Brett de Geus and Getting Back to the Majors
All players from each team’s 40-man roster are missing from spring training camps. They won’t return until the lockout is resolved. The minor leaguers, however, are not locked out, so they’re currently in camp. Right now, across Arizona and Florida, hundreds of young players are vying for their first call-up to The Show. Others are veterans who are trying to fight their way back. Some, including Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Brett de Geus, fit into both categories.
Brett de Geus entered professional baseball in 2017 as a draft pick from Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. The Los Angeles Dodgers selected the right-hander in the 33rd round that summer, but he did not begin his minor league journey until 2018. He played rookie ball that season with the Ogden Raptors of what was then the Pioneer League. While there, he was a starter. In 2019, he switched to relief upon promotion to the Class-A Great Lakes Loons of the Midwest League. de Geus did not allow an earned run in 17 of his 19 appearances with the Loons. So after three months, he joined the High-A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes of the California League. In Rancho Cucamonga, 16 of his 20 outings were scoreless.
de Geus was a victim of the 2020 minor league cancellation, so he lost a year of playing time and experience. He pitched at the alternate site, but we all know that’s not the same as playing in games for a full year. Despite showing strong potential in 2019, the Dodgers — who had an abundance of pitching talent in their farm system — left de Geus unprotected in the Rule Five Draft. Enter the Texas Rangers.
Brett de Geus Heads to Texas
By selecting Brett de Geus in the Rule Five Draft, the Rangers committed to keeping him on their big-league roster. If they sent him down to the minors, he would instead be returned to the Dodgers. This was a huge commitment to make on someone who had not even advanced to Double-A yet.
Hearing that he had been selected in the draft by the Rangers was exciting for de Geus. “It was a trip,” he recalled. But there was another complication. “The day before the Rule Five draft, I’d actually got my first positive test too. So I was super excited, but I still had nine more days of quarantining to do. I thought, ‘I can’t wait to go work hard and make a team, but I’ve still got to sit on my butt for the next nine days.’”
Heading straight to the majors from High-A could be overwhelming for many 23-year-olds, but it was a different feeling for de Geus. “It’s the culmination of a lot of things,” he said. “One spring training, if you can go out and perform, you can go out and win a big-league job. That was definitely the first thing on my mind. Go out there and win a job. You basically made your dreams come true, to a point. Obviously, now that you’re there, there are a lot more milestones to go. You realize that it’s, in a way, more the beginning than the end of your journey.”
Brett de Geus Makes the Majors…and Faces Trial by Fire
His time with the Rangers lasted until late June. He had 10 scoreless outings but gave multiple runs in eight of the other nine. “(I had) a lot of inconsistent outings,” he said, “which was, at the end the day, (my) own fault. The guys who are going out there and actually competing on the mountain are the ones who will get more appearances. At that point in time, I was not the best person to help our team win.”
The Rangers designated him for assignment, and on June 25, the Diamondbacks selected him off waivers. This meant the Diamondbacks took on the Rule Five conditions placed on de Geus. If they didn’t keep him on their major league roster, they would have to send him back to the Dodgers.
His first two appearances — at San Diego on June 27 and at St. Louis on June 28 — saw him pitch scoreless eighth innings. The first appearance he made at Chase Field on July 2, facing the first-place San Francisco Giants, did not go so well. A Jaylin Davis double and LaMonte Wade Jr. home run saddled de Geus with two earned runs, but he rebounded the next day by pitching a scoreless ninth. He did not give up another earned run over the next three weeks.
Brett de Geus Has a Shot at Redemption
During that time span, he had an important appearance — one that brought redemption. The Diamondbacks ended their first half with a three-game weekend series at Dodger Stadium against the very team that left de Geus unprotected in the Rule Five Draft. His first appearance at Dodger Stadium came with the Rangers on June 11. He entered the game in the bottom of the fifth with the Rangers already trailing, 10–0. The second pitch he threw drilled Mookie Betts. The rest of the inning did not get any better. Single by Albert Pujols. Lineout to left by Justin Turner. Wild pitch that advanced both Betts and Pujols. RBI single by Bellinger. Plunking Will Smith to load the bases. Sacrifice fly by Chris Taylor…and finally a grounded comebacker by Gavin Lux to end the inning. He rebounded with a scoreless sixth, but still…the damage had been done.
Now he was back in Dodger Stadium, this time wearing a Diamondbacks uniform. When Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo brought him in to relieve starter Taylor Widener, he inherited a 2–1 lead, but he also inherited a mess. There were runners on first and second with one out. The batter was — you guessed it — Mookie Betts. He grounded the third pitch into a force play at second. Max Muncy lined the next one straight at first baseman Christian Walker, who made the routine catch to end the inning and put out the fire. The Diamondbacks later added to their lead. They ultimately won, 5–2, and the win went to…
…Brett de Geus.
A Special Night
He smiled as he recalled that night. “It definitely felt like a moment of redemption in Dodger Stadium. That was the team I came up with — the team that let me pass through the Rule Five process. Whenever I go play there, there’s always a little extra something behind all those pitches. (There’s) a lot of extra conviction, like, ‘I’m gonna show you guys.’ But there’s no bad blood at all.” He continued, “Going into that atmosphere against that team…. It’s one of the best lineups in the league, one of the best crowds and stadiums by far. The energy there is just insane. I really couldn’t think of a better place to get my first major league win, either, given the history and everything like that.”
As an added bonus, his parents were in the stands. Because of the restrictions still in place at the time, his parents could not attend his debut in Kansas City. Most who played in their youth could locate their parents in the stands immediately during the game. It is no different for major leaguers, de Geus explained. “The fact that you get to see them at a baseball game, whether it’s the first win or at any point, it’s always special.” Finding one’s parents in a crowd of tens of thousands can be difficult, but de Geus has a method that works well. “My mom has a helluva whistle. If she’s there — it’s like calling a bird dog or something — I could immediately snap to know exactly where they are.”
The Rest of 2021
His 15th appearance for the Diamondbacks came on August 5 in a 10-inning loss to the Giants at Chase Field, when he pitched the last out of the top of the 10th. Twelve of his fifteen outings were scoreless. This gave him an 80% scoreless outing percentage (ScOtg%), 11 points better than the league average. In the other three outings, he gave up a combined four runs, so his ERA over that span was 2.84. As far as inherited runners go, he allowed 31% to score, which put him in line with the league average. His Win Probability Added (WPA) was a sparkling 0.404. This meant that his pitching performances had added 40.4 percentage points to the team’s chances to win. Six of his outings were Shutdowns, meaning that they had 0.060 WPA or higher. His WHIP was 1.263, better than the league average. He was in good shape.
But his next twelve appearances were a different story. He gave up earned runs in eight of the twelve, a 33% ScOtg%. His ERA over that span was 10.97, driving his season-long ERA as a Diamondback — not as a Ranger and not as the two combined…as a Diamondback — to 6.56. What was once a 1.263 WHIP became 1.843. His overall ScOtg% fell to 60.7%. Only one more outing was a Shutdown, and that was out of a total of three that even had a positive WPA. Two of the outings were Meltdowns, meaning his WPA was -0.060 or lower. At season’s end, his WPA as a Diamondback was -0.610. de Geus needed more time to develop, so the Diamondbacks outrighted him to the minors after the season ended.
Overall Assessment of 2021
Despite the way the season ended for Brett de Geus, there were positives to focus on while moving forward. Since the Diamondbacks kept de Geus on the major league roster despite his struggles, that meant they wanted to keep him. That made de Geus feel good. “It was a huge show of faith and support,” he said. “I like to joke now that I will never, you know, I already know what my worst-ever season of Major League Baseball looks like. Because if it’s any worse than that, (I’m) probably not gonna be playing in the big leagues. It’s a huge confidence boost going into this year.”
de Geus also learned some valuable lessons in 2021. “I’ve got to be consistent, be the same guy every day,” he explained. “Do whatever I can to slow the game down. Because when you go into other places and you have big crowds, it’s definitely easy to zoom out a little bit instead of focusing on your target and making pitches.” He added that “it’s a lot easier to feel confident” in the minors on days where he might not be at his best. On those days, if he has only one pitch working, because that one pitch might be all he needs to get through it. But when facing major league lineups, one pitch typically isn’t enough. The doubt “has a lot easier time creeping in” when pitchers are “not 100% prepared on mental or maturity side.”
Appreciative Instead of Anxious
Several big-league teammates taught him valuable lessons. One of the most memorable for de Geus came from then-Rangers teammate Kyle Gibson, who is now with the Philadelphia Phillies. de Geus had just had another in a string of rough outings. He had come out of the game early. de Geus recalled, “(I was) kicking myself, and Kyle was in the training room getting his work done. We started talking and ended up going to the end of the game. So we’re just in there talking baseball, and, a lot more specifically, managing being a big leaguer. One of the things he said was whenever you’re feeling anxious —really anywhere in life, but especially on a mound or in a clubhouse — try to be appreciative. You can’t be anxious and appreciative at the same time. So I took that to heart.”
What Brett de Geus Worked on in the Offseason
The Diamondbacks told Brett de Geus what exactly to work on as he went into his offseason training. “Make sure all the pitches are a little bit more consistent. The cutter definitely needed some work at the end there. It was not really getting as much (movement) glove side — wasn’t cutting a lot, (so it was) like a bad fastball. I didn’t really have a lot of trust in my curveball, which is a really good pitch.” de Geus wants his pitch movement to be “sharp” and “big.”
Part of the struggles came from his feeling that he was “fighting mechanics all last year.” Going to Push Performance in Tempe helped him get back on the right track. de Geus said that they “do movement assessment,” and Push told him “there’s a lot of room for us to kind of make up the just pure movement and stability side. Working on that has kind of opened up a lot on the pitching end and brought me back to where I want to be.”
“No Doubt” Has Carried Over
If facing a situation like Brett de Geus faced in 2021, many people would feel they were over their heads. For de Geus, the feelings were mixed. “Talentwise, there’s never been a question. (I) always knew that when the day came, I could get outs in the major leagues. But definitely over the course of the season, you realize that there are some places in some aspects of baseball that you can definitely be improving, specifically off-the-field-type stuff. It’s a lot different holding yourself as a major leaguer than it is a minor leaguer, and in a lot of different aspects. But at the same time, I had a year in The Show. Not a lot of people can say that. No matter how it went, it just ended up being a steppingstone to whatever the future holds. Suffering through some parts of that year will only help going forward.”
de Geus does not yet know whether he will go to Double-A Amarillo or Triple-A Reno. One thing he does know, however, is that there is “no doubt that’s carried over from last season at all.” He continued, “There’s still a lot more room to grow. Whether you’re a rookie or have 15 years, there’s always room to grow. But there’s no doubt that carried over last year. That’s all in the past. I’ve lived through it. I grew a lot from it, and I have a lot to take with me into this season. I’m just excited to go out there and put my best foot forward this year.”
Main Photo:
Embed from Getty Images
Players mentioned:
Brett de Geus, Jaylin Davis, LaMonte Wade Jr., Mookie Betts, Albert Pujols, Justin Turner, Will Smith, Chris Taylor, Gavin Lux, Torey Lovullo, Taylor Widener, Max Muncy, Christian Walker, Kyle Gibson
