Velocity is king in baseball these days, and every team is looking for pitchers who can throw harder and faster. In that context, the Angels have one of the ultimate weapons in the game in reliever Ben Joyce.
New San Francisco Giants manager Tony Vitello can speak to this, because he had Joyce back in college at Tennessee. He thingk Joyce’s career has a distinct cinematic element to it, in part because Joyce was nowhere near the best pitcher on his earlier staffs when he got to Tennessee.
“You could make a movie about it,” said Vitello, who coached Joyce at the University of Tennessee in a piece by Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. “Because of the way he’s broken records velo-wise and also just breaking into the baseball scene the way he did. Because, again, he was nowhere near one of the best pitchers at his high school, or in JUCO, and then when he originally first got with us.”
Joyce is still recovering from shoulder surgery last May, but he didn’t exactly profile as a pitcher in high school in Tennessee. He was just 5’4” and 120 pounds when he first tried out for the baseball team, but a growth spurt had him hitting 90 mph.
The pitcher actually missed a season right after that due to issues with his growth plates, but that didn’t stop his body from continuing the process. He wound up at 6’5”, which is part of how he got to the Volunteers, but Tommy John surgery set him back after that.
But Joyce threw a fastball at 105.5 mph at Tennessee, which is the hardest pitch ever recorded in the NCAA, and he also posted a 2.23 ERA to go with 53 strikeouts in 32-1/3 innings. That drew interest from a lot of teams, and it led to the Angels drafting him with the 89th pick in the third round of the 2022 draft.
The surgery has slowed his development to the point where Joyce is just throwing bullpens right now. He’s also just throwing two pitches, his fastball and changeups, so the steps are small. The idea is to increase the intensity, then add in other pitches if there are no setbacks.
Color new manager Kurt Suzuki impressed, however. He spent 15 years as a big-league catcher, but he never got the chance to catch Joyce, and he just got his first opportunity to watch a session at the start of spring training.
“I was back there for Joyce, and I was like, ‘Holy cow,’” Suzuki said. “I’ve never caught Ben. So being back there was incredible.”