Aaron Bummer holds a distinct honor in the White Sox clubhouse. As a 19th-round pick in 2014 taken 558th overall, not only is he the lowest-drafted player on the current 25-man roster, he is the only player selected on the third day of the MLB first-year player draft.
His feelings on the experience, at first mention of the topic, are unambiguous.
“It was a nightmare,” Bummer said.
Bummer was just 17 years old when he stepped on campus at the University of Nebraska. The Mike Anderson-led coaching staff that recruited him had been fired, the Yankees had thrown a 31st-round draft pick Bummer’s way coming out of high school, and new coach Darin Erstad and pitching coach Ted Silva had to talk him into coming to Lincoln. They felt it was in his best interest, and had to build the rapport to get Bummer to trust that.
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He was a tall, skinny left-hander with a quick arm and a projectable frame, so Erstad didn’t need too much expertise to identify his potential to help the Huskers. But he was also young and green enough that Erstad gets a kick out of realizing the freshman he’s told me about, and the 25-year-old big leaguer whose wedding he attended this winter, are the same person.
“We literally didn’t even call signs,” Erstad said. “We just told him to throw the ball down the middle and just attack. It just moves all over the place. It still moves all over the place.”
After working his way into the Nebraska rotation his sophomore year, Bummer really sparked attention from scouts — including the White Sox — with his performance in the summer Cape Cod league. He worked in short stints, his velocity got up to the mid-90s and he flashed a promising slider. When he followed that up with a 3.34 ERA in 15 starts as a rotation mainstay in Lincoln, he was sure his name would be called in the first 10 rounds. There were certainly interested teams.
The ERA didn’t include 16 unearned runs, more hits than innings pitched, and a strikeout-to-walk ratio well under two. The same scouts who were encouraged by his Cape Cod performance saw his stuff and velocity back up as he tried to work deeper into games as a starter, and shaky command and inconsistency from the breaking ball. His injury history was more heavily scrutinized. Even fans of his game, like Sox area scout J.J. Lally, were convinced a move to the bullpen would be needed to jumpstart his pro career, which depreciated his value.
And so as the third day of the draft dragged on, Bummer took to burning off his frustration by cleaning the carpet in his basement. He and his agent at the time resolved that if he didn’t get an offer of a $100,000 bonus — well overslot for where he was falling — he was going back to school.
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He spoke to Erstad, who in the three years since talking him out of de-committing, had become one of his closest confidants, and got some surprising advice. His coach felt Bummer was still quite raw in his stuff and approach, that he needed to add strength…and that’s why he needed to get hell out of Nebraska and go play pro ball.
“If I think a guy is not good enough to get to the big leagues, I’ll tell them to come back to college,” Erstad said. “They may not like to hear that but I’m just giving my opinion. Aaron had a high enough ceiling and had the stuff that we felt like he had a shot, and it was time to go.”
The 19th-round selection also belied the White Sox’s level of interest. While Bummer was fuming, the White Sox were burning up the phone lines trying to communicate their willingness to do it whatever it took to sign him. There were enough mixed signals with his agent that they eventually took to calling Bummer — mid-carpet cleaning — to say they were ready to give him six figures.
“We did have some expectations for Aaron that might not be normal for a 19th-round pick,” said White Sox scouting director Nick Hostetler. “I can’t tell you we worked the phones that hard since I’ve taken over to try to get signed somebody taken on the third day like that. We’ll call guys and they’ll tell us no and we might try them back, but in Aaron’s case it was three or four times.”
As a former first-rounder, Erstad couldn’t empathize with Bummer’s situation, but what he experienced could translate. There was less money involved, but it was a foot in the door to the pros. If he performed, he would advance. If he didn’t, he would not. If he performed, and the White Sox didn’t recognize it, someone else would.
That notion was comforting when Bummer dominated rookie ball in 2014 right after being drafted. It was less so when he had surgery to remove loose bodies from his elbow, and instead of ending his pain, it wound up being the precursor to Tommy John surgery. Scouts and executives have a fondness for late-round finds in the draft, but they don’t get fired when they get hurt and flame out. When injury and rehab wiped out essentially two years of baseball for Bummer, he was sure his lower status meant that if he didn’t perform immediately at his next opportunity, he was done.
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“I don’t know if the White Sox necessarily had a clock — but I had a mental clock for myself saying, if I don’t come back from this the way I want to come back, my career might be over sooner than later,” Bummer said. “That really drove me through the rehab, saying, ‘If you really want this, you’ve got to go out and get it.’”
The first year Bummer was healthy again, in 2017, he rode his newly mid-90s sinker and flew from High-A to the majors over the course of a single season. He struggled upon arrival, but made the big league club out of spring training the next year. After learning the news, he spoke about the value of getting to the show and staying there, as opposed to just getting there. Yet at the start of June 2018, having allowed nearly half of inherited runners to score, he was sent back to Triple-A and stayed there until September call-ups.
“He was ticked off when he got sent down,” Erstad said. “Two ways that goes: you either let it affect you and your career is over and you bitch and moan about it and then you have all these great excuses the rest of your life about how it’s everyone else’s fault. Or you say, ‘Screw you, here I come. I’m getting back there and when I get back there, watch out.’”
There were some mechanical tweaks from then to now, with Bummer touching mid-to-high 90s with ease and pitching his best ball in the majors. He’s shifted from the difficult-to-command chase slider to a harder cutter that is a bit easier to keep in the zone. He has a couple keys to lock in on, like getting his butt in front of his shoulders, so he drives forward to the plate with his core, and pushing off through his heel rather than his toe in his lead foot to keep from getting rotational.
But the biggest difference in talking to Bummer is a mentality change, which was triggered by an awful spring training and an oblique injury. Setbacks, for Bummer, have often proven beneficial.
“Getting my teeth kicked in for five outings in spring training allowed me to realize that a lot sooner,” Bummer said. “I thought the idea of aiming big to miss big, that’s something that everyone has always told me, to just throw the ball over the plate and let the ball work. But too often I found myself just trying to throw the ball over the plate with zero intent. Whereas I’m focusing on trying to execute as many pitches as I can. I found I’m better when I challenge myself.”
Believing he can command his movement has led Bummer to one earned run allowed in 11 1/3 innings with 10 strikeouts and four walks since he was recalled on April 28. It’s a start, and surely not the end of his challenges, but it’s proof of concept that he’s moved on from the throw-and-hope approach that fit him when he was raw.
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The oblique pull was less of a revelation, and more of a reminder — about the importance of doing everything he can to stay healthy, since he’s fairly unambiguous about the alternative.
“There’s nothing worse than it,” Bummer said. “After I got my TJ I said, ‘I’m never getting hurt again. I’m going to take care of my body, I’m going to do everything to never get hurt again because I don’t want to get hurt again.’ And then when I got my oblique I was like ‘This sucks, I forgot how much I hated it,’ and it drove me to get out there that much more.”
(Top photo: Patrick Gorski/USA TODAY Sports)