KENNEDY: Brash came oh so close to being Kingston's first big leaguer

Former Kingston Thunder RHP Matt Brash (Kingston, Ont.) was promoted to the Seattle Mariners near the end of the big league season. Photo: Sandra Brash

December 12, 2021

‘Crazy year’ left Brash just shy of big-league debut

By Patrick Kennedy

Kingston Whig-Standard

“What a crazy year,” pitcher Matt Brash offers with an easy laugh over the phone from his parents’ home in west Kingston — a rare respite in familiar surroundings for Matty B and his money arm.

Yes, a crazy, exhilarating, bizarre, beautiful, memorable year.

The right-hander posted terrific numbers in 2021, delivering the sort of starting pitching that draws attention and warrants promotion, in Brash’s case three times. He stepped up three rungs on Mariners’ talent ladder, from Single-A, through to Triple-A and on up to the “Show” as a September call-up by his parent club, the Seattle Mariners. From basement to penthouse — Major League Baseball style.

Though Brash was in the Seattle bullpen during the team’s crucial season-ending series with the visiting Oakland A’s, he did not see action. Come to think of it, he hasn’t debuted at Triple-A, either. More on that oddity in a moment.

But first how good was Brash?

Brash won the Canadian Baseball Network’s Wayne Norton award as the best Canuck pitcher in affiliated ball. He had four of nine first-place votes cast by a our panel, winning with 34 points. Right-hander Indigo Diaz (North Vancouver, B.C.), who went 6-2 with a 1.20 ERA with 85 strikeouts in 45 innings in High-A and double-A in the Atlanta Braves’ organization, secured three first-place votes and finished second with 23 points. Veteran lefty Andrew Albers (North Battleford, Sask.), who posted an 8-4 record and a 3.88 ERA in 18 appearances (17 starts) for the Minnesota Twins’ triple-A St. Paul Saints, had two first-place votes to finish third.

Brash’s pitching is a blend of high-octane power, pinpoint placement and guile. Most critically, he throws strikes, enough anyway to keep an offence at bay more often than not. When he’s on his game, Brash shades the corners of the strike zone with upper-90s fastballs that can sometimes giddy-up to three-digit speeds. His “out” pitch is outstanding, sweeping swing-and-miss slider that curls into, then out of, the strike zone with pace aplenty.

In nine starts with class-A Everett AquaSox, Brash compiled a 2.55 ERA with 62 strikeouts in 42 1/2 innings. It was the same story, only better, at Double-A Arkansas. The 23-year-old Bayridge Secondary School grad poured third strikes past 80 batters in over just 55 innings making 10 starts for the Travelers. He posted a WHIP of 1.00 and a stingy 2.13 ERA. Eleven of those 80 strikeouts came during a shared no-hitter against the Wichita Wind Surge. Brash twirled six hitless innings and the bullpen wrapped up the no-no with three spotless stanzas.

After 20 minor-league starts, he sports a staggering nine-inning strikeout average of 13.1. Brash has averaged better than three strikeouts for every walk issued. There isn’t a scout with an active pulse who wouldn’t take note and raise an eyebrow at those statistics. Brash is becoming — if he’s not already — a strikeout artist, a priceless commodity in today’s game of all-or-nothing hitters swinging for the fences with each cut.

Before this past season, Brash addressed an aspect of his game that needed to be addressed before it became problematic. Durability.

“I knew I had to get stronger, both my body and my arm,” he says, referring to the 15-to 20 lbs. of muscle he added the past two years, much of it during the pandemic-cancelled 2020 season. “I saw and realized what it takes to be a pro athlete, the sort of shape you need to be in to achieve your goals and be able to play and remain healthy through a long season.”

He didn’t make his big-league debut, but he came as close as anyone can, certainly closer than anyone in this city’s long baseball past. How close? This close:

Final inning of Seattle’s final game, the team’s faint playoff hopes dashed the previous inning by an out-of-town result posted on the stadium’s giant scoreboard; a bullpen phone rings with instructions from the dugout to get the new kid “up and throwin’ in case the inning goes long,” Brash remembers being told. He would stay put when the A’s went quietly in the ninth.

“It would’ve been nice to make my debut in front of family and friends,” Brash says, referring to parents Jamie and Sandra and sister Carlye, all of whom, along with close family friends the Casfords and Rob McCoy, Matt’s coach at Niagara College, were on hand for the Oakland series. “I didn’t pitch, but it didn’t matter anyway, because the whole experience was just amazing, something I’ll never forget.

“I’ll have to make my debut this year,” he states with the confidence not of a braggart but rather a quiet, self-assured athlete with unyielding belief in his own God-given ability and desire. “I’m going to try my best to make the team out of training camp, make good use of the opportunity to pitch to big-league hitters. Even if I start the season in Triple-A, I want to leave a favorable impression. At some point next year, I expect to be pitching in the big leagues.”

A 2022 debut wouldn’t surprise Casford, Brash’s longtime coach with Kingston Thunder teams.

“Matt always had that golden arm,” Casford points out, “but it was his work ethic, commitment and determination that set him apart. All he’s ever wanted to be is a pitcher.”

Matthew Aurel Brash — Aurel was his beloved grandfather’s name — was born in the last century (1998) and first stepped on a pitching mound at age seven. He liked other sports. He loved baseball, which he took to like a frog on a fly. Nineteen years into this century, Brash was a fourth-round draft pick of the San Diego Padres, who dealt him to the Mariners in 2020.

Brash recounts the day he heard of his call-up to the “bigs.” Home on a visit after his Double-A season, he was at a friend’s place when Seattle phoned with fresh orders for their prospect to catch a westbound flight first thing next morning and report to the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate, the Tacoma Rainiers. (Brash reported, hung out, but did not pitch during his short stay with the Rainiers. Evidently, the bump to Triple-A had been more a procedural promotion to enable Seattle to add Brash to its major league roster.) He learned the news on his last day at Triple-A.

Now in the movies it’s generally a ball club’s fatherly manager who relays such uplifting news. Brash was told in the weight room by the Tacoma trainer. “The trainer got a call from a coach,” he recalls. “He said, ‘Pack your bag, you’re going to Seattle.’”

A trainer? Seems like an odd messenger for such a memorable message. Yet, the more you think about it, the more it fits perfectly with Brash’s “crazy” year, a season of vast improvement and continued promise. Matty B even knocked on baseball’s penthouse door, and vows to knock again this season and finally experience, firsthand, a childhood dream — a big-league debut.

Kingston’s first major-leaguer: It’s only a matter of time now.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com.