University of Kentucky after high school, where he played for three years as a midweek starter and late-inning reliever during the Southeastern Conference slate.
Pop worked his way to eventually be considered a top-75 college draft prospect. Baseball America noted the “late life” of his fastball that is amplified by the deception coming from his cross-body throwing motion.
The Los Angeles Dodgers selected him the seventh round of the 2017 draft.
He was in the Dodgers’ organization for barely a year before he included as part of the Dodgers’ trade with Baltimore for star shortstop Manny Machado in July 2018.
The Orioles sent Pop straight to Double A, where he held opponents to seven earned runs over 32 innings (a 1.97 ERA) with 28 strikeouts against 10 walks between the end of the 2018 season and the first eight appearances of 2019.
THE REHAB PROCESS
But instead of racking up more innings and gaining more experience, Pop was biding his time.
You can’t rush back return from elbow surgery. So Pop waited.
He was in an iron sling and “sleeping in some pretty wonky positions” the first month after surgery before being put into a brace for the next few months.
He started with light throwing in November 2019, about six months after the surgery. He threw off flat ground for the time on Feb. 28, 2020.
Despite a couple minor setbacks, the occasional tightness in his arm here and there, his progression was tracking well heading into 2020 spring training.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic shut down baseball.
Pop wasn’t part of the Orioles’ 60-man player pool when the season resumed. He went back home to Canada to finish his rehab. Because the Canadian government’s restrictions, his options to continue his throwing progression were limited.
He worked out at the training facility for the Ontario Blue Jays, a team with whom he played during his prep days.
“You have this empty gym to yourself,” Pop said. “When you finish up that and you’re done for the day, it’s like ‘OK.
What now?’ ”
Pop said it took him until around late July 2020, 14 months after the surgery, to feel like he was back to some semblance of normal with his arm, but he would have to wait another eight months before his return to live game action — except not with the Orioles.
JOINING THE MARLINS
Pop was near the top of the Marlins’ radar when MLB’s Rule 5 Draft took place in December. General manager Kim Ng’s offseason priority was retooling the club’s bullpen. The Marlins were intrigued by the movement of his pitches and were confident he would healthy for spring training.
The only problem: The Diamondbacks selected him seven picks before the Marlins were on the board. Undeterred, the Marlins swung a trade with Arizona shortly after the draft ended, sending the Diamondbacks a player to be named.
He made five appearances in spring training, giving up one earned run on three hits and two walks while striking out four.
His first spring appearance, a shutout inning on March 10, was a reality-check moment. He was back.
“It felt pretty special,” Pop said.
What has followed has been pretty special, too.
Outside of two mistakes — a grand slam given up to the St. Louis Cardinals’ Dylan Carlson on April 7 and a three-run home run to the Braves’ Pablo Sandoval on April 15 — Pop has been dominant.
He is holding opponents to a .146 batting average and throwing strikes at a 61 percent rate.
“You can see his confidence growing,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said.
Pop knows there’s still room to grow. He’s learning from the veteran relievers on the team, such as Anthony Bass and Yimi Garcia and Dylan Floro. He’s making minor refinements with his pitch delivery.
“I think we’re trending in the right direction,” Pop said. “Hopefully, it stays like that.”