DUNEDIN, Fla. — There’s an odd digression in Tanner Roark’s early career, in which the then 21-year-old college senior goes from being the Friday night starter at the University of Illinois, a Division 1 program, to off the team entirely and pitching for a recently founded independent ball outfit, the Southern Illinois Miners.
Just like that. He goes from MLB draft prospect throwing to some of the best, up-and-coming hitters in the country to the Frontier League, pitching against professional cast-offs and over-the-hill 30-something’s. What happened? Why did he get cut from Illinois?
“I wasn’t cut,” Roark says, defiantly. “I was dismissed. From the school. There’s a difference. I was good enough to pitch there.”
Apologies for the mistake. But the question still stands. Why, exactly, were you dismissed from a Div. 1 program you could’ve helped on the mound?
“I liked to party and play baseball,” says Roark, who was deemed academically ineligible to play that senior season because his grades fell so low. “I’ve learned my lesson on that part. There’s been a lot of chapters in my book — and some of them are pretty crazy.”
Crazy like making three starts for that independent ball team and getting absolutely rocked, allowing 25 runs — yes, 25 — over 9.2 innings before leaving the team. Crazy like still getting drafted, in 2008’s 25th round by the Texas Rangers, and managing to grind all the way up to the majors, where he made his debut at 26. Crazy like never returning to the minors after that, other than for one-off rehab assignments.
Crazy like now having earned over $20 million in his career, with in excess of $20 million more to come, as Roark prepares to begin his eighth MLB season with a guaranteed job in the Toronto Blue Jays‘ rotation. Crazy like now pitching in front of infielders such as 20-year-old Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and 21-year-old Bo Bichette, who are the same age Roark was when he was partying his way out of school.
“This team’s cool because it’s just a young group of kids. Like, actual kids,” Roark says. “I can’t imagine being in the big leagues when I was 21, 22. There’s a lot of potential here. I was really excited to come here with this young core, this group of guys with a lot of talent and already a year under their belt in the big leagues, and be a part of it. Help them understand mentally what it’s like. Help them learn from their mistakes. Hopefully, I can have a positive impact.”
Roark will make his Blue Jays debut — finally — Thursday when the club travels to Clearwater, Fla., to play the Philadelphia Phillies. It was never the plan for his first start of spring to come this late, but a brutal case of the flu developed only a couple days after pitchers and catchers reported, which put Roark out of commission for more than a week.
“I haven’t felt that way in a long, long time,” the 33-year-old says. “It was terrible. Chills, cold sweats, sleeping non-stop and still tired. I felt like each day was a new symptom.”
Roark’s strength and energy returned slowly, which forced him to restart his spring progression, deliberately advancing through some conditioning work and running, to side sessions, to a live bullpen he threw on the weekend. Despite the delay, the Blue Jays and Roark say there is no risk of him missing the start of the season, his first on the two-year, $24-million deal he signed in December.
Roark was attracted to the Blue Jays’ opportunity not only because of the money and term they were offering, but the young, upcoming team he’d get to be a part of. When Toronto began showing interest, Roark started doing research on the club’s young catching tandem, Danny Jansen and Reese McGuire, and came away impressed.
Both Jansen and McGuire were top-15 pitch framers across MLB last season, with the former finishing as a finalist for the American League Gold Glove. After a 2019 season in which he threw to nine different catchers over his 31 starts with the Cincinnati Reds and Oakland A’s, Roark figured it was time for a little stability on the receiving end.
“That’s mainly what I was looking for this off-season — a catcher that I could be on the same page with and have a good relationship with,” Roark says. “Someone that can frame pitches is obviously an extra. And both of those guys did a really good job last year.”
A control and command right-hander whose fastball velocity and spin rate each fall below the major-league average, Roark benefits from capable hands behind the plate more than some. Last season, he mixed and matched almost evenly with a sinker, four-seamer and slider, also using a high-spin curveball that generated an encouraging 29.3 per cent whiff rate and a changeup that was a reliable weapon against left-handed hitting.
[snippet id=4863988]
Roark doesn’t miss an exceptional amount of bats, relying instead on varying his pitch mix and setting up his secondary weapons by using his sinker all over the strike zone. A well-formulated game plan is a necessity for any Roark outing, as is an intuitive catcher who can execute it. Roark starts devising those plans days before his starts, and values his relationships with catchers highly, looking to them for advice on between-outings focuses and in-game adjustments
“I want them to tell me what they see. Because I don’t know everything. I want criticism,” Roark says. “That’ll keep you in the game for a long time. You want to master your craft.”
Roark’s best MLB season came in 2016, when he pitched to a 2.83 ERA over 210 innings for the Washington Nationals, finishing 10th in National League Cy Young voting. He’s settled into a more league-average profile since, posting a 4.46 ERA over the last three seasons. He’s been stricken by MLB’s homer-happy era, as his home run to fly ball ratios have inflated since that strong season four years ago. His groundball rates have decreased significantly, as well, which is asking for trouble in today’s juiced-ball game.
Still, Roark hardly walks anyone — career 2.6 BB/9 — which can mitigate some of the damage those homers cause. And he takes the ball every five days without fail, making at least 30 starts each of the last four seasons. Nothing about his FanGraphs page is sexy. But his almost perfectly average MLB numbers mean he’s completely capable as a pitcher at the world’s highest level of baseball. If Roark’s stat line was easy to attain, half the league wouldn’t be doing worse than him.
And Toronto’s coaching staff has some ideas for how to get Roark back to something closer resembling the 151 ERA+ pitcher he was in 2016. A lot of that has to do with pitch usage, the particulars of which the Blue Jays obviously won’t be sharing publicly. But Roark’s five-pitch mix certainly provides an adequate canvas with which to work.
“He wants to keep you off balance. He wants to keep you guessing as a hitter. He has plenty of weapons to do that and he’s creative,” says Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker. “And he’s a bulldog on the mound. He’s a competitor. He has a real work ethic and desire to compete. I think he’s going to be great for the younger guys to see.”
[snippet id=4722869]
One of the biggest impacts Roark’s made on his younger teammates so far has been forcing those who hadn’t yet had flu shots to get one. Going forward, he’s hoping his influence will be a little less painful. Along with fellow early 30s starters Hyun-Jin Ryu, Chase Anderson and Matt Shoemaker, Roark’s part of a top-four in the Blue Jays rotation that has more than 23 combined years of MLB service time.
The benefit of all that experience isn’t only that young players can learn from the successes those four have experienced in the majors — they can learn from the setbacks, too. Shoemaker’s missed significant time due to freak injuries; Anderson’s reinvented himself repeatedly; Ryu’s pitched playoff shutouts and disasters. Roark was playing independent ball at 21, and pitching in Venezuela at 25, before ever making his major-league debut.
In a Blue Jays camp where the fiercest competition is among the 10 mid-20-somethings who could start the season in the triple-A Buffalo Bisons’ rotation, awaiting an opportunity in the majors, those resources are invaluable.
“I think it’s great for the younger guys to see how they go about their business. They’re peppering them with questions — I’ve seen it. They’re constantly trying to pick their brains,” Walker says. “When you have veteran guys that have been through it, that have made adjustments, that have had a lot of trial and error, that have been through adversity, those are great learning tools for the younger guys.”
Roark certainly fits the mould. His locker in Toronto’s spring training clubhouse is not far from Guerrero and Bichette’s. When Roark was that age, he wasn’t anywhere near the majors. He wasn’t even on his college team. He was only just reaching the big leagues when he was Trent Thornton’s age. Or Ryan Borucki’s. And he was still in the minors when he was T.J. Zeuch’s or Sean Reid-Foley’s.
But he eventually got there. And stuck around this long. All the players listed above made their major-league debuts before Roark did. And if he can teach them one thing this season, it’ll be how to have the longevity he’s enjoyed.
“Sticking here (in the majors), it’s the game within the game. You have the talent to get here. Then it’s, ‘how do you stay here?’ And it’s all up here, mentally,” Roark says, tapping his head. “You’ve got to craft that, big time. Because you have the stuff. There’s a reason you got called up. You’ve just got to remember that, remember who you are within, and not overthink it. But I’ve over-thought a lot of things in my career. So, I guess I’m still trying to master it myself.”
[relatedlinks]
