Talking Blue Jays Minor League Pitching with Cory Popham

It was a conversation I’d been hoping to have for several weeks, and life finally cleared its hectic self up enough for me to touch base with Blue Jays Minor League Pitching Development Coordinator Cory Popham.

Popham really is entitled to take a bow, although he gladly shares the credit for an incredible season of individual pitching development in the system. This was a year that players like Ricky Tiedemann, Yosver Zulueta, and Dahian Santos, among others, took huge steps forward in their progression to the big leagues. And there were several other stories just out of the limelight, but no less impressive from the likes of Jimmy Robbins, Irv Carter, and Michael Dominguez.

I caught up with Cory just as he returned from the Thanksgiving holiday, and was getting ready to work with the pitchers who have stayed in the area to work out at the minor league complex.

DMF: Cory, I wanted to start our conversation with Nate Pearson. I haven’t been able to get any looks at him, but his numbers in the Dominican have been impressive, and you guys must be happy not just with that, but how he recovered between outings.

CP:  It was kind of in a compacted version, but it was really good to see him get that experience. He pitched really well, and got into some good leverage situations.

DMF: I think the logical place to start our conversation after I asked about Pearson is with Ricky Tiedemann. We saw the reports last fall that he had hit 100 at Instructs, and while we were all excited to see him make his debut this year, did you have any inkling a year ago at this time that he would have such a breakout season?

CP: He was in a routine-oriented regimen for the first time last fall, and he worked very hard - it was fun to watch. It’s a huge testament to him - he just got better. I know it’s tough when you go from competing and then being in the complex and non-game environment. At Instructs, he got to see how that hard work paid off, and all of his pitches looked sharp, he was throwing hard, and it was easy for him. So the biggest thing coming into this year was how it would hold up for an entire season, and from the results perspective, it’s not incredibly surprising just because he was so good at Instructs, but how he was able to do that consistently at three different levels at 19 years old. You can’t ask for much more than that.

DMF: He seemed to get better at every level, the hitters seemed to get less comfortable as he moved up.

CP: The results speak to that - he just continued to succeed. The goal was for him to hit a certain amount of innings and he hit that. And so it worked out exactly as we were hoping it would. We’re excited to see where he goes next year.

DMF: Speaking of next year, what’s next for him in terms of development? What does he still need to work on?

CP: I think it’s just really going to just be refining his slider. It’s in there, but it’s just getting comfortable with the thought process behind it and where he’s going to throw it. That will probably be the biggest test going forward next year, just how he’s going to be able to pitch with his offspeed stuff, and then getting guys both in the zone and then to get them to chase out of it.

DMF: You and I had talked just after the all star break, when Tiedemann had been at the pitching lab in Dunedin, about the different shape his slider seemed to have when he returned to New Hampshire.

CP: That was one of the things we’re hopefully going to start doing more of in the future, where we bring guys in just to check to see how they’re doing at mideason - until we get biomechanics at all the (MiLB) stadiums, but yeah - that slider, a lot of it was just talking about where to start it, and really to just trust that he could throw it, and so it did get a little bit shorter when he went back, but he was able to throw it for the most amount of strikes - granted it was a small sample size. So there were some encouraging things about his ability to throw it for strikes, it became more of a called strike pitch. Hopefully now as he gets more comfortable, he’ll be able to not only continue to do that, but also change the shape to get guys to chase out of the zone.

DMF: So, with Tiedemann in mind, is his development path something of a template for Brandon Barierra?

CP: I would say it’s probably going to be similar, but it’s just not Barriera, it’s also for some of our younger high school guys, someone like an Irv Carter, and some other guys who threw a lot of innings this year, and we were trying to set them up for Instructional League and to have a good first off season. So, yes, it will be similar, but we’re still working through as far as innings and usage - that’s not set in stone for Brandon just yet, but I think it will be similar to how Ricky was handled.

DMF: Did we see a velo bump with him this fall?

CP: The interesting thing with him was that he came in and was already throwing BBs this fall, so his bump maybe wasn’t as big as Ricky’s, but he was sitting 95-97, touching 98. So, he was in a pretty good spot this fall, but with the hurricane and everything, it wasn’t the same type of Instructs as we’ve had before. We actually had to send guys home for a few days, I think it ended up being just over a week. So, he had three or four live outings that went really well. We are happy about it, and for Brandon going forward, the goal was just going to be to attack the strike zone. The stuff is really quite good. It’s just being fearless and consistent in the zone.

DMF: Just straying off course a bit here when you talked about having to shut down because of the hurricane. As much as I chafed a bit at first with this whole new minor league structure, I’m starting to see the logic in it - everything seems to dovetail quite well from a development standpoint, be it the new FSL, the draft, or Instructs. But with hurricane season moving later into the fall, could that be a factor with Instructs in the future?

CP: That’s a good question. I think there are people in the organization much smarter than me who are probably thinking through it right now. I do think from our point of view on the baseball side, it did add a new wrinkle on things, because we had to rush to send guys home, and we had some kids stay at the Complex because they couldn’t get out of the country. Others were going back to the Dominican, Venezuela, and around the continental United States. So, the big thing was to make sure when we brought them back was that we were really diligent about figuring out what they were able to do while they were gone, so that we were putting them in good spots. We didn’t want them ramped up, then they don’t pitch for a week, then they come back and they’re right back into it. In Brandon’s case, he was lucky he had a facility that he was able to throw at, so he was able to come right back into Instructs and hit the ground running. There are some guys who didn’t have those resources, and we had to build them up a little bit differently, but Brandon didn’t miss a beat with the hurricane he came back in and looked really sharp.

DMF: So, with Yosver Zulueta, this was certainly a make-or-break year. We knew about the easy gas, but with his injury history I didn’t anticipate this kind of a breakthrough for him.

CP: What a great kid, and what an awesome story he is. He gets signed, then undergoes Tommy John, and then I was at his outing (his return in 2021) when he ended up hurting his knee with the first batter. But the cool thing is, here’s this guy who signed for a lot of money, throws 100, and then blows out his knee, but stays in the dugout icing his knee and stayed for the rest of the game. His stuff has never been in question, and his fastball is phenomenal. The thing I can’t say enough about is that every time he’s had something to improve, whether it’s us working directly with him or telling him there’s something he needs to work on, he just comes back and does it. So, during the rehab process after his elbow surgery, his changeup wasn’t very good. He comes back into big league spring training the next year and his change is now a plus pitch. Then we were concerned with his slider and curveball, we were worried whether he’d be able to land the curveball for strikes, and then he did that at a much higher rate.

DMF: Zulu is just the very definition of easy gas, the ball just explodes out of his hand.

CP: Yeah, it looks effortless, but I can tell you, it’s not fun to play catch with him.

 DMF: Andrew Tinnish absolutely raved about Dahian Santos to me after he signed with the organization. It seems like it’s taken a while for him to fulfill that promise, but he too broke out in a huge way this year.

CP: He’s another testament to hard work. He was at the Complex last off season, and while he had a pretty good curveball, he ended up making it more of a lateral slider, and as you saw, it ended up being one of the best pitches in the organization. We’re really excited for him - I think going forward, we’re hoping that he continues to get stronger and puts on some more weight, because he’s got a good three-pitch mix, but we’d like him to add a couple of ticks to his fastball. And he’s going to be here again for the off season (many players and staff were still in the process of returning from Thanksgiving when we spoke).

DMF: Jimmy Robbins is a guy who kind of came out of nowhere this year, started at Dunedin, wound up at New Hampshire, and finished the year with two shutout starts.

CP: Jimmy was drafted my first year with the organization (2019), and to see his career arc has been fun. You could tell from the beginning that he was a hard worker, he writes down his routines, and knows what he wants to do. To seem him gain velocity and work hard, and then injure his elbow and have Tommy John - his rehab process went incredibly smooth, having had Tommy John myself, and then being around other guys who’s rehab didn’t go was well as Jimmy’s did. That was a testament to our rehab team and Jimmy’s work ethic. He learned a slider during the rehab process, and our rehab pitching coach Greg Vogt helped him develop a cutter. To see him come back and kind of reinvent himself as a pitcher as far as what he was using to get guys out was really exciting. He’s a local boy, so he’s here at the Complex every day.

DMF: Having gone through the Tommy John experience, what’s the biggest challenge of the whole process?

CP: I know it kind of sounds cliche, but I think it kind of depends on the individual. For me, the biggest hurdle was by far the mental side, and when I came back to pitching against hitters, there were games where I wasn’t worried about what I was going to get the hitter out, if was more like, is this going to hurt my arm, am I going to get hurt again? “Oh, I just felt a crack in my arm, is that my elbow again?” So for me, that was the hardest part, just playing the game and not worrying about getting hurt. I think for other guys, maybe it depends, like maybe they haven’t had a ton of time to work on specific pitches, or they haven’t faced hitters in a while.

DMF: I know you pitchers are always worried about your elbow and your shoulder, but when you do undergo an injury that requires surgery and rehab, there must be quite a period before your brain is ready to trust your body.

CP: It’s tough, and you know, you’re out of competition, and you go into the rehab setting. For me personally, I was playing college so I was doing it during the summer, and at my parents’ house, and then during the school year. So you feel like you’re on an island a little bit, you’re not around the team that much. To get back to our staff, they did such a good job with Jimmy and other guys like Troy Watson and Nick Fraze.

DMF: I wanted to shift gears and talk about some guys who had their struggles. Sem Robberse pitched well at Vancouver, and didn’t pitch that badly in New Hampshire, but was done in a bit by the big inning.

CP: Obviously (moving up), it definitely was a learning experience for him. The great thing about Sem is that we’ve continued to challenge him, and he always seems to rise to that challenge. I think the exciting thing for us is that we did a similar thing last year, when we was promoted from Low to High A. He actually had a lower ERA at New Hampshire, and the strikeout to walk numbers were similar. I think that Sem is a great pitcher, he’s shown the ability to pitch at a really young age. I think what he’s committed to and what we’re trying to help him with is to put some weight on and continue to get stronger, and put some zip on the fastball, because his offspeed stuff is so impressive. He throws two different sliders, a harder shorter one, and a bigger slower one, as well as a changeup. It’s just maybe getting that fastball into the 93-95 range. He’s another guy who is here at the Complex, and we feel he’s going to be into a good spot going into next year now that he’s faced that higher level of competition and knows what he has to do to improve.

DMF: Adam Kloffenstein still seemed to have stretches where he would dominate, then lose his delivery and drive up his pitch count. He just seemed to have a number of starts where he was breezing for the first 3-4 innings, then the game would just get away from him.

CP: That’s a good point, and it’s definitely something we’re hoping to help Adam with, but there’s some really encouraging things with him, too. I mean, there’s the fact he turned 22 at the end of the summer, and he hasn’t missed a start over the last two years, and he’s thrown over 200 innings. The walk rate went down when he got promoted to AA, and it was still lower than it was last year. I think the biggest things is we’re just trying to help him get some zip back on his fastball. His velocity was down a bit this year, and as you saw, he pitched backwards a lot. If he can get that fastball to tick back up a bit, he’s going to be in a really good spot because his slider is so goo, and his changeup is one of the best in the organization.

DMF: Just thinking about fastballs, with more and more offspeed pitches being thrown every year, does everything still work off the fastball?

CP: That’s a good question. I know there’s a lot of debate about that, but for me, I operate if I were to take off the fastball title, and just say - here are your four pitches, you have one that’s a really good one, one that’s pretty good, one that’s good, and one that’s below average, I would probably want to throw that last one the least. We do have some guys who have some really special fastballs, we’ve talked about Zulueta, Ricky, Hayden Juenger, and Michael Dominguez - guys who can probably get away with throwing the fastball more often because of the results they get. But I think if you look at it and say, “that’s not my best pitch,” then it doesn’t make sense to throw that pitch a lot. Watching hitters react to a guy’s fastball we can usually tell pretty quickly whether that pitch should be the one that they’re using more often than their secondary offerings.

DMF: You had mentioned Irv Carter earlier, and I wanted to circle back to him. We finally had a chance to see him pitch (online) this year, and he had quite a turnaround this season after some early struggles.

CP: Yes, he did a really good job at Dunedin, and we were excited to see him get there. He’s going to have to continue to work on putting guys away - it’s not like he was walking a ton of guys, but he was getting hit. So, it’s largely just a matter of learning his repertoire, continuing to gain strength and velocity, then being able to put his slider in a good spot and to make it a good shape. The slider changed shape this year, and he worked a lot with our pitching coaches, Tony Caceres, and Cory Riordan, and it started to really improve towards the end. It was fun to see it all come together.

DMF: Adrian Hernandez - man, I just love the looks on guys’ faces on their way back to the dugout when they strike out against him. It’s like they know the pitch is coming, they’re gearing up for it, but they can’t track the movement on it, and they walk back looking like, “what the hell was that?”

CP: Adrian is another guy who came in my first year with the organization. He was in what was known as the GCL at that time, and he had a really tough summer, he pitched to an 8.00 ERA, wasn’t striking anyone out, but there was something about the way his stuff moved that was really interesting. He played winter ball in 2020, and came back and really trusted that he could throw that changeup as a primary pitch - that was a really big difference. He went from using his fastball three quarters of the time in 2019 to using it less than 40% in 2021. The reports that we’re getting from Mexico is that the fastball has kicked up a bit, and I think if he does that he could be a helpful option in the big league bullpen. He gets a ton of swing and miss, and he works incredibly hard. Every challenge we put to him he’s just met and exceeded. It was so cool to watch him go from a tough time in 2019 to our minor league pitcher of the year in 2021.

DMF: Did you guys teach him that pitch, or did he pick it up by himself?

CP: No, that’s all him, and if you ask him how he throws it, he just shows you a four-seam grip. Guys play catch with him and they’re always shocked - it he really refined that pitch in winter ball. We certainly would like to see him add some more velocity, but we’d also like to see him develop another pitch that he feels comfortable throwing in the strike zone.

DMF: There are about 20 more guys that I want to ask you about, but I’ll turn things over to you: who are some guys that we haven’t talked about that are worth some attention?

CP: Brandon Eisert. Man, he just gets guys out wherever he pitches, and we hope he can be used as big league depth or even help out in the big leagues next year. TJ Brock is a guy who I just can’t say enough good things about, he just came in and immediately got guys out, he’s got an awesome slider and throws hard. Michael Dominguez was a huge testament to himself and the Dunedin staff this year - he bought in and really locked into his routines. He has a special fastball, slider, and a good changeup, too. He’s a competitor. Bowden Francis is another one who’s’ been exciting lately. He’s pitched well in Puerto Rico, and he’s continued to throw harder. Ryan Jennings (4th round pick) pitched out of the bullpen for us this year - his stuff is really good, and he’s going to start for us next year. He’s going to be someone to keep an eye on. Juenger, obviously, I can’t say enough about how fast he moved this year, his thing is going to be using the slider a little bit better, but his fastball and changeup are big league ready.

DMF: I know players largely dictate their developmental path with their performance and routines, but is Juenger going to be the model for some guys going forward - going once through the order to start the game?

CP: In Hayden’s case, it was more that we were looking at his stuff and how he pitched in Vancouver last year, and we thought - if we can get this guy to start, that would be great. The thing we were trying to check on is does he hold his stuff well, because the thing we were cognizant of is that Hayden Juenger is a phenomenal pitcher, and he’s shown he can get guys out as a reliever, but if we can help him be starter, we would love that. At the same time, we just wanted to make sure we’re not putting him in a spot where we’re taking what makes him special, and then trying to stretch that over 5-6 innings, and kind of just making them average. So, when we have guys like that we think can maybe start, we usually put them in a bulk role, either as a starter or a piggyback just to see if the guy can hold his velocity and stuff throughout an outing.

Eliander Alcalde is a bit of an undersized guy, but we were excited to see him pitch in Dunedin this year. He’s a competitor, and his stuff is really good. Cooper Benson is another who came off rehab and pitched really well. Then there are a couple of AA relievers…..Ryan Boyer unfortunately ended up getting hurt, but he was an Indy ball guy who just came in and he has a fastball that guys just seemed not to be able to see, and he struck out a ton of guys (45 in 30 IP) this year. So, as he continues to rehab, we’re excited about that fastball. Jimmy Burnette at AA, he maybe has to tighten up the strikes a bit, but he has swing and miss stuff (15K/9) as well. Lazaro Estrada is someone I’m excited for next year, it’s great to have him back pitching, and he’s hopefully going to be at the Complex for the remainder of the offseason. TJ Brock went straight to High A, has a really good slider, is a good kid, and wants to get better. I can see him being another swing and miss guy next year. Rafael Ohashi has had some injury struggles the last couple of years, but he’s pitched really well for us so far.

DMF: Have you spoken with Adam Macko yet?

CP: I’ve spoken with him a bit, he’s a great guy, really inquisitive and wants to learn. We talked about what he was hoping to do in the off season, and he has a really good game plan. He talked about how he wants to work on some things in his throwing program to stay healthier this year, some of the things he’s going to work on with his pitch usage, and he was locked in. I wouldn’t have suggested anything different, so I’m excited to meet him - he’s going to be at the Complex in a couple of weeks.

Let me give you three more names to keep an eye on - Fernando Perez (2022 IFA) and Nolan Perry (12th rounder in June) were really impressive at Instructs. For Fernando, it was the first tie in the States, and he pitched incredibly well, his stuff looked really sharp. Perry was in the group here with Barriera, and he just looks the part - strong kid, has put some velo on his fastball already. And then Trenton Wallace, he’s another who we think can be a swing and miss guy, his goal this offseason is to throw a little harder, and he’s been at the Complex already, and if he can add a few ticks to his heater, we think he could be pretty good.