Barnette Takes Least-Likely Path To Opening Day

Back in the day, roster issues were torture for Baseball America employees and perfect for BA readers.

Getting all the rosters in your mailbox had to be fantastic in the pre-internet era. It truly was baseball news you couldn’t get anywhere else, and I have communicated with enough readers over the years, via email or phone calls, to know how much those are valued, even today.

For us on the staff, entering in those rosters by hand was not the main reason we decided to work at this magazine, and that was especially true of November’s 40-man rosters. A long-running joke at BA is of a past staffer, who will remain nameless, calling clubs and asking, “I desperately need a copy of your 40-man roster.” His word choice and plaintive tone perfectly captured how all of us felt.

The Opening Day roster issue has the added benefit of uncovering stories of the players who came from nowhere, seemingly, to make the majors. Also today, we featured longtime minor leaguer Jeremy Hazelbaker, a once-released player who surprisingly earned a spot on the Cardinals roster.

 Tony Barnette making the Rangers roster wasn’t as big a surprise, in that he came into camp with a two-year major league contract. His background, however, makes him one of the most intriguing players in the major leagues.

The Swallow Comes Back

Barnette started by being one of the few big leaguers born in Alaska. (Curt Schilling remains the best and may always be.) Barnette moved to Washington state as a youth and played his high school ball there before attending Central Arizona JC and then Arizona State.

Barnette wasn’t a key piece for the Sun Devils and was a 10th-round pick of the Diamondbacks in 2006, signing for just $10,000. He was never a priority minor league prospect, either—he made one Prospect Handbook, ranking No. 20 after the 2008 season, when he had reached Double-A.

That’s when his career started to get different. He pitched at Triple-A Reno in 2009, the first year of the Aces franchise and one of the toughest environments for a pitcher in the minor leagues. Naturally, he had his issues, with a 1.50 WHIP during a 14-8, 5.79 season.

But he led the PCL in wins and ranked second in innings pitched. He didn’t have standout stuff—he pitched with an 88-92 mph fastball, solid slider and changeup, and had average control if not precise command. But he competed, and caught the eye of scouts from Japan who scour Triple-A rosters for talent.

After Barnette wasn’t added to the Diamondbacks’ 40-man roster that November, he was open to offers from Japan and wound up signing with the Yakult Swallows for roughly $500,000.

The Swallows signed Barnette as a starter, but he lasted in that role for only one year, going 4-5, 5.99. For Barnette, it was either adjust to the style of play and hitters in Japan, or his baseball career could be close to being over. Pitchers with 5.79 and 5.99 ERAs in back-to-back seasons, even in two leagues as different as the Pacific Coast League and Japan’s Central League, usually are close to being released.

Barnette’s career changed with a move to the bullpen, and his own adaptability came to the fore.

“He did pick up a split-finger pitch, like a lot of pitchers over there have,” Rangers senior director of professional scouting Josh Boyd said. “But that’s not his go-to pitch. It was more the willingness to learn from others that helped him adapt, and learn how to succeed.”

Barnette learned new pitch grips, key to adjusting to the different ball used in Japan. He added a harder cutter to his slider, giving him another pitch to attack hitters in the strike zone and to go after lefthanded hitters. And his fastball, an average pitch as a starter, became a plus pitch as he added velocity throwing in shorter stints, bumping 93-95 mph by the end of his stint with Yakult.

As a result, Barnette became one of the top imports in Japan, a star reliever and a key to Yakult winning its first pennant since 2001 last season. He went 3-1, 1.29 in his best season in 2015, tied for the league lead with 41 saves (with current Cardinals import Seung-hwan Oh) and gave up just 37 hits in 63 innings.

Barnette had been good in Japan before; he saved 33 games and posted a 1.82 ERA in 2012, for example. But his improvement put him on the radar for major league teams that scout Japan heavily, such as the Rangers.

Hajime Watabe is the point man for Texas in Japan and gave the organization a heads-up that Barnette was making significant progress, bringing him up to Joe Furukawa, who oversees the organization’s scouting efforts in the country, reporting to Boyd.

Their influence on the Rangers’ pitching staff has been profound, with Colby Lewis, Yu Darvish and Barnette all on the roster (with Darvish disabled).

“Joe and Haji are very thorough in covering the NPB,” Boyd said, “and year after year they have identified talent and situations to monitor to put us in position to make decisions on, and ultimately sign, in the case of Lewis, Darvish, (Yoshinori) Tateyama and now Barnette, players who are capable of helping make the Rangers better.

“Ultimately, their work helped give us the conviction to guarantee a second year for Tony.”

Barnette had several suitors among MLB clubs as he became the first import player in Japan to go to MLB via the posting system. The Rangers paid $500,000 to Yakult, small potatoes compared to the maximium $20 million but a token of respect for all the Swallows had done for Barnette’s career. When other bidders fell through, though, Barnette became a free agent, and the Rangers’ two-year offer, for a modest $3.5 million, won Barnette over because of the guaranteed second year.

Turning Japanese

While Barnette and his wife Hillary had maintained a home in Arizona for the offseasons, they wound up embracing Japanese culture during his six-season stay.

That included bike rides around Tokyo after late games, learning Japanese to fit in with teammates and neighbors and raising their daughter Madelyn as if Japan were home.

As Hillary Barnette—pregnant with the couple’s second child—told the Seattle Times this spring, leaving Japan was “definitely bittersweet. We felt very at home.”

When Barnette agreed to sign with the Rangers, he addressed his fans and community in Japan with a poignant note on his Twitter page.

“Six years ago, when the Yakult Swallows called, we weren’t aware of the impact that Japan and the team would make on our family,” he wrote. “We are overwhelmed with gratitude. We will always remember the hospitality that NPB fans showed to our family on and off the field, especially Yakult fans . . . the people and culture of Japan taught us a lot. The overall kindness and way of life are something we will carry with us for the rest of our lives.”

Other influences carry on in Barnette’s game, though. He does throw a split, a pitch favored in Japan but frowned upon by most major league organizations, at least among North American prospects. (The fact that Cubans and Asian pitchers use the splitter well and frequently is another story for another issue of BA.)

But Barnette picked up pitchability in Japan; the art of making a pitch, any pitch, to get an out when he has to. His athleticism and balance are good enough to have incorporated a Japan-style hesitation move in his delivery, and he has incorporated a different grip on his four-seam fastball that gives it riding life up in the zone, another pitch favored in Japan.

Barnette is a 32-year-old rookie, which is unusual enough. He’s also a rookie primed to succeed from the start, thanks to his unique path.