SEATTLE – In limbo immediately after being released by the Houston Astros on Sunday, Mike Hauschild needed someplace to keep his arm in shape so he returned to Chukchanski Park to work out with his former Fresno Grizzlies teammates. When the triple-A club hit the road to play the Nashville Sounds, the 28-year-old right-hander went to the stadium on his own and threw by himself, waiting for all the domino pieces to settle after the trade deadline’s frenetic shuffling.
There were a couple of teams interested, back in the Pacific Coast League where pitchers are little more than pinatas in hitter-happy havens, when Hauschild got a call from the Toronto Blue Jays. Usually, such calls are made to a player’s agent, but for some reason his agent wasn’t registered as his representative. He picked up the phone. The Blue Jays were in dire straits and needed some help at triple-A Buffalo in the International League. Was he interested?
Hauschild said he was and directed them to his agent. An agreement was struck Wednesday, just as another bullpen day, a third in 10 games, loomed for the Blue Jays on Thursday. Plans quickly changed.
“I was supposed to fly to Buffalo,” Hauschild said with a wry grin. “Then they flew me here.”
Here, in Seattle, where the native of Dayton, Ohio selected in the 33rd round of the 2012 draft by the Astros out of the University of Dayton, took over from starter Tyler Clippard on Thursday and set a Blue Jays record by debuting with six shutout innings of relief in a 7-3 win over the Mariners.
Hauschild allowed four hits and a walk with five strikeouts in the outing, a pitching line as unlikely as his pathway to the mound at Safeco Field. He debuted in the big-leagues with the Texas Rangers last year, making four relief appearances, giving up runs in each, surrendering five homers in eighth innings of work. This year, in 19 starts at Fresno, his ERA was 4.88 and WHIP was 1.546. Forget left field, there’s no field that does justice to where this comes out of.
“It is pretty crazy, it kind of feels like a dream based off my last week,” said Hauschild. “A couple days ago I was waiting to see which team I was going to be playing for. Now I’m in the big-leagues. Just a whirlwind of emotions going through.”
Under different circumstances, the Blue Jays would have given Hauschild the start, but he didn’t take his physical until an hour before first pitch – typically, around the time he’d start getting ready for his outing – and only signing a contract 30 minutes prior.
Manager John Gibbons and pitching coach Pete Walker decided it would be best to give Clippard the first and then ride Hauschild for as long as they could. The bullpen was a mess after Marco Estrada, Sam Gaviglio and Marcus Stroman only managed to cover 11.2 of the 24 innings the club threw during a three-game sweep by the Athletics in Oakland.
It was buckle your seatbelts time.
“I didn’t know what to expect to be honest with you,” said Gibbons. “The thinking was if he went out there and got roughed up, he’d have to wear it a little bit because we wanted to rest some guys. He did just the opposite. He dominated a good hitting team. … It was one of those tight games. It wasn’t an easy one to pitch in, either. I tip my hat to the guy. We’re looking for an extra starter, and he sure earned another start, I would say.”
The beginning was an inauspicious one for Hauschild, who struck out Mike Zunino before Cameron Maybin singled and Dee Gordon walked. Jean Segura followed with a flyball to deep right for the second out before Denard Span flew out to shallow left, and he was rolling, pumping a fastball that sat at 90.2 m.p.h., and a slider that generated seven whiffs.
“(The slider) had a little bit better action than I’m used to,” said Hauschild. “After the first inning, that was the kind of, whew, OK moment. From then on I was just trying to make sure I had relatively low pitch counts for the innings, just try to eat up as many innings as I could.”
Six frames is more than the Blue Jays could have imagined and now he’ll get to do it again for a team making things up in their rotation as things go along. A week ago, Hauschild was toiling away in Fresno, blocked in multiple ways in the impressively deep Astros system, another shot in the majors feeling way out of reach.
But sometimes, baseball, like life, is just crazy.
“It’s a big difference,” Hauschild said of returning to the majors after debuting last year. “I have that little bit of experience after getting my butt kicked last year. I’ve figured out the kinks in my delivery and just working toward that I had pretty good confidence of where I was at in the couple of starts before I came here. Just trying to build off it.”
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