Wilson: Albers’ baseball career comes full circle back to Saskatchewan

Left-hander Andrew Albers (North Battleford, Sask.) has been one of Canada’s most reliable pitchers in international competitions. Photo: Baseball Canada

*This article was originally published on Saskatchewan Dugout Stories on April 23. You can read it here.

April 27, 2024

By Ian Wilson

Saskatchewan Dugout Stories

He put the “battle” in North Battleford.

Following a playing career full of twists and turns that showed off his resilience, Andrew Albers has returned to his home province of Saskatchewan and he’s ready for the next chapter of his baseball life.

It’s been a full-circle time for Albers, who grew up watching Toronto Blue Jays broadcasts on television and tagging along at his father’s senior men’s baseball games.

“Having chats about the game with him while the game was going on, and that kind of fostered a love of baseball for me, and I had some success at an early age so really enjoyed playing it and just continued to pursue it from there,” noted the left-handed hurler.

By the time he was a teenager, Albers was turning heads for his work on the mound. The Canadian Junior National Team sought him out for tryouts and, after he graduated from high school, he suited up for the Saskatoon Yellow Jackets of the Western Major Baseball League (WMBL). He quickly became the ace of the staff in the collegiate summer baseball circuit.

“He’s mature beyond his years,” Todd Plaxton, the head coach of the Yellow Jackets, told the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix newspaper in late June of 2004.

“He has no fear; he just goes after guys. And when they hit him, you can see him laughing – it doesn’t bother him at all. He’s a true lefty, that’s for sure.”

Albers was named the WMBL Rookie of the Year as an 18-year-old that season and he was already thinking about pursuing baseball as a full-time job.

“That was when it was like, OK, this might be a career possibility, with a possibility to go to school down south and from there possibly play pro ball. Obviously, those are always the aspirations. You always think in your own mind that that’s going to happen, however, until you actually go through it, you don’t realize how difficult that journey is,” said Albers in a recent interview with Saskatchewan Dugout Stories.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Listen to Saskatchewan Dugout Stories interview Andrew Albers here.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

He went to the University of Kentucky, a NCAA Division 1 school, where he pitched for the Wildcats for four years in the Southeastern Conference and earned his education degree.

Albers has returned to Saskatchewan now and will look to put some of that teaching knowledge to work.

As the pitching coach of the Saskatoon Berries – an expansion franchise in the Western Canadian Baseball League (which rebranded the WMBL name in 2019) – Albers joins forces with head coach Joe Carnahan, who was named the league MVP in 2004, the same summer that Albers claimed Rookie of the Year honours.

Photo: Saskatoon Berries

“I hadn’t thought of the full-circle deal, but interesting to get the opportunity to come back where a lot of it started for me. That was really my first experience with collegiate baseball,” said Albers.

“To get to come back to the same location, little bit different team name, and coach … it’s going to be special. I’m looking forward to it, looking forward to being a part of the community up here again, and hopefully we can win some baseball games and have a good atmosphere for the fans.”

Filling in that circle – the time spanning two decades between playing for the Yellow Jackets and coaching for the Berries – was a whole lot of baseball. Some good, some bad, and some downright painful.

SOUTHEAST BOUND & DOWN

With the Wildcats, Albers was given plenty of opportunities during his four years with the program. The 6-foot-1 southpaw started 14 games in his freshman season in 2005, logging 80-plus innings as he posted a 4-6 record, 42 Ks and a 5.24 earned run average (ERA).

“Kentucky was a great experience for me from a baseball standpoint. I certainly took my lumps there. As a freshman I was fortunate that they had faith in me to start me pretty much every weekend. I got off to a great start. My first four or five starts went really, really well,” recalled Albers.

“Unfortunately, then we got into conference and Kentucky plays in what’s arguably the best conference in the country there in the Southeastern Conference – faced Georgia, Tennessee and Florida and that team in Florida went to the College World Series that year. Had a few rough starts there, so it was kind of an eye-opening experience for me where it was really the first time I failed that greatly. It was an atrocious three starts, so I had to figure some things out. I was fortunate, to be honest, that we weren’t very good that year, so they stuck with me and gave me more opportunities to try and figure things out.”

He was moved to the bullpen for his sophomore season, where he racked up seven saves and 28 strikeouts for the Wildcats in 30 innings, and then he worked as a starter again in his junior year in 2007. During his 15 games that year, Albers went 6-5 with 51 Ks and a 4.85 ERA.

Everything came together in his senior year when Albers found himself once again working as a reliever for Kentucky. He appeared in 31 games, going 7-4 with five saves while lowering his ERA to 2.40 and posting an impressive 1.08 walks and hits per innings pitched (WHIP).

“My senior year was pretty good. I was fortunate I had a tremendous pitching coach by the name of Gary Henderson, who without him I don’t have the same career that I did. Fortunate to be around him for four years and learn from him and that really helped me throughout my pro ball career,” said Albers.

THE PROFESSIONAL

After impressing at the college level, scouts took notice and Albers was a 10th-round selection of the San Diego Padres in the 2008 MLB Draft. He got his feet wet at the professional level that year, getting into five games with the rookie-level Arizona Padres.

Hardship awaited, however, as he needed Tommy John surgery to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his pitching elbow the following year.

“Certainly some dark times from a career perspective, but at the same time, looking back on it, it may have been somewhat of a blessing in disguise. I ended up getting hurt pretty much right when I went down to San Diego,” noted Albers.

“Rehab from that really didn’t go that well from the start. It was a real struggle early on and I couldn’t get my range of motion back. It was really frustrating. For the first time in my life baseball had kind of been taken away.”

Albers learned a lot during that time, about life and baseball.

“It gave me a different perspective on things, as far as the enjoyment of the game and understanding that there’s more to life than just baseball. I used to take failure really, really hard in college and going into pro ball,” said Albers.

“Just realizing that baseball isn’t everything in life. For me, there were times in my life that it was and depending on how baseball went, that was kind of how I went, but having it taken away from me, going through that struggle, not even knowing if I’d play again but just wanting to be able to move my arm and do other activities coming out of rehab or coming out of the surgery. It really kind of changed my perspective and helped me enjoy the game a lot more once I was able to play.”

Added Albers: “Going forward, that was something that I tried to maintain, was that new perspective, good or bad, life is going to go on and there will be a tomorrow and things are going to be alright. It allowed me to hopefully relax a little bit and perform a bit better instead of being too tense and worried about the results.”

STARTING OVER

Whatever life lessons the injury provided, the situation unquestionably made his path in the pros more difficult.

Following the surgery, Albers threw live batting practice for the Padres to “prove that I was healthy, or not prove that I was healthy” to the organization’s roster decision-makers. The club opted to release him.

“That was an eye opener, getting exposed to the business side of baseball that early. It can be a bit of an ugly side and I didn’t understand it at the time. I certainly took that hard. It was frustrating. You feel like the dream has come awfully crashing to a halt right there and not real sure what to do,” confessed Albers.

To get back on track, the Saskatchewan native looked north of the border.

“Luckily, I got some good advice from my agent and he found me a place to play in Quebec and, again, I wasn’t real sure how the arm was going to respond coming off of Tommy John and not having thrown even in a game since then,” he said of his move to the Quebec Capitales of the independent Can-Am Association.

Manager Pat Scalabrini saw something in Albers and believed he had a lot more left to offer the game of baseball. It was a bet that paid off for both the Capitales and Albers, who worked as the team’s closer in 2010.

Albers played in 40 games that year and picked up 17 saves and three wins. He struck out 59 batters while walking only 16 over 57 2/3 innings. He also had a 1.40 ERA and 0.99 WHIP.

“I was able to have a really good year. It couldn’t have gone much better and even then I still didn’t have a job offer coming out of that,” said Albers.

“I was trying to latch onto an affiliated club and there weren’t any offers out there, despite the season I’d had in Quebec. It felt like, really, that was about as good as I could pitch. Everything had gone right. I’d thrown the ball really well, obviously the numbers were there to back it up, and still there were no takers for a 25-year-old lefthander who didn’t throw real hard, was a reliever, all those things.”

Undeterred, Albers started making plans to land a job somewhere.

PLANES, TRAINING & AUTOMOBILES

His agent, Blake Corosky, set up some open tryouts for Albers in Arizona before spring training got underway in 2011.

“It’s tough to get invites to spring out of those, just because most teams are trying to chop their rosters, not expand them, so unless you really show something special it’s really tough to get an opportunity out of that,” said Albers.

He also made a call to his old college coach, Gary Henderson, to seek advice and the chance to travel to Lexington, Kentucky before his scheduled tryouts “just to get outside and to throw off a real mound” at batters.

The frigid and snowy winter in Saskatchewan was not conducive to such a pitching environment.

“I was throwing off a couple of aerobics mats at a cinder block wall and that’s how I was getting ready for it. I figured I should at least get outside and get on a real mound,” said Albers, who had his request granted by Henderson.

Albers hopped in his 2004 Buick Lesabre and hit the road for Arizona. More than 27 hours later, he arrived in Phoenix and prepared to board a flight for Lexington. While Albers was in Kentucky, Henderson made some phone calls and urged a couple scouts from the Minnesota Twins organization to check out his former college standout. They liked what they saw but roster space was also at a premium, so they encouraged Albers to go ahead with his Arizona tryouts that he had scheduled.

He flew back to Phoenix, only to discover the tryout he had lined up with the St. Louis Cardinals was canceled.

Andrew Albers (right) tells baseball stories with Shaun Haney (right) at the 2024 Vauxhall Academy of Baseball banquet. Photo: Vauxhall Academy of Baseball

“Then I threw a bullpen for the Brewers and they came back and felt I could use a bit more time in independent ball, which is kind of a nice way of saying we don’t think you’re quite good enough right now. That was fine,” said Albers.

“The Rockies held a big open tryout where there were about fifty guys there and your tryout was 15 total pitches. You throw five pitches to three different guys and that was it. That didn’t really accentuate my skillset very well, being that I wasn’t a guy who threw hard or didn’t have a lot of devastating secondary stuff, so didn’t think anything would come from that and it didn’t.”

Albers called the Twins back to figure out some next steps, which included a medical, throwing another bullpen, and the potential buyout of his independent baseball contract. The Twins were considering flying Albers to their spring training complex in Fort Myers, Fla.

“I had a friend who was living in Fort Myers at the time who said, ‘If you need a place to crash you can come crash here, why don’t you just drive?'” recalled Albers.

He checked Google maps and calculated the drive time to be somewhere between 35 and 40 hours with minimal pit stops.

“Hopped in my car the next morning and made the trek over to Fort Myers and luckily that one went pretty well for me. They liked me enough to give me an invitation to spring training and managed to make the team a couple weeks out of camp. Once my visa got in I was able to work my way up through that organization,” said Albers.

“I’m really thankful to the Twins for giving me that opportunity. Without that I don’t know that I’d have a career, let alone the career that I did.”

And thankfully, his mileage was reimbursed.

“Once they invite you to spring training, they reimburse your mileage. They pay for everyone to get down to spring training,” he said.

It was one of many detours that Albers pursued that ensured he wouldn’t walk away from baseball with regrets.

“I just wanted to make sure I gave myself every opportunity … so that I knew that I had exhausted all the things that I could do. I remember thinking I didn’t want to have to look myself in the mirror 10 years later and wonder, ‘What if?’,” explained Albers.

“You’re just looking for a shot and I thought if I could get a shot, I thought I could pitch at double-A. I didn’t know if I could go any higher than that. Once you get to double-A you’re pretty close.”

CLIMBING THE LADDER

After all those miles on the road, the phone calls, the tryouts and doubts about his physical capabilities, Albers was ready to chase his dream of making it to the major leagues … again.

He pitched well at Single-A for the Fort Myers Miracle and Albers did indeed make it to double-A, where he continued to post solid numbers for the New Britain Rock Cats.

Albers got a boost that fall when he competed for Canada, first winning bronze at the International Baseball Federation World Baseball Cup in Panama, and then following that up with a gold medal at the 2011 Pan American Games in Mexico.

Albers picked up the win in the championship game, a 2-1 victory over the United States in late October.

“That was special. That was one of my favourite nights in my baseball career,” said Albers, who pitched into the seventh inning and racked up eight strikeouts to help Canada secure the victory.

The Canadian pitching staff at that tournament included Regina’s Dustin Molleken, who went on to pitch for the Detroit Tigers and is now a pitching consultant with the Moose Jaw Miller Express in the WCBL.

Andrew Albers delivers a pitch for Team Canada. Photo: Baseball Canada

“It was just a really good group of guys that really grinded it out, that played just good, fundamentally sound baseball and they were there for the right reasons. They were there to win games and it really paid off. It showed in the chemistry that we had and those are some of the better friendships that I have, that I made throughout my career playing baseball,” said Albers of that national team.

Albers rolled into 2012 with confidence. Back with the Rock Cats, he went 4-3 with 73 strikeouts and a 3.75 ERA over 17 starts and 98-plus innings. That year he was named Saskatchewan’s male athlete of the year. Meanwhile, he and his Canadian teammates from the Pan-Am Games were inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame for their achievements.

He was promoted to triple-A the next season and kept rolling, going 11-5 with a 2.86 ERA and 116 Ks in his 132-plus innings on the mound for the Rochester Red Wings.

DOMINANT DEBUT

The 2013 campaign was magical for Albers, who made his MLB debut on Aug. 6 of that year against the Kansas City Royals.

“You talk about fairytales and that it’s just too good to be true, it really was, especially for a guy like me that wasn’t a highly touted prospect, nobody was expecting much from,” said Albers.

He remembers the heat and the humidity of that start in Kansas City and throwing a first-pitch strike to leadoff hitter Lorenzo Cain. Albers also recalls seeing his friends and family in the stands.

“I threw probably the worst pre-game bullpen of my life that day,” laughed Albers.

“I think I can say this now, being that it’s not as much of a thing anymore – I went into the locker room and there’s a certain sunscreen that you can use that when you combine it with rosin it gives you a little bit of tack on your fingers, so I put some of that on. I had never used it before, but when I threw my pen the ball was going everywhere and we had gotten beat pretty bad the night before so we used a lot of our bullpen arms. Our poor pitching coach had to be, ‘What the hell are we doing right now? We’re going to send this kid out? He has no idea where it’s going.'”

Despite his erratic pre-game pitching, Albers settled in. He got Cain out, then Eric Hosmer and Billy Butler fell victim to a double-play and, before he knew it, he was still pitching in the ninth inning. With a runner on, he faced Cain yet again.

“I get Lorenzo Cain to hit a ground ball to third base, we try to turn the double play, bang bang play at first and they call him safe. If they call him out I probably get a complete game shutout there, too. I remember still being upset about that, to this day I’m still sure he was out. Unfortunately, call didn’t go our way and I end up walking the next guy and I was exhausted by then. I think I was at 107 pitches, somewhere around there, and it was a good move to take me out,” said Albers, who yielded just four hits and a walk in picking up the win during a 7-0 romp for the Twins.

His second start was even better. Facing Cleveland, Albers delivered a complete game shutout after allowing just two hits and no walks in a 3-0 triumph.

“Everything was working right. I felt like I had really good command, like I could throw the ball wherever I wanted to, execute whatever pitch I wanted to, whenever I wanted to. Usually when you feel like that you have pretty good nights,” he said.

Albers made a total of 10 starts for the Twins that year and finished his first MLB season with a 4.05 ERA over 60 innings.

He credited fellow Canadian Justin Morneau and star catcher Joe Mauer with welcoming him to Minnesota’s clubhouse and making him feel at home.

“Having those two guys in the locker room being the leaders of that team, that was huge for me,” said Albers.

“At the peaks of their careers they were two of the best players in baseball. Watching those guys go about their business on a daily basis, it was fun to watch and special to see. When your best players are your hardest workers things tend to go well and that’s why they had so much success.”

BUMPED FROM THE ROTATION

Despite his success in the majors, Albers found himself on the outside looking in ahead of the 2014 season.

The Twins signed two starting pitchers – Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes – that offseason. Those moves kicked Albers out of the rotation and he was released.

There was still work for the lefty hurler, though. After losing Hyun-Jin Ryu to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Hanwha Eagles reached out to Albers and he made the jump to the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO).

“It’s kind of a life-changing opportunity where it was tough to say no. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good year, I really struggled. We didn’t have a very good team and I didn’t pitch very well and that didn’t help matters,” said Albers, who pitched much better for the Orix Buffaloes in Japan in 2018-19.

Albers still had plenty to prove, including that he was still capable of facing MLB batters.

In 2015, the chance to live out another dream came about. The Toronto Blue Jays inked him to a minor-league contract. He was the Opening Day starter for the triple-A Buffalo Bisons and the Jays called him up for bullpen duty on May 1.

After starting pitcher Mark Buerhle faltered, Albers entered the game in the fifth inning. A changeup that he “probably shouldn’t have thrown” got hit out of the ballpark. It was a three-run blast with two of the runs charged to Buerhle.

“That’s kind of a dagger and a game killer and we ended up losing,” said Albers, who was sent back to triple-A the next day.

“Got my one day with the Jays, there’s pictures to prove it – not many but they are out there and I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful I did get that opportunity because it really was a dream come true getting to play for Canada’s team, and even though it was an incredibly short tenure it’s something that no one can ever take away from you.”

More big-league opportunities came along for Albers. He had two more stints with the Twins in 2016 and 2021, as well as a stop in Seattle, where he played nine games for the Mariners in 2017.

Albers was starting to feel older but his final stop in Minnesota was meaningful for the veteran pitcher.

“I really enjoyed that season, getting to come back to the States and play one more year and getting to be around those guys and, of course, getting called up to the majors one more time and getting one more win for the Twins, since I hadn’t gotten a win for them since those first two starts,” he said.

His elbow started “barking a little bit” in 2021.

The Mariners took another chance on Albers with a minor-league deal in 2022, but his elbow still didn’t feel right and his hips were also bothering him. He didn’t end up playing for the M’s that year but Albers did get one last hurrah with Canada at the World Baseball Classic (WBC) in 2023.

“It’s always great when you get to play in a tournament like that, that’s probably the premier baseball tournament in the world,” said Albers of a WBC tourney that ended with Shohei Ohtani striking out his former star teammate Mike Trout to seal a Japanese championship win over the United States.

As he turns the page on his playing career and looks ahead to coaching in the WCBL, Albers has nothing but gratitude for the impact baseball has had on his life.

“It’s meant a whole heck of a lot to me,” he said.

“It gave me an opportunity to do a lot of things that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. It gave me an opportunity to travel to a lot of places and make a lot of great friendships and meet a lot of people that I wouldn’t have. I guess for me, baseball meant opportunity.”

Spoken like a battle-tested veteran.