Mark Patton: Major League Baseball Springs Forward with a Throwback to UCSB’s Magical 2015 Season

It’s been nine years since UC Santa Barbara successfully pitched itself as a worthy host for one of the 16 regionals in the 2015 NCAA Baseball Tournament.

An unworthy stadium may have forced the Gauchos to hold it 170 miles south in Lake Elsinore, but they never stood taller on the mound.

And hope still springs eternal in the human breasts of three of the top pitchers from that team.

Dillon Tate, Shane Bieber and Kyle Nelson all made much-anticipated spring training debuts this week for the 2024 Major League Baseball season.

They were all major contributors for the 2015 Gauchos, combining for 19 wins, 232 strikeouts and an earned-run average of 2.04. They led UCSB to its first 40-win season in 14 years.

But all three enter this spring with something still to prove.

Dillon Tate, Baltimore Orioles

Tate was so anxious to get started that he arrived for the Baltimore Orioles’ spring training in Sarasota, Florida, well before the Feb. 14 reporting date.

“Just excited to be back out there,” he said at a media conference during the team’s Birdland Caravan.

There is good reason for Tate’s eagerness: Arm problems sidelined him for all of last year’s MLB season. The Orioles can still exercise two minor-league options on him, but Tate is determined to show that he belongs in Baltimore.

“I feel like that every year that I’ve come in,” he said. “It’s been like that since I got here.”

Tate had a breakout season for the Orioles in 2022, fashioning an earned-run average of 3.05 in 67 appearances out of the bullpen. He allowed just six home runs in 73⅔ innings.

But a persistent forearm/flexor strain put him on the injured list at the start of the 2023 season.

He then suffered an unrelated stress reaction in the area of his right elbow and forearm during his rehabilitation assignment.

Tate struggled in his 13 minor-league appearances — eight at Triple-A Norfolk. His ERA had skyrocketed to 15.19 by the time the Orioles shut him down for the rest of the summer on June 21.

“That’s always the hope, to get back up whenever you’re in any rehab situation, and sometimes it shakes out and sometimes it doesn’t,” Tate said.

“Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for me and now it’s my time to go back out there and play, so I’m ready.”

He worked out during the offseason at the Driveline Baseball training facility in Washington. One video posted online by Driveline showed him throwing a PlyoCare ball at 99.8 mph.

Orioles catcher James McCann had played just across Highway 101 from UCSB when he was attending Dos Pueblos High School.

It was a few years before Tate was a Gaucho, however, and McCann admitted that he’d never seen Tate throw until he caught his first bullpen session this spring.

And he liked what he saw.

“He had a really good idea what he was trying to do,” McCann said. “He located well, he made adjustments quickly.

“I’m excited to see what he’s going to bring to the table, and I think that’s a huge piece to add to our bullpen.”

Tate gave a promising preview this week in Sarasota. He retired the Detroit Tigers in order on a flyout, a strikeout and a weak comebacker during the third inning of a 5-2 victory on Tuesday.

“That’s the best I’ve seen him look so far; it’s been a while,” manager Brandon Hyde told reporters afterward. “Great sinkers. He threw some nice sliders also, but the sinker was going straight down and was low-to-mid 90s.

“It looks like the ‘D-Tate’ from a couple of years ago.”

Tate said he was just trying to “fill up the zone.”

“It was just good to be out with my teammates,” he added. “It’s been a while since I competed at this level, so it felt good.”

McCann contributed to the victory with a two-run double.

Tate followed that up on Saturday with another perfect inning. He got a strikeout and a pair of groundouts in the third inning of a 7-3 win over the New York Yankees.

“It’s huge,” center fielder Cedric Mullins said of Tate’s return. “What he contributed to the team that year was impressive.

“Having him back after dealing with a year full of injuries, he’s feeling good and in good form.”

The Orioles won the American League’s tough Eastern Division last year without Tate and they’re one of the favorites this season.

“We can compete with anybody and I think we’ve shown that over the past few years,” Tate said. “For me, it’s anything I can do to help.

“I’m ready to go out there and do what I need to do to help us win more than 101 games and into the next piece of the season.”

Shane Bieber, Cleveland Guardians

Bieber also sought offseason help from Driveline Baseball. The company’s Arizona training facility is just 15 minutes from his home in Scottsdale.

An inflamed elbow kept the Cleveland Guardians’ ace on the injured list for 64 games last summer. But his stock, along with his velocity, had been sinking ever since his Cy Young Award-winning season of 2020.

Bieber’s fastball dropped from an average of 94.1 mph in 2020, to 92.8 mph in 2021, and to 91.3 in each of the last two seasons.

Although his effectiveness has always come from his elite command and the spin rate of his breaking pitches, his strikeout rate has also dropped the last four years to 20.1% from 41.1%.

“Whether you pick up new tools, or make pretty big changes, there’s value in trying something new,” Bieber said. “You expose yourself to a new stimulus. You put yourself out there to learn new things.

“That’s important to your growth.”

Driveline gave Bieber valuable feedback by using its video technology to “motion capture” his delivery.

“I really fell in love with the new routine,” he said. “Everything was dialed in to what I needed.”

Bieber saw some positive results Saturday during a spring training debut that didn’t exactly go his way. He walked three Kansas City batters while giving up one hit and two runs with no strikeouts in 1⅔ innings.

But he also threw four consecutive fastballs that clocked 94 mph.

“It’s been a while, that’s how it felt,” Bieber said. “Body felt good. Everything was coming out good. I thought the results were probably not indicative of the box score.

“Being a little bit more aggressive in the zone and struggling to find it a little bit, obviously, with three walks.”

The positives, he added, included “no hard contact, not really any good swings.”

Stephen Vogt, the Guardians’ new manager, was encouraged by Bieber’s outing.

“It was great to see Shane get out there,” he said. “It’s great to see his (velocity).

“Obviously he put a lot of hard work into that and changed some things up with his routine. So, all in all, great day for Shane.”

Bieber’s offseason improvement included a newly enhanced, one-year contract worth $13.125 million.

He’ll become a free agent after this season. That made him the subject of countless trade rumors the last few months. Bieber just kept his head down and trained.

“I stayed off social media,” he said. “It was kind of easy for me.

“I was in a great routine in Scottsdale spending every day working my butt off. I felt if I put myself in a good position, the team would be in a good position as well.”

“I’m healthy, strong and looking to Oakland on Day One,” he added, referring to the season opener against the A’s on March 28. “That’s where I’m at.

“I’m not going to change. I’m not going to waver. I see no point in paying attention to any outside noise when the reality is I’m right here with this group.”

Kyle Nelson, Arizona Diamondbacks

Nelson was part of that Cleveland group during parts of the 2020 and 2021 seasons. It took a change of location, however, for him to stick in Major League Baseball.

The Guardians placed him on waivers after he’d allowed an earned-run average of 8.71 in 11 big-league appearances.

The lefthander’s big break came when the Arizona Diamondbacks tweaked his breaking ball after claiming him off the waiver wire.

Nelson’s ERA of 2.19 in 43 appearances ranked among the best in Arizona’s bullpen during the summer of 2022.

His win-loss record of 7-4 last season helped Arizona win the National League pennant.

His strikeout rate skyrocketed to 67 punchouts in 56 innings after pitching coach Brent Strom taught him a different way to locate the pitch.

Strom’s tutelage took root for Nelson after he noticed how Los Angeles Dodgers lefthander Clayton Kershaw located his own slider against Arizona in their season-opening series.

“The movement profile on the pitch and the velocity were similar to what I throw,” he said. “It seemed as though he had a very simple approach to just throw it down, under.

“He didn’t seem to be changing the shape of it very often, or changing his location. It seemed like he was trying to aggressively throw it down but keep it over the confines of the plate.

“He was just getting swing after swing after swing.”

For the next three-plus months, Nelson was one of Arizona’s most effective relievers with an earned-run average of 3.10.

Arm fatigue set in during the final month of September, ballooning his ERA to 4.18. The Diamondbacks rested him during their National League Division Series against the Dodgers.

Ironically, Arizona pounded Kershaw in the series opener for an 11-2 victory while on its way to a three-game sweep.

Nelson was activated for both the National League Championship Series against Philadelphia and the World Series against Texas. He pitched five innings in five playoff games with a solid ERA of 3.60.

He picked up where he left off this week by pitching a hitless fifth inning for Arizona in his spring training debut against Cleveland on Wednesday. It helped the Diamondbacks beat his old club, 8-6.

What goes around sometimes comes back around, especially for a lefthander who can bend a wicked slider.