KINSTON, N.C. — When the big league club’s beat reporter begins to mention your name in articles covering the organization’s minor league standouts, it’s a clear indication your childhood dream is moving in the right direction.
Especially if you only seriously started pitching in community college, suffered a torn ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow of your throwing arm requiring Tommy John elbow surgery and a lengthy rehabilitation, played for three different colleges and eventually were drafted in the 40th and final round of the MLB Draft —receiving a paltry $1,000 signing bonus — while other draftees became instant millionaires.
Such is the life and back story of right-hander Cole Uvila, 25, a Port Angeles High School graduate and right-handed reliever in the Texas Rangers organization.
The sports drama in the making that is Uvila’s athletic reality, chronicled in a Peninsula Daily News article after draft day in June 2018, was a primary reason Uvila was selected to appear in the second season of the Razed Sports documentary podcast — Uvila’s intriguing past and present provides the narrative frame for a in-depth dive into minor league baseball.
The first episode releases Thursday at razedsports.com, on YouTube at YouTube at tinyurl.com/PDN-RazedSports and through podcast mediums such as Apple Podcast and Google Podcast.
Listeners will hear the story unfold closer to real time than you usually experience in a documentary, as episodes will post just weeks after the action happens on the field.
Ensuing installments will come out through the fall.
More evidence of the strength of Uvila’s performance this season came when he was invited last week to play in the Arizona Fall League, as one of just seven Rangers’ minor leaguers selected to play for the Sunrise Saguaros starting later this month.
“It’s a showcase for each team’s prospects,” Uvila said just after learning the good news last week. “It’s a pretty prestigious league, so I’m honored to be invited and excited to get down there and play.”
And he’ll be supported on site as his fiancee Kayla Andrus has plans to visit Uvila during his first week in Arizona.
Uvila was previously mentioned in the notebook of Rangers beat writer Evan Grant of the Dallas Daily News for picking up his first win of the season at advanced Class A.
After starting the season in early April 255 miles to the west with the Class A Hickory Crawdads, Uvila was promoted April 15 to play for the Down East Wood Ducks, an advanced Class A team in the Carolina League.
Uvila said he thought he had a 50-50 chance of making the Wood Ducks’ roster and one more rung up the Rangers’ organizational ladder coming out of spring training. And in less than two weeks with Hickory, he made his presence felt — posting a 2-0 record and 0.00 ERA out of the bullpen with seven innings pitched and 10 strikeouts.
Promoted to high-A ball, Uvila struck out all four batters he faced in his first Carolina League outing as a member of the Woodies on April 17.
“Uvila has not allowed an earned run in nine innings this season between Class A Hickory and Down East,” Grant wrote at the time. “He has allowed just four baserunners (three hits and a walk). Though a bit old for Class A, Uvila, 25, has 63 strikeouts in just 40.2 innings as a pro, an average of 13.94 per nine innings.”
Stepped his game up
The quality of hitter Uvila was facing rose dramatically with his promotion to Advanced-A ball and Uvila said there were some growing pains.
“There’s been some ups and downs for sure,” Uvila said. “At High-A the hitters are more advanced, so I needed to make adjustments. The entire month of May was a huge learning curve.”
Curve and adjustments being the operative words in that last paragraph.
Uvila, a power pitcher with a four-seam fastball that has reached 98 miles per hour, had long sought to develop an off-speed pitch, a slider, with less-than-acceptable results since his elbow surgery.
So Uvila kicked his slider to the curb in place of a curve to go along with that big-league fastball.
“The slider has been an ongoing frustration dating back to coming off the surgery,” Uvila said. “I adopted the curve ball.”
Uvila said his four-seam fastball and the newly adopted curve helps him in two ways.
“I throw a four-seam fastball that rises through the zone. A pitch like the curve that moves more vertically than horizontally through the [strike] zone will have more success,” Uvila said.
“Ideally, it will drop from 12-6 [hands on a clock] but mine is more like 11-5 at 77 or 78 miles per hour. It’s a change of pace pitch, an off-balance pitch. I can land it for a strike on an 0-0 count or late in the count and get somebody to chase in the dirt.
“The curves comes out of the same arm slot as the fastball, really over the top in delivery, and that’s a huge difference from the slider.”
By no means was Uvila faring poorly as Down East, the team with the best record in all of Minor League Baseball, cruised to a first-half division title, but his second-half statistics show drops in ERA (2.67 to 2.35) and opponent batting average (from .193 to .137) and an increase in strikeouts (51 from 34).
Uvila is 7-3 with a 2.23 ERA in 64.2 innings in 38 appearances, a 1.05 ratio of walks and hits per innings pitched to go along with 95 strikeouts, an opponent’s batting average of .157 and six saves in seven opportunities.
“First half to second half numbers it’s the No. 1 thing that’s helped me,” Uvila said of adding the curve. “It’s been a gamechanger for me the last few weeks.
“I have a pitch [hitters] have to respect, so when they read it in the scouting report and it’s in the back of the hitter’s head when they come to the plate. This whole year has been about becoming a more complete pitcher rather than relying on throwing it by guys. I’ve focused on keeping it in the zone and having more than one pitch.”
Uvila said he’ll continue to tinker with the curve this fall, during the offseason and when spring training begins in February.
“By no means is it a finished product,” Uvila said. “I’d like to maybe get it going a little harder, up to 80 or 81 MPH.”
But he likes how often he’s been able to select the pitch and find success.
“I just had the game with my highest usage rate,” Uvila said. “I threw the curve 41 percent of the time. Back in Spokane last season I was throwing the fastball 83 percent of the time.”
And he began to pitch out of the stretch 100 percent of the time — eschewing the full windup many pitchers use.
“It was my idea to get rid of the windup, I noticed I was starting out a lot of innings with a walk.”
Uvila said the switch to the stretch has cut down on his walks in the second half of the season and helped him control runners who do reach base.
“Cutting down from taking 1.5 seconds to the plate [with a full windup and pitch] to 1.3 [in the stretch] makes the difference between safe and out.”
Uvila and Down East will begin the Carolina League playoffs Thursday.
“We’ve lost guys to promotions, to injuries, but have all kept moving in the right direction,” Uvila said. “It’s been an awesome season with these guys, one that I’ll always remember.”
If the Woodies advance to the championship series, he could be playing as late as Sept. 15, getting just a few days off before starting back up in Arizona on Sept. 18.
“That’s fine with me,” Uvila said. “I’m already in a weird way looking forward to spring training.”
