When Drew Storen first reached the majors, he pitched like a bar fighter. He channeled rage and intensity when he ran in from the bullpen. He tried to blow all his pitches past hitters. He tried to throw harder than he could. The bearded right-hander is still fighting, but he’s trying to do it more like a boxer.
“Back then, I was like, ‘When you hit me, I’m gonna try to hit you back twice as hard,’” says Storen, acquired by the Toronto Blue Jays for Ben Revere in January. “But I learned the hard way that when I try to throw a punch twice as hard, I get knocked out. I would try to throw the ball too hard, then suddenly it comes up, and—‘See ya’—out of the park. You have to be more tactical about it.”
The learning process began in 2012, when Storen’s Washington Nationals were playing the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLDS. The then-24-year-old closer came into game five of that series with a two-run lead in the ninth inning. He gave up a leadoff double, then quickly retired the next two batters while his teammates got ready to celebrate. Storen could practically taste the champagne. He got two strikes on each of the next two hitters, but he walked both, then allowed back-to-back singles as the Cardinals built a two-run lead they would never surrender. It’s still the worst night of his major-league career.
“After that, I was sitting there going, ‘I’m gonna come in there next year and I’m not gonna give up a hit,’” Storen says. “I wanted to punch out every single guy I faced.”
He didn’t. In fact, Storen struggled severely in the first month of 2013, pitching to a 5.23 ERA in 10 appearances as a setup man. He finished the season with a 4.52 ERA, his worst full-season performance since being drafted out of Stanford University in 2009. He knew he had to make a change.
“I learned to take the emotion out of it,” Storen says. “You learn that you don’t always have to throw the perfect pitch. You just have to throw a good pitch.”
He returned in 2014 as one of the best relievers in baseball, allowing just seven earned runs in 65 appearances. But then, with his Nationals back in the NLDS for the first time since his meltdown against the Cardinals, Storen blew another save, again in a game and series his Nationals would end up losing. But this time, he knew how to handle it; he knew not to return from failure trying to be that bar fighter.
When he came back in 2015, he quickly regained his job as closer with the Nationals, and through his first 38 games, he pitched to a 1.73 ERA with 29 saves in 31 opportunities before the team traded for all-star closer Jonathan Papelbon, which bumped Storen back into a setup role.
Storen says the key was to bring intensity without getting carried away.
“You don’t want to be the red-line guy,” he says. “You want to be right below it.”
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Over the years, Storen has learned the best way to do that is by focusing on his process. That starts with watching the game closely in the fifth and sixth innings, regardless of the score, because those are the hitters who will likely be coming back up in the ninth. Then he goes back into the clubhouse and gets his body loose with foam rolling. He watches video of opposition hitters he hasn’t seen before, looking for tendencies in their approach—like whether they swing at the first pitch or struggle with balls thrown down and away—then he heads to the bullpen to ready his arm.
By the time he’s thrown two warm-up pitches, he’s mentally locked in on the task at hand and calm enough not to overextend himself. He’s ready to go out and use his four-pitch mix to get effective results, like a boxer—rather than trying to blow everyone away like a bar fighter. It’s taken some time, but Storen feels he’s finally gotten there.
“You can talk to people who’ve done it, get great advice, say all the right things, talk about having a short-term memory,” Storen says. “But until you’ve had the highest of highs and lowest of lows, you have no idea.”