It was a seemingly typical Saturday summer morning in the Stevenson household, except for one thing: it was 8:00am and Jake Stevenson, 17 years old, was awake and filled with energy. He had a phone call to make – the phone call that would forever alter the trajectory of his baseball career.
On most every summer weekend in high school, Stevenson would sleep well past daybreak, often not emerging from bed until moments before noon. But this particular Saturday was different. This Saturday, he would be calling Minnesota pitching coach Todd Oakes (T.O.) and committing to play baseball at the University of Minnesota.
“When T.O. came to my house and said that they had a spot for me on the team, I wanted to say yes right away, but my parents and I had a conversation that I would wait until at least the next day and I would sleep on it,” Stevenson said.
So he did just that. Stevenson slept on it, then arose hours before he normally would the very next day to let Coach Oakes know he would indeed be donning the Maroon and Gold. Something that once seemed impossible, Stevenson would indeed be a Golden Gopher, one day emerging as an integral part of the program he admired so deeply as a child.
“I called him back and let him know that I wanted to be a Gopher more than anything,” said Stevenson.
Four years later, the Minnesota native was sitting in that same childhood home in small-town Waconia. His parents were with him, as well as his sister and college teammate, Nick Lackney. When the seventh pick came up in the 10th round of the MLB Draft, the roles reversed, for this time Stevenson was not the one making the call. This time, it was the Cincinnati Reds. In seemingly the blink of an eye, Stevenson had gone from a walk-on college hopeful to a 10th round MLB selection.
“When the Reds pick came up with the seventh overall pick in the 10th round and my name popped up on the board, it was kind of a surreal moment,” Stevenson said.
“There I went, seeing my name, I’m sitting there in my childhood living room watching these names that I’ve followed through college baseball and high school baseball go off the board. They’re these huge name guys and then there’s me that pops up on there and it was kind of surreal to be with everybody else and get drafted.”
In reality, Stevenson’s progression did not happen the way it might have appeared on the outside. Yes, his rise to becoming a professional ballplayer is worthy of praise, but it did not happen overnight; it did not happen just like that.
In reality, it’s physically impossible for a human being to go from topping out at 86 miles per hour to 97 mph overnight – which Stevenson did in the time that spanned between his senior year of high school to his final season with the Gophers. It takes time, hard work, the proper workout regimen, a consistent throwing routine – the list goes on. But still, one has to ask, even after time has proven the decision was the right one, why did Stevenson turn away significant scholarship offers to walk on at Minnesota?
“When I was younger in high school, I was just hoping to play college baseball,” said Stevenson. “It was always a dream of mine to play Division I baseball at the U. Being from Minnesota, I had grown up going to games and it was my dream to go there, but I never really knew how possible that would be.”
A Gopher at long last, Stevenson arrived on Minnesota’s campus as a scrawny kid who got by in high school by burning 86-87 mph heaters by the opposition. As a right-handed pitcher who only threw in the mid-to-high eighties and did not have much of a secondary offering in his arsenal, Stevenson was a far cry from what most major league scouts were looking for.
“I knew baseball, but I didn’t know pitching,” said Stevenson. I come from a smaller town and throwing 86-87 was going to get a lot of outs just based off velocity. I didn’t really have to pitch. I just had to throw at that age, and it took a while in college to figure that out.”
Stevenson saw limited action his freshman year, appearing in six games and totaling 10 1/3 innings of work. His sophomore campaign brought about much of the same story, as he would pitch out of the bullpen every so often, but not in high-leverage or pivotal conference situations.
“In college, now I’m a Division I pitcher and I kind of thought, ‘now I’m going to go to Minnesota. I’m going to get better just by being there basically, and I’m going to become a draft prospect,'” Stevenson said.
“With anything, that’s rarely how it ever works. If you don’t put the work in, you’re not just going to be there and become a draft pick. It was a plan of mine to become drafted, but I didn’t really know what that meant. I didn’t know what work that took.”
It was not until late into his second year at Minnesota that Stevenson experienced the turning point of his career. In the 2017 Big Ten Tournament, the Gophers were facing elimination in a must-win game against Iowa. The contest was a dog-fight, with each team battling to keep their respective seasons alive. As the game went into extra innings, all Stevenson could do was watch from the bullpen.
“We had thrown some pitchers twice in that tournament and I hadn’t pitched yet because basically, I just wasn’t good,” Stevenson said.
Finally, with the Gophers scraping for arms as the game progressed into the 11th inning, Stevenson got the call.
“I just remember going down to the bullpen and I was kind of like the last choice,” he said. “‘Ok, now we got to get Stevenson warmed up, we don’t really have anybody else left.'”
In the midst of a season in which scoreless innings were a rarity for the young hurler, Stevenson took the mound with a chip on his shoulder. For arguably the first time in his Minnesota career, he stepped up to the call of duty and fired two innings of shutout baseball with the score knotted at five runs apiece.
In his third inning of work, Stevenson surrendered a pair of runs and the Gophers were ultimately unable to come out on top against the Hawkeyes. Still, the righty had proven to himself that he was capable of churning out quality innings for his team in high pressure situations.
“It was a huge turning point for me in my career,” said Stevenson. “I looked in the mirror one day and kind of was talking to myself, ‘what have I done to make myself a better baseball player, a better person, to prove that I’m a hard worker, anything that you need to become a professional baseball player?’ I realized that I was doing all the wrong things. I was doing the minimal amount of things and I was out of shape.”
The epiphany prompted Stevenson to get back into form in the offseason. The following fall, he returned to campus well-conditioned and sitting 88-90 mph with his fastball. With a newfound work ethic and added velocity on his heater, he found himself penciled into the Gopher rotation to start his junior campaign.
Still, Stevenson struggled mightily through the first few weeks of the season. Unable to pitch well with runners on base and failing to find a quality secondary offering, pitching coach Ty McDevitt had no choice but to pull Stevenson from the rotation.
“I couldn’t have agreed more with him,” said Stevenson. “We made some pretty major mechanical changes and then we sat down and had some conversations about how I was throwing the ball and he gave me some more confidence.”
Then, midway through the year and in an important conference series at Purdue, Stevenson hit 95 mph on the radar gun for the first time. From that point on, he would focus on a relief role, gaining more confidence as his fastball improved with each subsequent inning he threw.
“Just knowing that I could throw that hard was a big boost and a big turning point in my career,” he said. “I owe a lot of that to Coach McDevitt. He helped me mechanically and with my confidence.”
Head coach John Anderson also played a role in developing Stevenson as a pitcher. Had it not been for the long-time veteran skipper, the righty fireballer might not be where he is today.
“[Coach Anderson] really helped me with my mental preparation when I was out on the mound, because that was something I struggled with,” said Stevenson. “That’s the biggest thing in pitching and those two helped me an immense amount, where I don’t know where I’d be right now without those two in my corner during that rough period in college.”
As we know, Stevenson did in fact get through that rough patch. In the next year-plus following that appearance at Purdue, he added two additional ticks on his fastball and refined his secondary offerings, possessing a quality slider and change-up by the end of his senior season.
When the Gophers’ 2019 journey concluded and Stevenson’s focused shifted to his draft prospects, he was already a near shoe-in to hear his name called by an MLB team. Sure enough, it took only two days before the Reds made him a 10th round selection, culminating an almost unbelievable journey for a kid who went from college baseball hopeful to MLB draft pick.
Just a handful of months into his professional career, Stevenson is already thriving and utilizing lessons passed down to him from Coach Anderson and McDevitt. He earned a Frontier League All-Star nod for his first-half performance with the rookie-level Billings Mustangs and sports a 2.03 ERA and four saves across 13 1/3 relief innings as the team closer.
“I was pretty ready to get into my routine and get things going when I got here,” said Stevenson. “That was something Coach McDevitt and [Coach Anderson] really taught me, creating that routine. Minnesota really prepared me well for it and I didn’t really have a learning curve when I got here.”
Now a professional athlete that used to simply dream of playing college baseball as a child, Stevenson never lost the perspective he had as a young ballplayer. Among the lessons taught to him by his former Minnesota coaching staff was understanding the bigger picture in regard to the game of life. Such sentiments were emphasized by everyone on the staff, but no one more than the late Coach Oakes; the man who made Stevenson’s wish of being a Gopher come true years ago in his childhood home.
Coach Oakes passed away in May 2016 after a hard-fought battle with leukemia. Stevenson did not have as much time to learn under Oakes’ tutelage as he might have hoped, but the former Gopher coach taught him about the irreplaceable values of gratitude and thankfulness.
“I think that was the biggest thing for me, just realizing how small baseball is compared to what’s going on in the real world for some people,” said Stevenson. “Every day that we get to put on that jersey and go play baseball is such a blessing.”
Humbled by his past, Stevenson now has something within reach that seemed so far away all those years ago on that one Saturday morning in Waconia. Now, he is but a few steps away from one day setting foot on a big league mound.
“My ultimate goal is to one day pitch in the major leagues,” he said. “Everybody says that’s their goal, but I don’t know how much some people mean that. I actually believe that I can.”
“Any opportunity you have to go step on a mound, I don’t think you can waste it.”