Overview:
Gabe Speier has shined for the Seattle bullpen this season with 16 holds, an earned run average of 2.22, and 59 strikeouts over 44 2/3 innings
Home plate is where the heart is for Gabe Speier, star relief pitcher for Major League Baseball’s surging Seattle Mariners.
Sports and family have always gone hand-in-hand for the southpaw-throwing son of Santa Barbara’s Jenny and Craig Speier.
He was 10 when he played alongside brother Jesse and cousin Luke two decades ago in the Goleta Valley South Little League.
Their coaching staff included three of Gabe’s uncles, his dad, and even his grandfather.
The Rev. Nicholas “Kurt” Speier, now retired after a 30-year tenure as senior pastor of Santa Barbara’s St. Athanasius Orthodox Church, had been a star running back for the UC Santa Barbara football team in the late 1960s.
Kurt’s younger brother, Chris, played shortstop for the Gauchos at that time, prepping for a 19-year MLB career that included three All-Star Game appearances.
Gabe’s maternal grandpa, former Westmont College coach Jim Klein, was an alternate on the U.S. Track & Field team as a decathlete during the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.
This family has always come to play.
A huge throng of Speier’s family showed up at Oakland Coliseum in September 2019 when Gabe made his first appearance in California shortly after his big-league debut with the Kansas City Royals.
“It’s definitely a family experience, and I think Gabe really relishes that,” his father said. “He’s been really accommodating to both family and friends.
“We had 35 people there in Oakland, family and friends, and it seemed like he wanted to include everyone in the experience.”
Gabe, ace of Dos Pueblos High School’s Channel League championship baseball team of 2013, knows that the roots run deep in his very supportive family tree.
“My uncle Scott, dad’s twin brother, and my uncle Chris Robinson coached me all throughout my amateur years,” he pointed out.
He still thinks about the last time uncle Kevin Speier — one of his Little League coaches and his dad’s youngest brother — watched him pitch in 2016.
Gabe was playing at the time for the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Double-A affiliate in Mobile, Alabama.
Kevin lost his battle with cancer the following February.
And although the Diamondbacks moved their Double-A farm team to Jackson, Tennessee, the next season, Gabe was struck by what he saw when he returned to Mobile’s Ladd-Peebles Stadium in 2017 to play against its newest tenant.
“I remember looking up to where he’d been sitting when he watched me for the last time,” he said. “The stadium was quite full that day, but the seat where he’d been was empty.
“I felt like he was there for sure.”
“There’s probably not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Kevin.”
A Speier to Greatness
The Speier clan believes that the family that plays together, stays together.
When the COVID-19 pandemic put Major League Baseball into a timeout during April 2020, the family decided to celebrate Gabe’s 25th birthday with their own backyard Olympics.
Only his older brother Jared and wife Emily had to take a pass while quarantined in Los Angeles with their newborn baby.
Gabe’s sister, Lucy, now a beach volleyball player for the University of San Francisco, outscored Jesse for the gold medal.
She had a bit of an advantage in the volleyball spiking event, although she did have to master seven other challenges.
They included putting a golf ball, racing a razor scooter, rolling a bocce ball, shooting a football through a basketball hoop, hitting a Wiffle ball, running a slalom course, and flipping a ring toss.
Gabe was edged out for the bronze medal by his future wife, former DP and Santa Barbara City College volleyball player Megan Leiphardt.
“I was in such a rush, I messed up a couple of times,” Gabe explained sheepishly.
But there was no messing up the weekend of his 30th birthday last April when he helped the Mariners sweep the Texas Rangers in a three-game series.
A pair of one-inning, scoreless stints continued a rejuvenation of Speier’s pitching career after his injury-plagued 2024 season.
The Mariners have been in full sprint in the American League pennant race ever since.
As of Sunday night, Seattle trails first-place Houston by just a half game in the A.L. West. The Mariners are also in solid position for a wild-card berth should they fail to pass the Astros.
“We all want to be playing in October,” Speier said. “It’s something I’ve never done in my career and it’s something I really want to do, especially here in Seattle.
“I love it here … I’m happy with what I’ve done up to this point and just want to keep it rolling.”
He has served Seattle well as the set-up reliever for All-Star closer Andrés Muñoz, recording a team-high 16 “holds” (maintaining a team’s lead in a save situation for the next relief pitcher).
Speier ranks among the best in baseball by allowing a batting average of just .186, a WHIP of 0.896 (walks plus hits divided by innings pitched) and an average of 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings. His earned-run average of 2.22 is nearly 3.5 points lower than last season.
The pennant race did force Gabe to make a tough call last month by remaining close to Seattle during the All-Star Break.
He took wife Megan, 19-month-old son Casey and their dog, Dax — an 8-year-old goldendoodle — to the Bavarian-style village of Leavenworth in Washington’s Cascade Mountains for some rest and relaxation.
“Normally we go home back to Santa Barbara, and we didn’t do that this year,” Speier said. “I think that was really helpful.
“It’s kind of hard to go home, have a bit of a tease, and then you come back.”
He’s allowed only four hits, one walk and no runs in 11 appearances since that break, helping the Mariners trim 4½ games off the Astros’ lead in the A.L. West.
“We jumped into the river, checked out the town of Leavenworth and just had a nice, relaxing time,” Speier said. “We were coming off 17 games in a row with one off day — two series on the East Coast — and that stretch was tough.
“To get four days off was really nice … Reset and get the body right and just refocus.”
Bulldog of the Bullpen
Speier, who struggled last year with a rotator cuff strain, has shouldered a hefty workload in the Mariners’ bullpen by appearing in 53 of their 118 games this season.
He’s been the only lefthander in the bullpen for much of this summer.
Seattle didn’t deal for another lefty, Pittsburgh’s Caleb Ferguson, until just before the July 31 trade deadline.
“We’ve had to lean on him a lot in those left-handed pockets and he has responded and done a great job for us,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “And not just against left-handed pockets, he’s also pitched very well against right-handers.
“Just his ability when he takes the mound … He is ready to attack, and I think that’s very apparent whether it’s a lefty or a righty.”
Speier previously relied on mostly a sinker and a slider to go with his four-seam, mid-90s-mph fastball. But he developed a more effective changeup during the offseason to become more effective against righthanded batters.
“I really don’t want to be labeled as that lefty specialist kind of guy,” he said. “I want to be a high-leverage reliever, so for me to be more successful against righties, I really developed that changeup.”
He was a bit of a baseball vagabond until the Mariners claimed him on waivers in November 2022.
Speier had been traded four times in four years, from Boston to Detroit to Atlanta to Arizona and then to Kansas City.
He thought his MLB career might be over when the Royals cut him loose after his rough summer of 2022.
“I had legit thoughts that might be it,” Speier said. “I might not pitch in the big leagues again.”
His ERA soared to 14.51 at Triple-A Omaha after Kansas City shocked him with a demotion to the minor leagues following a strong 2021 season.
“It felt like they had kind of swept the rug out from under me,” he said. “I just kind of went to Triple-A feeling really salty … Kind of in a bad mood. I didn’t want to be there.
“Looking back on it, it’s a big regret of mine … But it led to me getting DFAed again (designated for assignment), and the Mariners claimed me.
“I learned from that year a lot … to never give in like I did.”
In the Zone
Speier had a breakout season with Seattle in 2023, striking out 64 batters in 54⅔ innings while fashioning a 3.79 ERA.
It began to click after his first conversation with pitching coach Pete Woodworth.
“I was expecting that initial meeting to be like, ‘Hey, we need you to change this and change that’ and all these different things, but it was quite the opposite,” Speier said. “It was, ‘We claimed you off waivers because we like what you have and we just need you to be in the zone more and attack hitters a slightly different way.’
“I accepted the Mariners’ pitch philosophy as my identity … staying on the attack at all times, pounding the zone.
“Still, to this day, at the forefront of my mind when I’m out there is to be on the attack.”
His statistics bear that out. Since becoming a Mariner, he’s walked only 35 batters while striking out 156 in 123 innings.
“They showed me the numbers of what happens when you get ahead in the count,” Speier said. “During my time with the Royals, I didn’t really have direction — I was just out there trying to get guys out any way I could.
“And then they gave me these guidelines: ‘Throw your strike ones … win your 1-1 counts, as well … and when you’re in two-strikes, punchouts will follow … Good outings will follow, and ultimately, at the end of the season, a good year.’”
There’s also the good feeling of finally finding a baseball home. His three years in Seattle represent the longest stay with any of his six MLB clubs.
“Some of the best friends that I’ve made in the game are on this team,” Speier said. “It’s a tight-knit group, and the bullpen especially.
“But also, when you have a starting group like ours, you can’t help but not pick their brains … It’s fun to talk pitching with those guys.
“We all want to make each other better. It’s fun in that way.”
And finding fun in togetherness has always been the Speier tradition.
