TORONTO — When Tim Mayza reached high-A Dunedin at the beginning of the 2016 season, he was paid a visit by Pat Hentgen, the 1996 Cy Young winner who now works as a special assistant for the Toronto Blue Jays.
Mayza was starting to make some noise in the organization with a 97-m.p.h. fastball from the left side and a hard, sweeping slider that made him look a lot like a high-leverage, late-inning reliever in the making. The Blue Jays wanted Hentgen, who threw over 2,000 MLB innings, to impart any knowledge he could to the then-24-year-old prospect.
“Pat always told me: ‘Get ahead, get out of the middle,’” Mayza says, sitting in the Blue Jays dugout wearing a big-league uniform for the first time. “That’s something that I take personally.”
Something about the advice stuck, as Mayza pitched to a 1.66 ERA and 9.6 K/9 over 48.2 innings with Dunedin that year. Without it, Mayza doesn’t think he would have received the news he did from his triple-A pitching coach Bob Stanley at 1:30 a.m. ET Monday, as they rode a bus between Toledo and Buffalo: that a car would be picking Mayza up at noon and driving him to the majors.
“At first, it’s a little bit surreal. This is a childhood dream. And when you hear that news you’re almost taken aback like, ‘Wow, this is really happening,’” Mayza says. “But on the car ride here this afternoon I got a chance to collect my thoughts and really take it in.”
Mayza joins a Blue Jays bullpen that has thrown more innings than any other in the American League, and the third-most in all of baseball. The 25-year-old was holding left-handed hitters to a .150 average in triple-A, but he’ll face both right- and left-handers with Toronto and can pitch multiple innings if needed.
“He’s got a great arm,” says Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. “He was kind of on the map last year, and then we saw some good things in spring training. And he’s been pitching really well lately.”
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Mayza’s fastball, which he was throwing between 92-96 m.p.h. in Buffalo, is his best weapon. But it’s his slider that he says has allowed him to reach the big leagues. Mayza has worked diligently on the 84-88-m.p.h. breaking pitch this season, adding depth and sharpness to it and learning how to use it effectively to both sides of the plate.
“As you go along it’s all about tightening up your game,” he says. “For me, it was sharpening up my slider. … I think I was just able to move the ball to both sides of the plate with some tilt, get some angle, and kind of work towards my strengths.”
Of course, it helps that Mayza can get his fastball velocity up to 97-98 m.p.h., which helps him miss bats with his slider when hitters are sitting dead red. You won’t see 98 flash up on the scoreboard every time the ball comes out of his hand, but Mayza can dial it up when he needs to.
“I’ll run it up there every once and a while. But I usually stay within that 92-96 range. The sevens and eights pop up when I try to ramp up,” Mayza says. “Once I get on the mound, it’s all about competing. I’m gonna let it rip. And that’s where the velocity comes from.”
Mayza’s journey to the big leagues began at eight years old when his father, Jerry, taught him how to pitch in the family’s backyard. Jerry played basketball at Allentown College (now DeSales University) in Center Valley, Pa., and got his son into a number of sports, but Mayza started to excel as a pitcher when he reached high school, throwing a no-hitter in his sophomore year. He pitched to a 1.55 ERA and struck out nearly a batter an inning as a senior, while hitting .424 as a first baseman and outfielder.
With numbers like that, Mayza had his pick of colleges, but he settled on tiny Millersville University in his home state of Pennsylvania because he looked up to the school’s head coach, Jon Shehan. Seven years later, he’s only the second MLB product the NCAA Division II school has ever produced.
After his sophomore season at Millersville, Mayza got to pitch in the Cape Cod League, which is mostly populated with players from DI colleges. Mayza didn’t perform as well as he would’ve liked, giving up 30 hits and striking out 20 over 17.1 innings. But he says he came away from the experience with a new confidence that he carried into the pros.
“That was kind of where I said, ‘You know what, I belong with these guys and the likes of the Division I’s,’” Mayza says. “Watching them and being able to take stuff from them really helped me kind of flip that page, and say, ‘I can do this.’”
A significant velocity jump helped, too. Mayza came out of high school throwing only 82-83 m.p.h. But he put on 30 pounds during his three years at Millersville and logged lengthy long-toss sessions that helped him gradually throw harder and harder.
“I really worked hard on gaining arm strength,” he says. “I took every day as a chance to get better.”
Selected by the Blue Jays in the 12th round of the 2013 draft, Mayza began in rookie ball and has stopped at every level of Toronto’s organization since. He battled his command at times as he rose up the ranks, but hit his stride this year when he joined Buffalo at the beginning of July, allowing only two runs over 19.1 innings while striking out 16.
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Asked if any particular coaches have helped him along the way, Mayza says “pretty much everybody” and quickly runs off a long list of the organization’s pitching instructors.
“Antonio Caceres, Jim Czajkowski, Ken Huckaby, Vince Horsman, Bob Stanley, Sal Fasano, Jeff Ware,” Mayza says. “They’ve all given me some advice that I was able to take in order to refine my game and to have some success through the minors.”
And, of course, there was Hentgen, who gave Mayza the aforementioned wisdom he says he carries with him every time he takes the mound.
“Attack the zone early and then expand from there,” Mayza says. “Whichever way I can do that, I’ll do it.”
