DUNEDIN, Fla. – The first time Deck McGuire faced hitters in spring training, his catcher was John McDonald.
It was February of 2011. McGuire was the Blue Jays’ top draft pick from the previous June. McDonald, once voted the most popular Blue Jay in a fan poll, was a veteran infielder pressed into service on the first day of live batting practice because there were not enough catchers for all the pitchers.
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Does McGuire remember that day?
The answer comes in a big smile.
Deck McGuire and John McDonald after they paired up in spring training 2011. Photos by John Lott/The Athletic.
“I do,” he said. “My very first live BP in 2011. I tell people all the time, of all the places I’ve been, John McDonald and Aaron Hill in my first year were two of the most professional people I’ve ever met. I’m really thankful that was part of my first experience in pro ball, to be in spring training with some of those awesome guys.”
Back then, many scouts projected McGuire as a mid-rotation starter in the big leagues. The Blue Jays had made him the 11th overall pick. They gave him a $2-million signing bonus.
In that same draft, they followed up by selecting Aaron Sanchez and Noah Syndergaard. In the overall draft, McGuire was picked ahead of Chris Sale and Christian Yelich.
But in the winter of 2017, after six years in the minors with three organizations, McGuire had trouble finding a job. Finally, on Valentine’s Day, he signed a minor-league deal with the Cincinnati Reds.
Their message: You’re going to double-A. As a veteran, part of your job will be to mentor young prospects.
“They told me from day one, you’re not getting a job in double-A, you’re going to compete for a job in double-A,” he said. “That definitely gave me a little bit of something to look forward to, but at the same time, I knew that every day it was time to go out and compete to keep that jersey.”
McGuire pitched for the double-A Pensacola Blue Wahoos until their season ended in early September. He led the league in innings pitched, starts and strikeouts. His ERA was 2.79.
And on Oct. 1, in Cincinnati’s final game of the season, Deck McGuire worked five shutout innings against the Cubs and earned his first major-league win.
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This spring, at age 28, he is back where he started, in the home clubhouse in Dunedin.
John McDonald is the infield co-ordinator for the Cleveland Indians. Aaron Hill is also long gone, currently an unemployed free agent.
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Close by McGuire’s locker sit assorted big-leaguers and young prospects. McGuire is no longer a prospect in the ordinary sense of the word. He is too old, his past too chequered. After all, this is a man who in seven seasons has managed to pitch in all 30 double-A ballparks.
But he would not be here except for that scent of a comeback in 2017, and that delicious six-game sampling of the big-league menu last September.
He is ticketed for triple-A Buffalo, part of a platoon of pitchers – most of them prospects – forming rotation depth in case something bad happens to a major-league starter. McGuire knows that.
But from a deeply personal outlook, he also came to camp with a different mission.
“Honestly, coming back here, it’s just to settle some unfinished business,” he said. “I feel like there’s a part of me that let the organization down. They took a chance on me and gave me a lot of chances, and I do feel like, to an extent, I let them down. So it’s my job to come in here and do whatever they need me to do to help them win games.”
In three spring games through Saturday’s action, McGuire has worked four innings, allowed one hit and no runs, and struck out five.
He knows those numbers will not change his short-term destiny. He simply hopes to leave a noteworthy impression on his way to Buffalo.
He says he matured last year and stopped trying to live up to the hype that goaded and tormented him in the early years of his career.
Still, he was surprised by that September call-up from double-A.
“Surprised would be a good word for it,” he said. “I really appreciate them giving me the chance, both to come out of the bullpen and make a couple starts at the end of the year. I feel like I showed some good things and showed there’s still some room to grow and get better.”
He might also have been surprised by what he learned in those 13.2 big-league innings.
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“I think I proved that I can hang with those guys,” he said. “I think I proved it not only to the people willing to give me a chance this year, but I proved it to myself. That’s invaluable going forward.”
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McGuire’s first pro season, in high-A and double-A, showed promise. Then he sagged.
He was a No. 1 draft pick carrying a yoke of expectations. For a 6-foot-6 prospect in his early 20s, it was too much to bear.
Each time he struggled in a game, he struggled again to fix himself.
“I felt like I needed to change something every day,” he said. “I felt like every time it went bad, something caused it to go bad, as opposed to just, ‘It’s baseball.’ You’re going to have bad ones.”
He lost trust in his mechanics, his preparation and his perspective.
“Yes, mechanics, and the way I approached games, the way I pitched in games, the way I sequenced in games – little things, all the way down to how I faced each hitter,” he said. “This game will drive you crazy if you let it. I allowed the game to almost consume me. Every day I wanted to do something to be better as opposed to keep playing and see what happens.”
By the time the Blue Jays traded him to Oakland for cash in July of 2014, McGuire had pitched to a 4.57 ERA in 542 innings, mostly in double-A. Take away that encouraging first season, and his ERA for the Blue Jays was a titch over five.
After Oakland released him, he went to the Dodgers, then the Cardinals, never doing enough to turn heads. He was roster filler for minor-league rotations.
The wakeup call came a year ago, after a year in triple-A, when he had to wait until February for a job – in double-A.
Then something serendipitous happened.
“The first thing is definitely maturity, kind of understanding that everybody is there to help but not everything is going to work for you,” McGuire said. “I had an unbelievable coaching staff on Pensacola last year when I was in double-A. Even when I hit a rut, we didn’t try to make wholesale changes. I was just trying to keep getting better with what I did.
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“A lot of credit goes to our pitching coach, Danny Darwin, and our manager, Pat Kelly, for continuing to give me the ball every five days. And the pitching co-ordinator, Tony Fossas, told me from day one that my situation was going back to double-A, maybe trying to help out some of the young guys, but just keep taking the ball every fifth day and you never know what could happen.
“I really thank the Reds organization for letting me have a jersey and giving me another chance, and ultimately giving me a chance in the big leagues at the end of the year.”
Kelly told him in spring training that he and Darwin would not ask him to change anything.
“We just told him, ‘You pitch like Deck McGuire … We will let you go out there every fifth day and you pitch like you feel like you need to pitch,” Kelly told the Pensacola News Journal. “We are not going to mess with you mechanically.”
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Now, back in Dunedin, McGuire sees a few familiar faces.
Across the aisle from his locker sits reliever Aaron Loup, the longest-tenured Blue Jay, who was a teammate in Class A Dunedin in 2011.
Dane Johnson, the Jays’ bullpen coach, was the minor-league pitching co-ordinator during McGuire’s time in the Toronto system. Manager John Gibbons and pitching coach Pete Walker were on the job during McGuire’s last year in the organization.
But none of them saw the change that McGuire experienced in 2017, the year he became a father, and the year he finally made it to The Show.
“I said I’m going to work hard to keep getting better but I’m going to enjoy every minute of it,” he said. “I know it’s my job but I’m going to treat it like a game as well as an opportunity. I think I lost sight of that a little bit and probably didn’t enjoy every day as much as I could have, and put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself for a few years.”
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Johnson, his old pitching co-ordinator, said he was surprised and delighted to see what McGuire accomplished in 2017. Before that, Johnson said, McGuire’s careered had left him “maybe being humbled.”
“I know how hard he works and how much he cares, what type of competitor that he is,” Johnson said. “To have him back in the organization where he started and hopefully helping us down the road here, that would be some type of story.”
Indeed. And it would be a chance for McGuire to write finis on some unfinished business.
“For me,” he said, “it’s a chance to come in and show them that maybe I was just a late bloomer.”
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From the cutting-room floor: Pat Kelly, McGuire’s manager in double-A last year, played a total of three games in the majors, all with the Blue Jays in 1980. A catcher who once backed up Ernie Whitt in triple-A, Kelly was part of a trade from the Angels for Ron Fairly after the Jays’ first season in 1977. Kelly went 2-for-7 in the majors, both hits coming against Boston’s Bob Stanley in the same game. Stanley is now pitching coach for the Jays’ triple-A affiliate in Buffalo. Kelly has won more than 2,000 games as a minor-league manager, including a stint in 1999 and early 2000 with the Jays’ triple-A affiliate in Syracuse. For more about Kelly, check this out.
Photos by John Lott/The Athletic
