ARLINGTON, Texas — Red Sox reliever Tyler Danish went 726 days without pitching in affiliated baseball after the Mariners released him May 24, 2019.
The righty tossed 23 ⅔ innings for the independent New Britain Bees in 2019 after being cut, then 38 innings for the independent Sioux Falls Canaries in 2020.
He remained unsigned throughout the 2020-21 offseason. He was jobless until the Angels took a chance on him May 19, 2021, almost two full calendar years after the Mariners released him.
“It’s kind of crazy. Last year, right before I signed with the Angels, I was five days away from starting school,” Danish told MassLive.com here at Globe Life Field.
Danish was a White Sox 2013 second-round draft pick out of Durant High in Plant City, Fla. MLB requires teams to offer high school draft picks money to eventually use for college. The White Sox agreed to pay it to Danish as part of his first contract but he needed to start school within two years after being out of affiliated ball.
The clock was ticking and Danish viewed it as a potential transitional time in his life from baseball to life after baseball. Danish enrolled at St. Petersburg College and he had interest in pursuing an engineering career. He also planned to continue to play Indy Ball that summer.
“I had signed up for (online) classes,” Danish said. “I was five days away from starting summer classes. ... I wasn’t excited about it.”
Instead, the Angels inked him to a minor league contract. Danish posted a 3.84 ERA in 70 ⅓ innings in Double A and Triple A for the Angels last summer, good enough to land him a minor league contract from the Red Sox in February. He impressed at big league camp, was selected onto Boston’s 40-man roster and has a 3.72 ERA, 10 strikeouts and two walks in 9 ⅔ innings for the Red Sox right now.
It’s quite the comeback story for a former 55th overall draft pick whose ERA was approaching 5.00 in his 13 innings for the White Sox from 2016-18. He had allowed 37 earned runs in 15 ⅔ innings (21.26 ERA) for Triple-A Tacoma in 2019.
“You understand in Indy Ball, if you don’t pitch well, you probably don’t have another opportunity,” Danish said. “So I understood going in that if I didn’t pitch well, this is probably it. I didn’t want it to be like that. And I never had the mindset of being scared to not pitch well. But obviously I think in everybody’s head when you’re in Indy Ball, you know this is the last step. You either make it back or you don’t. So looking back now, I was pretty close to being done.”
Danish said feels confident this time around in the majors, something he didn’t feel with the White Sox.
“I know my stuff plays here,” he said. “Now it’s the fact of believing in it every single night, going out there and attacking the zone with what I have and trusting it. Believing this pitch is going to work no matter who’s in the box. I think I struggled with that early in my career when I first got up here. I told myself when I got back (to the majors), I would never make that mistake again.”
Danish pitched 94 scoreless innings, striking out 156 batters and walking only 19 his senior year of high school.
Baseball America named him one of the 2013 high school draft picks closest to the major leagues. He made it to the big leagues at age 21.
“That was my first time actually failing in the game of baseball,” Danish said. “You hit failures at different parts of your career. And for some people, it’s a lot earlier than mine was. I was at the highest level, at the biggest stage. I think it took me a little bit to understand and digest the failure and realize there’s stuff I still need to work on. It’s not, ‘Oh, I just didn’t pitch well. Next time I get there, it will be different.’ I think I struggled with that. And that’s why I had the couple years of back and forth, up and down (from the majors and minors).
“Then I realized there’s stuff I need to work on still,” he added. “I got here for a certain reason but there’s more that I can add to continue to get better.”
The realization especially came after being released by the Mariners.
“It hurt,” Danish said about being released. “I wasn’t pitching well. I wasn’t in a good spot mentally. So it definitely was like an eye-opener. I’ve been DFA’d. I’ve been through that whole process. But being released and telling you, ‘Hey, you don’t have a job anymore,’ it was a wakeup call for me. I went home and I said, ‘I’ve got to figure something out.’ ... It took me a little bit to wake up from it and be like, ‘OK, here’s the failure. What did I fail at? How do I fix it? What do we do? Where do we start?’ And that was the hard part for me. When you get released like that, you feel like you’re at rock bottom.”
He said his wife told him to take the comeback process day by day.
“It’s not going to be a quick climb back to the top but if you put in the work day by day, you’ll slowly get back,’” Danish said his wife stressed to him.
“It wasn’t easy. A lot of hard conversations,” Danish said. “A lot of hard nights of ‘What’s next? I don’t know if we’re going to get another chance.’ But at the same time, it made me a stronger player. I continued to believe in myself, even though a lot of people weren’t. And that’s why standing here today, I have so much confidence in what I’m doing. The route I took to get back just gives me so much more confidence.”
He focused on his delivery throughout 2020.
“I changed everything,” he said.
He broke down his mechanics with Randy Sullivan of Florida Baseball ARMory. Sullivan is a certified strength and conditioning specialist and physical therapist. His middle son is Danish’s best friend.
“We started from scratch,” Danish said. “I didn’t get off the mound for a couple months just working on things to try to get the muscle memory to where when I get on the mound, it kind of triggers it. It started with getting my legs stronger and to be able to ride down the mound a little longer. And stay connected way longer down the mound. Once that hit, then everything else started playing up. I never had to work on different grips. Just the better I got at my lower half, the better my stuff got. The better my velo got and the better the movement, the late movement.”
He said the process took approximately a year.
“But now standing here, I needed that. That was my last-ditch effort.”
Danish’s slider is his best pitch. He keeps it smaller early in counts, then sometimes throws it a little bigger like a curveball later in counts.
He throws a cutter to left-handed batters. He throws his changeup to both left-handed and right-handed hitters. He has both a two-seam fastball and four-seamer.
“I knew (signing with the Angels) was another last-chance effort,” he said. “I probably have one more time in affiliated ball and I turned out to have my best season in my career strikeout/walk-wise. ERA-wise not great. ... But the extra stuff behind it, it was the best year I’ve ever had.”
Maybe engineering will be in his future. He said he’s good with numbers and he enjoys breaking down math problems. For now, it is Major League Baseball.
“And that’s the crazy part about the game of baseball is how quickly it can turn around for you. The ups and downs and how quickly the game can change on you in a good and bad way. I’ve been through both now and I understand how it works. You just try to remember the stuff you did wrong to get you to that point and the stuff you did right to get back. Just try to follow that day in, day out and keep it day by day.”
Related Content
Ad Choices