His deception + movement + control guided Drew Rucinski‘s improbable rise from the obscurity of the independent leagues to the major leagues in just under a year.
If you were watching the Angel game last Tuesday and saw this guy subbing for CJ Wilson at the last minute who then proceeded to no-hit the Colorado Rockies regulars for four straight innings like they were a bunch of defenseless blades of grass stretching up for the sun only to be cut down by an arsenal of 94 mph four-seam fastballs with zigzag movement, change-ups that nibbled on the corners, and splitters that appeared to be thigh high fastballs but dove to the ground just as the batters committed to their swings, you might have asked yourself, “Who is that guy?”
Well, I’ll tell you. That, was Drew Rucinski.
If you’ve never heard of him, I wouldn’t blame you. The major league scouting cadre that watched him pitch from 2008 to 2011 for Ohio State University were so unimpressed that Drew went undrafted at the conclusion of his four-year collegiate career. He didn’t have a bad season his senior year — he went 5-3 with a 2.95 ERA, but he had a disastrous junior year posting a 5.45 ERA as he spent the season fighting a horribly split nail on the middle finger of his throwing hand. Before that, he spent his first two seasons as a Buckeye as a reliever, although he did lead the Big Ten in wins his sophomore year with 12, all of which came in relief.
Anyway, since the invitation to pitch in low minors for a major league team never showed up in the mail, the 22-year-old Rucinski believed in himself enough to commit to plan B — join the Rockford (Illinois) Riverhawks, one of the 12-teams that comprise the independent Frontier League. His mantra was to just play as hard as he could and wait for an opportunity to show up. In June, his first one did, sort of, as the Cleveland Indians signed him as a free agent, but looking at it now, it seems like the Indians just wanted him to be an organizational guy, someone clubs hire to fill up roster space so there would be enough guys for the actual prospects to have a team to play on. Drew spent the remainder of that season bouncing around the bottom of the Indians’ minor league system, playing short stints for three different clubs as the year played out.
In March of 2012 Drew was invited to Cleveland’s minor league camp, but he was quickly released. So as the new baseball season was about to begin, Rucinski found himself back to square one, as he hooked up once again with the Rockford Riverhawks, refusing to let his baseball dream die. His belief in his ability was not unfounded, however, as he started 15 games that season and had a nice 3.13 ERA, a 1.18 WHIP, and a 7.9 strikeouts per nine innings to show for it. Unfortunately, the opportunity to climb back on with a major league franchise never came knocking, so when the calendar reset in 2013, Drew decided to play once more for Rockford, this time as a 24-year-old independent league player hoping that some scout would finally see something in him, before he became too old to be a noticeable commodity.
Drew played his heart out for the club, now called the Aviators, and he had an even better season than the one before. He was the ace of their staff and the league leader in strikeouts with 101 in just 15 games. He had a 2.88 ERA, a 1.13 WHIP, and a 9.1 strikeouts per nine innings for the 2013 Aviators. This time, however, opportunity did come knocking, and it was the Angels at the door.
“Before an evening game in Schaumberg, my manager, James Frisbee, came up to me and said, ‘Congratulations,’ and I said, ‘For what?’ He said that the Angels wanted to sign me. They needed some pitching help in High-A,” Rucinski explained to frontierleague.com last October. “Everyone in the clubhouse knew what was going on, congratulated me, and was super excited. I called my girlfriend Sheridan, who would never let me give up baseball, and my parents. We played the game that night, and as soon as we returned home, I packed up my bags and was at O’Hare airport at 5 the next morning on my way to San Bernardino” (the home of the Angels’ High-A California League team, the Inland Empire 66ers).
Now that he had the second chance he had worked so hard to get, he wasn’t about to give the Angels any reason to let him go. He was lights out down the stretch for the Inland Empire club, starting five games, striking out 21 while walking only four, and posting a statement-making 1.86 ERA. Once the playoffs started, all Rucinski then did was go 3-0, a run that included a 6.2 inning start in the clinching game of the Cal League championship series, a performance that surely brought back memories of when Drew was the winning pitcher in the title game for the Oklahoma state championship as a junior at Union High School.
In 2014, Drew ascended one rung up the minor league ladder by starting the season for the Double-A Arkansas Travelers. He proceeded to have a terrific season and was rewarded by being named to the Texas League all-star team. Then, in July, when CJ Wilson was placed on the disabled list, in a little less than one full season in the minors since signing with the Angels, the big league club called Drew up to temporarily take Wilson’s spot on the roster.
And on July 10th, the call came to the bullpen for Drew to warm up — manager Mike Scioscia was going to have him pitch his first big league inning, in this case, the ninth inning of a 15-4 blowout in which the Angels were beating down the Rangers in Arlington.
“I came in during the ninth inning for some mop-up work,” Rucinski later remembered, “but for me, it felt like pitching in Game 7 of the World Series.”
He understandably had a shaky outing, hitting a batter and giving up two runs, but he also got in his first major league strikeout, Shin-Soo Choo, swinging, for the second out of the inning.
“It was an incredible experience just to step foot on that field with an Angels jersey on. It made all the hours of practice and games worth it to be on a big league field at the Ballpark in Arlington. Everyone on the team congratulated me after I got the last out of the first game I pitched in.”
Now in the spring of 2015, Drew has followed up his eye-opening emergency start against the Rockies last Tuesday with 4.2 shutout innings on Sunday against the world champion San Francisco Giants. After spending a couple of years in baseball purgatory followed by a meteoric rise that saw him come from out of nowhere to get his first cup of coffee, it looks like Drew Rucinski is on the cusp of making his first big league roster out of camp. If he does, and if he can keep up the impressive movement on his pitches while continuing to command the strike zone, major league hitters are going to have their hands full trying to figure out what to do when they come up to bat this season against Drew Rucinski.
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Thanks to Josh Handler’s article “Formerly Frontier: Rucinski Makes the Jump from Rockford to Los Angeles” at frontierleague.com, “Buckeyes Hold 2015 Meet The Team Dinner” at ohiostatebuckeyes.com, and a fantastic scouting report of Rucinski at InsideTheHalos.