Overview:
Jeff McNeil, the New York Mets' reigning National League batting champion, is playing for Team USA during the next two weeks of the World Baseball Classic.
One of the littlest kids from the Goleta Valley South Little League now finds himself on top of the world.
Jeff McNeil’s baseball journey, both detoured and injured during the past 16 years, has taken him to this week’s World Baseball Classic as the starting second baseman for Team USA.
It’s been as odd an odyssey as you could imagine for a baseball player who gave up the sport to play high school golf after his move to Nipomo.
“I always wanted to be the best,” McNeil said after winning last year’s National League batting championship with a .326 average for the New York Mets. “I wanted to prove people wrong at the same time.
“I was always the smallest kid on the field and always had to prove myself.”
He’s in exalted company now at the WBC. Team USA, which opened the event Saturday with a 6-2 win over Great Britain, will complete pool play in Phoenix with games Sunday against Mexico, Monday against Canada and Wednesday against Colombia.
Nobody appreciates playing alongside such future Hall of Famers as Mike Trout more than McNeil.
“I got to play against Trout last year,” he said. “That was the first time I saw him play live, on the same field as him.
“It’s going to be cool to be teammates with him and watch him up close.”
Forging a Career with the Foresters
McNeil didn’t resume playing baseball until his senior year of high school. He made up for lost time by helping the Santa Barbara Foresters win the 2011 National Baseball Congress World Series and becoming an All-Big West Conference player at Long Beach State.
The Mets made him their 12th-round pick in the 2013 MLB Amateur Draft, but he was never listed among their top prospects.
His situation became tenuous in 2016 when he needed an operation to repair a pair of sports hernias, and then more surgery for a torn labrum in his hip.
A groin injury limited him to just 48 games in 2017.
“As a 26-year-old in Double-A, I wasn’t really sure where my career was going to go,” McNeil said.
But McNeil’s fortune seemed to swing around after he married his longtime girlfriend, Tatiana DaSilva, just before spring training of 2018.
“We had a tough career in the minor leagues — we’ve been through a lot — but I couldn’t have done it without her,” he said. “She’s my rock.”
He proposed to her “on a hike at Harpers Ferry, in West Virginia … We went up to the top of the mountain, and I did it up there.”
With that, McNeil began his quick ascension to the major leagues. He batted a combined .342 in minor league stops at Double-A and Triple-A that summer before getting called up to the Majors on July 24, 2018.
The Best in Baseball
He rapped a pinch-hit single in his first at-bat and has hit .307 ever since — the highest batting average of any major leaguer in that time period.
“Jeff had the talent, the resolve to scratch, claw, fight through a lot of adversity to make it to this point,” Mets general manager Billy Eppler said two months ago, signing McNeil to a four-year contract extension worth $50 million.
He and Tatiana had their first son, Lucas, just before last year’s MLB All-Star Game.
“To be able to take care of my family for quite a while is pretty special to me,” McNeil said. “I’ve had an extremely long journey coming up through the minor leagues.
“It’s been six years in the minor leagues, grinding. So for all that, too, to pay off and to be able to get this extension means a lot.”
McNeil has been selected to two National All-Star teams during his four full seasons in the big leagues. And now he’s playing for the national team of all-stars.
It almost didn’t happen. Team USA manager Mark DeRosa originally turned down McNeil when they talked last fall at the Wally Joyner & Friends Golf Tournament in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
DeRosa had already tabbed the Boston’s Red Sox’s Trevor Story to play second. He also had Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts available to play the position in a pinch.
But DeRosa added McNeil to his roster after an elbow injury forced Story to pull out of the WBC.
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that, “DeRosa replied honestly, telling McNeil that Story had been one of the earliest players to commit to the squad … But when Story went down, DeRosa fulfilled a vow he made to McNeil that if an appropriate spot opened, he would call.”
DeRosa admitted that McNeil, who can also play outfield, does give him more versatility than Story.
“There was a concerted effort to not just throw the Dream Team out there,” he said, “but (to think) about what we’re going to need as this thing progresses, and how we can use guys who are a little more versatile who can bounce around the outfield.”
End of the Worlds for Dillon Tate
While one injury paved McNeil’s way into the WBC, another threw up a roadblock for former UC Santa Barbara pitcher Dillon Tate.
Tate, who has led the Baltimore Orioles in relief appearances the past two years, was removed from Team USA’s roster because of a strained forearm.
Orioles general manager Mike Elias said they plan to be cautious and will likely keep Tate on the disabled list past the start of the regular season.
“I know he’s bummed about missing the WBC and all that, but he’s doing well,” Elias said. “He’s a pitcher. Injuries happen. This shouldn’t last too long.”
Tate, ace of UCSB’s NCAA Regional team of 2015 and the No. 4 pick in that year’s MLB Draft, said he’s able to play catch and work out, but “the intensity is low.”
He had his best season as a Major Leaguer last year with an earned run average of 3.05, five saves, and 16 holds in 73⅔ innings of work. He served as the set-up man for closer Félix Bautista.
Tate remains optimistic about his 2023 season in Baltimore.
“We did exactly what we needed to do last year and I felt like our presence was felt among the division and other teams in baseball, so I think they know we mean business,” he said.
“So it’s just time to take it up another notch.”