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Longform: Slew of former Hoos are living the baseball life in MLB

A number of former players and those connected with the program are living the MLB dream.
A number of former players and those connected with the program are living the MLB dream. (UVA Athletics)

Justin Novak was more than happy to provide a virtual tour of the space he will call home for the next few months.

Pointing with his phone, Novak first showed off the kitchen area and pantry and then pivoted to the bed before starting to open drawers. What excited the former Virginia infielder most was the amount of storage space, “because I’ve got a lot of stuff.”

Then he enthusiastically threw out there, “And it fits in a normal parking space, which is awesome.”

The conversation was taking place as Novak sat in the driver’s seat of his new home: A Dodge Ram ProMaster he purchased in January before driving 10 days crosscountry to Seattle in early March, which was parked at a national park in Washington for this interview. Novak is now in his third year working for the Seattle Mariners organization, spending this season in a player-development role with the team’s Triple-A affiliate, the Tacoma Rainiers.

Since he’ll be spending half the season on the road with the team, Novak chose to buy the van—he’s quick to correct anyone who calls his new ride an RV—instead of renting an apartment in Tacoma. He plans to sleep at campgrounds or the occasional Wal-Mart parking lot when the Rainiers are playing at home.

“I’ve been bouncing around throughout my life,” said Novak, a native of Tokyo who moved to the United States to play for the Wahoos. “Coming from Japan to Virginia, I had a job in Seattle in 2019. I was working in Arizona last year. So I feel like it’s a perfect opportunity to get a van, bounce around, and work within baseball. It’s just kind of what I wanted to do.”

His start in the pros came a few months after finishing his college career in 2018. He served as an intern for MLB Japan, working in the clubhouse as big leaguers like Juan Soto, Ronald Acuna Jr., and fellow former Cavalier Chris Taylor visited his home country for the six-game MLB Japan All-Star Series. Novak spent the entire 2019 season with the Mariners, serving as translator for pitcher Yusei Kikuchi, who had joined Seattle from Japan as a free agent.

“It was awesome, just being in the big league clubhouse,” he recalled. “They let me help out a lot. I was catching bullpens as well. Just the knowledge that was being bounced around every day, just seeing how a big league club ran, it was awesome. Great experience.”

Novak spent last year’s COVID-19 shortened season at the Mariners’ spring training facility in Arizona, serving as a bullpen catcher for pitchers on rehab assignments after injuries. That led to his new role this year in player development.

“Whatever they need me to do,” he said. “Catch bullpens. If they need me to throw BP, I’ll do that. Hit fungoes. Just learning as much as I can. Just work hard.

“I’ve always loved baseball. I’ve always had a passion for the game,” he added. “Whatever knowledge I have, I’m still always learning but I’ve always wanted to pass it along to the next generation. Coaches have made such a big impact in my life, I want to do something like that as well.”


HAPPY TO STAY IN THE GAME

Novak is one name on a growing list of Virginia alumni now in non-playing roles within professional baseball. Former UVa infielder Jeremy Farrell is assistant director of baseball development for the Chicago Cubs, the team he’s worked for since after the 2015 season. A pair of former teammates with the Wahoos, Chris Gale and Paul Gillispie, are longtime Cleveland Indians front office employees. Both are now in the team’s international scouting department with Gillispie as vice president and Gale as assistant director.

One-time UVa student manager Haley Alvarez is in her fifth season working for the Oakland Athletics, her third as assistant director of scouting and baseball operations. Two other alumni, Chris Marinak and Morgan Sword, both work for Major League Baseball. Marinak was promoted to MLB’s chief operations and strategy officer in September. Sword has been MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations for a little more than a year.

Reed Gragnani has been assistant hitting coordinator for the Boston Red Sox since the franchise created that position during the 2019 season. That’s the same organization that drafted Gragnani twice, first coming out of Mills Godwin High School in Short Pump in 2009 and again in the 21st round of the 2013 MLB Draft following his fourth year at Virginia.

A switch-hitting infielder, Gragnani reached Triple-A Pawtucket before getting sidetracked by a serious knee injury in 2015. He worked his way back to appear in 31 games at three different minor league levels in 2016 but his playing career ended after that season. Gragnani wasn’t sure what was next but the Sox convinced him to stay in baseball.

“I just developed so many good relationships as a player with people in the organization, that they approached me after about sticking around,” he said the other day. “Not even knowing really what I’d be good at.”

Gragnani started in 2017 as a developmental assistant coach for Boston’s Class-A Advanced affiliate in Salem. He switched to scouting the following season, a role he was enjoying when the Sox added the new assistant hitting coordinator role to his responsibilities in 2019.

That coordinator role became a full-time job in 2020, though Gragnani worked virtually from his home in Richmond for the entire summer because of travel restrictions. This spring, he has spent four to six hours each day watching every Red Sox at-bat from the night before, as well as hitters in Boston’s minor league system. He’ll spend time traveling between Boston and those minor league affiliates this season.

“I’ve done a lot of different things,” he said. “Playing, scouting, coaching. And now it’s kind of all-encompassing in this role. But I honestly just kind of got lucky, with the people that I’m around and the organization that I’m in, to kind of continue on.”

For Gragnani, just as with several other former Hoos, getting to stay around the game is the best part of the job.

“It’s been a part of me for 20-plus years,” he said. “The excitement before we go to spring training. The excitement of being at the ballpark before a game. I still feel all those things. So it’s basically been a part of who I am for the last 20-plus years.”

Nate Irving had been working for a few months as a student assistant coach at Virginia when, in early 2019, he got a call from J.R. House, his first minor league manager. House had just been hired as the new third base coach for the Cincinnati Reds. The team had an opening for a bullpen catcher and the position could come with other opportunities within the Reds’ staff.

Now in his third season in Cincinnati, Irving’s job title remains bullpen catcher but he’s also deeply involved in data analytics, working with both catchers and hitters. Helping Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart win a Gold Glove last season was “probably one of the cooler things that I’ve experienced in my baseball life” he said.

After three seasons as UVa’s primary backstop—he was the catcher for the 2014 team that reached the College World Series finals—Irving spent time in the minors with both the Arizona Diamondbacks and Pittsburgh Pirates before calling it a career. He returned to Virginia in the fall of 2018 to start his stint as a student assistant while finishing his degree. He said that call from House changed the trajectory of his post-baseball career.

“Getting to go to ‘work’ at a Major League Baseball stadium every day doesn’t get old. And I don’t think it ever will,” Irving said. “It’s a blessing, and I’m very grateful to be able to involve myself in the things that I’m passionate about, and continue to learn and continue to grow in a lot of different ways.”

Matt Doughty also gets to work from the ballpark each night, at least on those nights when the Mariners are playing at home. One of his roles as a scouting analyst for the Seattle front office is to accommodate scouts from other teams who are visiting T-Mobile Park. Last week, Doughty watched as Baltimore Orioles pitcher John Means threw a no-hitter against Seattle.

“I have to pinch myself every day,” he said. “I get to go see Mike Trout, Ohtani, Rendon. I love the competition of baseball. Getting to feel like I’m a part of something that’s chasing a championship. I consider myself incredibly grateful to still be in the game. It’s a pretty difficult industry and role to crack yourself into, especially with my fairly limited baseball experience as a player.”

A side-winding right-hander, Doughty spent one season in a Virginia uniform, making five appearances out of the bullpen for the 2015 team that won the College World Series. He graduated from UVa in 2018 and immediately began pursuing a career in pro baseball.

He began as an intern for MLB that summer where he was schooled in the various aspects of the league’s economic structure, like the option system and bonus structure. Doughty spent the 2019 season doing video and scouting work with the Washington Nationals’ Double-A affiliate. That job earned him another ring, after the major league club beat the Astros in the World Series that postseason. It also taught him how player development data can be used “to find every flaw in a guy’s skill set” he said.

“I still remember to this day being blown away that they have everybody’s leads off of first base, down to hundredths of a foot,” Doughty recalled. “Didn’t even know that existed but that’s a minuscule advantage that can help a team win.”

Doughty arrived in the big leagues last summer. As an advance scout for the Philadelphia Phillies, he provided intel on upcoming opponents “in terms of how are we going to beat them.” In his current role with Seattle, he studies other organizations from the major league club down to rookie ball in search of players the Mariners may want to acquire.

Despite his limited experience playing at the college level, Doughty believes his time at UVa helped set the foundation for his career in player evaluation.

“There’s guys that I see get called up to the major leagues or who are stars in the major leagues today that I played against in college,” he explained. “That tells you where that barometer is of what’s an elite player. Some of these guys that were even later-round picks that make the major leagues, getting to see them in college was really useful. Just concerning what type of skill sets translate to the next level, what guys improve upon to get to that next level.”

Like Novak, Doughty drove crosscountry from Roanoke to Seattle last offseason. He made that trek for a job he describes as “a lot of watching video, a lot of report writing, and a lot of numbers.” He does not regret the decision.

“I love it. I can’t imagine doing anything else,” Doughty said. “Some people are like, it’s got to get old working 9-5 and then going to the park right after. And I’m like, it’s just a treat every day.”


With his playing career over, Danny Hultzen has found a different path with the Cubs.
With his playing career over, Danny Hultzen has found a different path with the Cubs. (USATSI)
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HULTZEN’S NEXT CHAPTER

Danny Hultzen can feel the phantom pains creeping in whenever he watches a pitcher throw a bullpen session.

“Even the thought of playing, my shoulder starts to hurt. My hand gets weaker,” the Virginia Baseball Hall of Famer said with a smile. “It’s an insane feeling, but that kind of confirms the fact that I made the right decision by moving on.”

Hultzen’s arduous journey to the major leagues has been well-chronicled. After etching his name all over the UVa pitching record book, the lefty was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2011 MLB Draft but quickly had his pro career derailed by shoulder issues. The first of several surgeries came in 2013. Years of rehab followed.

The Chicago Cubs gave Hultzen another shot in 2018. On September 8, 2019—more than eight years after first getting drafted—Hultzen made his Major League debut at Wrigley Field. He struck out the side, including reigning National League MVP Christian Yelich, in a scoreless inning against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Hultzen didn’t allow a run in any of his six September appearances with the Cubs that fall. He was back with Chicago last summer, pitching at the team’s alternate site in South Bend when his reconstructed left shoulder started hurting again. Hultzen tried to rehab but realized while throwing a live batting practice session that he was done.

“I made the hard decision to move on,” he said. “It’s not like it came out of nowhere. I’ve had shoulder issues for years now. It’s not like this came out of the blue.”

Those years also gave Hultzen plenty of time to consider life after pitching. He knew he wanted to work in baseball. He felt at home with the Cubs organization, which was already filled with former players who had made moves into front office spots. Hultzen had conversations with the team about what he found interesting and what he found fulfilling, and where he could be useful to the franchise.

Within days of his official retirement announcement in January, Hultzen was hired by Chicago as a pitching development assistant. After months of learning “what the numbers mean and how this works” through virtual meetings, he has been at the Cubs’ spring training complex in Arizona since early April, working with rookie league players and rehabbing pitchers. He expects to make a few trips to Wrigley Field but will spend most of the season in Mesa.

“I get to be a part of everything,” he said. “I get to be on the field with the guys, with the coaches and the players. And then I also get to be in the office and understand the analytical side and understand the front office side. So it’s the perfect blend of both worlds.

“I’m having a great time,” Hultzen added. “Every day is fun and engaging and I’m learning something new about the game that I didn’t know before. I’ll forever miss throwing a baseball, but now that I’m in this other role, I get to have every other aspect of the game other than doing that.”

As a player, Gragnani approached the game analytically even if the term “analytics” wasn’t as prevalent as it is today.

“That’s kind of how I played a little bit, in terms of game planning for pitchers,” he explained. “How their ball moved, and how hard they were throwing, and what side of the rubber they stood on, what was their arm angle.”

That approach has become a key aspect of Gragnani’s role as assistant hitting coordinator for the Red Sox system. In addition to working with players and evaluating them individually, he is responsible for implementing the hitting data compiled by the organization.

“It’s kind of like learning a language. That’s how I compare it,” Gragnani said. “You have all the baseline statistics, and then you have all the expected stuff, which is relatively new. Especially with how the players are being evaluated. But those type of numbers, they strip out the luck that’s involved in the game.”

Nate Irving was late in his playing career when he first started to notice that teams were increasing their use of technology to collect data during practices and games. He also picked up on the connection between the successful application of that data and wins on the field.

“Admittedly, I wasn’t a great math or science student when I was in high school, or even college,” Irving said. “But when I started to research it and study it and start to cultivate an understanding of how it can be applied, all of a sudden the context that I never had kind of made it all make sense.”

His role with the Reds has expanded as Irving has gotten more educated on how those numbers can be put to use. After his first season in Cincinnati, he spent time at Driveline Baseball in Seattle (one of the organizations at the forefront of data-driven player development in baseball) to get some ideas for the Reds’ catcher development system. Last season, he started working with the team’s hitting coaches on ways to apply data and technology with Reds hitters.

Like Gragnani, Irving used the analogy of two different baseball languages: The one he used throughout his career as a player and the new, data-driven language of analytics. He sees it as his role to fuse those two languages, helping the Reds to use the data they accumulate to successfully play better baseball on the field.

“It’s always kind of an exploration of new things, new ideas, and trying to find little places, the one percents where we can get better as a group,” Irving said. “Or if there’s something that comes up that may not be present to the naked eye, but we can see it with the data that we get, being able to connect the two worlds of what we see and what we get from an objective side, to me is really fascinating.”

For Hultzen, the past four months with the Cubs have been a crash course in data analytics and the tools used to gather that data. Rapsodo is a machine that measures how quickly a pitch is spinning, in what direction, and how fast it’s going. Trackman provides similar data but can also be used with balls hit off the bat. KinaTrax records how a pitcher’s body is moving during his delivery.

Now that he’s working on the field in Arizona, Hultzen has realized that the true “art” of analytics comes in applying that collected data to help players improve.

“I thought I knew something about baseball, but I’m learning that there’s a lot more that I don’t know, which has been awesome to kind of realize,” he confessed with a laugh. “Can we use this? Should we use this? Can this help a guy? If this metric is down or up, is that something we tell the kid, or is that something that we need to change immediately, or is that something that can wait? That art has been very interesting, and I’m also realizing it can be very difficult.”

Grasping some of the nuances of his new role has led to some brief frustrations, Hultzen admitted. He initially expected the data to be more straightforward. But his focus has remained on the bigger picture.

“Everything revolves around making players better, and that’s something that I’m always trying to keep in the forefront of my mind,” he said. “I’ve gotten a couple of opportunities to do that, and I’m looking forward to being able to do that all the time.”


THE UVa NETWORK

Irving was doing some biomechanics and data consulting work at a baseball performance facility in Arizona last winter when a familiar face walked through the door: fellow Virginia alumnus Sean Doolittle, who had coincidentally joined the Reds as a free agent during the off-season.

“Long story short, I got a chance to work with Sean, which was amazing because it was my first time applying a lot of the stuff that I’ve learned from (Cincinnati’s pitching coaches),” Irving recalled. “Really taking the experiences that I’ve had being in the bullpen and applying it. So that was really, really cool.”

Those two former Hoos have spent the first weeks of the 2021 season together in the Reds bullpen. Irving has both caught the lefty as he warms up for relief appearances and caught up with Doolittle during games to discuss the growing network of former Virginia players around the game.

Several ex-Cavaliers mentioned that they have run into fellow former Hoos more frequently than they had been expecting. Novak and Doughty, who were both freshmen on Virginia’s 2015 title team, often cross paths with the Mariners. Both have bumped into Cleveland minor league infielder Ernie Clement at various points in their careers, and were watching as pitchers Alec Bettinger and Daniel Lynch both made their recent major league debuts. Other former teammates have also reached the big leagues in recent seasons.

“Seeing guys go up the ranks,” Novak said. “It’s really awesome to see all these guys I played with follow their dreams, work hard and follow their dreams.”

Last winter, Hultzen reached out to a few former Wahoos, including Farrell, Gragnani and Doughty, while contemplating his next move.

"Hearing their stories, they talked about a guy that went to UVa that they knew that worked in this position, and another guy that went to UVa who's in this role," Hultzen said. "The network is way bigger than I thought, which is awesome."

Despite being as he described "on the older side of the baseball world," Hultzen has a few former college teammates still playing, like Phil Gosselin, John Hicks, and Chris Taylor that he keeps tabs on. Three more former UVa players—infielder Andy Weber, pitcher Derek Casey and catcher Caleb Knight—are in the Cubs system. Hultzen first met all three while they were still at Virginia and he was back in Charlottesville to rehab his shoulder.

Last off-season, Doughty reached out to some former UVa teammates for feedback on minor league free agents he'd been preparing reports on for the Mariners.

"We all look at baseball through a fairly similar lens, from what we were taught from Coach Oak and the rest of the staff at Virginia," Doughty said. "It's a little cliche, but there is a bit of a shared sacrifice that you go through with those guys. Everybody appreciates what we all gave to the program, what we all went through, and we're all willing to help each other out."

“I think it’s great for the guys to stay in the game, and I think a lot of the lessons we learned at Virginia have allowed us to have some early success staying in the game, and having an impact on players,” agreed Gragnani. “But it is cool to look around and see guys in other organizations flourishing.

“And then at the same time, you’re still competing against them,” he added with a laugh, “which is also fun.”


ONE DAY AT A TIME

His College World Series ring from that unlikely 2015 postseason run provides Doughty with a constant reminder of why he wants to work in baseball.

“One of the most important lessons that I think Virginia baseball taught me was that you don’t get into this game if your end goal isn’t winning,” he explained. “I am much more concerned with winning a World Series than I am with what my next job is or what my next promotion is going to be. That taste of winning that we got in 2015 with Virginia really hooked me, and I’m chasing that feeling ever since.”

That one-day-at-a-time approach was consistent among the former Cavaliers working in baseball. Hultzen learned from his brother, a scout in the Pirates organization, that it’s common in pro baseball not to know what job may be on the horizon.

“You take it as you go along,” he said. “You learn what you’re good at; you learn where you can contribute. So that’s kind of where I am right now. I’m happy to be learning about this stuff and finding my way through it, and we’ll see where that leads.”

“I had aspirations to be a big leaguer. I never really thought about my career on the other side,” said Gragnani. “I think the long-term goal is to do whatever the Red Sox feel I’m best at, and we can win multiple World Series championships.”

And Novak is literally along for the ride. Since buying his van, road trips have taken him to new places in Colorado, North Dakota, and Montana. And his current role with the Mariners gives him the freedom to embrace that nomadic lifestyle he has long enjoyed.

“It’s a new adventure every day, which I love,” Novak said. “Baseball has always been a part of me. It’s taken me to so many different places. I’m just super grateful to still be a part of it.”



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