The Converging Paths of a Texas Battery

Career trajectories meet 60-feet, six-inches apart

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We’ve got ourselves an ALCS, and today’s game is all about the journey.

So much for home-field advantage. After the Rangers took the first two games in Houston, the Astros — a team that posted peculiar home/road reverse splits during the regular season — stormed back against the softer side of Bruce Bochy’s starting rotation. (Yes, I’m lumping a rusty Max Scherzer in that back part of the rotation. For now.)

The ’Stros, playing away from Space City, went 51-30 this year. As if they wanted to make it clear to the world that these are not your slightly older cousin’s trash-can-banging sign-burglars, Dusty Baker’s gang posted a 39-42 record at Minute Maid Park.

Conversely, the Rangers’ home record was a strong 50-31, befitting of a playoff team deep in October. Home whites vs. road orange: strength against strength. Of course, this Texas team swept the Rays in Tampa in the Wild Card round and then won both its ALDS games in Baltimore.

It’s an ongoing journey, and we’re constantly reminded not to trust what we think we’ve learned from the past six months.

Game 5 features a rematch of the series opener on the mound: Justin Verlander vs. Jordan Montgomery. The three-time Cy Young Award winner and two-time World Series champion attracts the attention, but the Rangers lefty has two scoreless outings of six innings or more already this month. Tonight’s start will be his first at Globe Life Field this postseason.

Putting the fingers down for the Rangers lefty is Jonah Heim.

Heim was a fourth-round selection of the Orioles in the 2013 Draft; Montgomery was a fourth-rounder of the Yankees in 2014. Heim went 129th overall; Montgomery, 122nd. I happened to scout both players during the 2015 season when each was in the South Atlantic League. And that’s where the similarities end.

Montgomery grew up in South Carolina and played college ball for the Gamecocks in the competitive Southeastern Conference. As a 22-year-old pitching for the Charleston RiverDogs, he had poise and mound presence. In his first full season of pro ball, he put himself on the prospect track. Montgomery climbed the minor league ladder with a steady upward trajectory and made his big league debut less than three years after going pro.

For the second straight time around the trade deadline, the pitcher was shipped away. After joining the Cardinals last season, he found himself acquired by the Rangers in late July this year. He threw to Heim only seven times in the regular season and has pitched to him three times in the playoffs so far.

Heim is from the Buffalo, NY area. While Montgomery was spinning curveballs, Heim was chucking snowballs.

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I liked Heim’s potential when I scouted him, and I kept an eye on him as he was traded not once, not twice, but thrice. The Orioles traded him straight-up to Tampa in 2016 for Steve Pearce. The following year, the Rays sent him to Oakland, where he made his Major League debut during the abbreviated 2020 season.

Just prior to Spring Training 2021, the A’s and Rangers executed a five-player trade that included Elvis Andrus and Khris Davis. Heim was on the move again, and it looks like he’s found a home in Texas. In his first season in the Lone Star State, Heim shared the catching duties for the Rangers. He made enough of an impression with his receiving skills that his .196 average didn’t keep him out of the lineup.

Heim’s path to the big leagues and big-league success required overcoming geography. The outdoor high school baseball season in upstate New York is fairly limited. The opportunities to be noticed were limited as well. Heim is the only big leaguer ever to come out of Amherst Central High School. Additionally, as a long-limbed 6’4 kid, he had to learn his body. (Attention parents of kids who fit that lanky description: those long levers take some learning!)

Each player develops differently. I often think about players like Heim, an eventual All-Star who required a combination of patience, good instruction, and probably some sort of X-factor that all teams strive to provide. For every one player that makes it, hundreds fall short. How did Heim overcome the obstacles and achieve success, finally, with his fourth organization?

Jeff Manto played in parts of nine Major League seasons. He debuted with Cleveland in 1990 and made stops in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Seattle, Detroit, and the Bronx, before finishing his big league career by going 4-for-5 in seven plate appearances with Colorado in 2000. He’s currently the manager of the Trenton Thunder of the MLB Draft League.

Manto was the Minor League hitting coordinator for the Orioles from 2014-2019. I asked him about the first time he met Heim.

“He was extreme long and lanky,” Manto says of the catcher, who may have still been a teenager at the time. “No weight on him at all, but he had a really nice swing coming out of high school.” Manto also notes that Heim had very good game awareness.

It’s noteworthy that a young player who didn’t grow up in a baseball hotbed could impress a well-traveled coach with his instincts. But those instincts, Manto says, gave Heim a chance to succeed every game. While the young catcher added muscle to his frame, he also developed — slowly — as a hitter.

“It’s going to take taller, longer guys longer to learn how to hit because their limbs are not in sync,” Manto shares.

Manto credits former O’s minor league coach Don Werner for working with Heim “tirelessly.” Heim, to his credit, had the makeup and desire to improve; that fact can’t be understated. (Werner, by the way, caught the only no-hitter in the career of Tom Seaver.)

Manto raises another very interesting point about Heim and the challenges he may have faced while in the minor leagues: “When you look at Jonah, he has such a good bat path, it looks slow. He has an effective fast bat, like Jeter and Chipper. Their bats were in the zone so long, to the naked eye it looked slow.”

Before anyone gets too upset, let’s make something very clear: Manto was not saying that Heim is going to be Derek Jeter or Chipper Jones. He wasn’t saying that Heim is either of them. He was describing one player’s bat path and providing some outstanding comps with whom we are quite familiar. Please! Heim’s got enough on his plate as it is.

As it did with the bat, Heim’s catch-and-throw game needed some time to develop. With long legs and long arms, he had to learn to release the ball more quickly and shorten his arm action.

I like to believe that Heim’s success is a product of and credit to all four organizations he has spent time with. For Heim and Montgomery, two players who crossed paths nearly 10 years ago in the Gulf Coast League, NY Penn League, and South Atlantic League, their journeys connect — as teammates — in the ALCS. Maybe they’re not so different after all.

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