Royals pitcher Glenn Sparkman, back in the majors, returns to where it all began
The excitement that swept over right-hander Glenn Sparkman wasn’t simply because he’d been called back up to the majors to join the Royals. It wasn’t just that he’d get the chance to build on his best outing as a big leaguer.
It was all that, plus … he’d join the team in his home state of Texas.
Sparkman, 26, appeared in 21 major-league games entering Monday, but he had not thrown a pitch in Texas. Minute Maid Park, where the Royals started a three-game series with the Houston Astros on Monday night, sits less than an hour’s drive away from the school where Sparkman turned himself into a potential pro — Wharton County Junior College.
“I was at a football school, so we really didn’t have a lot of baseball workouts,” the 6-foot-2, 210-pound Sparkman said of his high school career.
On the football field, Sparkman said he played a little bit of everything from kicker to running back, wide receiver and linebacker. But it was in junior college where he saw the jump in his pitching velocity that put him on the radar for pro teams.
“I feel like it was just getting into a routine, baseball workouts, strengthening up my arm,” said Sparkman, who regularly pitched with velocity upwards of 90 mph after a few months at Wharton.
Sparkman ended up at Wharton by chance thanks to an encounter with a scout.
By his own admission, Sparkman was throwing between 84 and 86 mph regularly. He hadn’t gotten much attention from colleges, having played at Ganado High, about 100 miles southwest of Houston and one of the smaller schools in the state. He’d been playing summer ball for the Victoria Generals, and he went to a free tryout where he met a pro scout named Rusty Pendergrass.
Pendergrass directed Sparkman to Wharton to play college ball.
“He said call Wharton and tell them I said you’re going to go to school there,” Sparkman said. “So I called them and was, ‘Hey, I went to this tryout and he told me to say I was going to school here.’ He was like ‘All right. I’ll see you Monday.’”
Sparkman made three starts in the majors prior to his spot start last Wednesday in Kauffman Stadium. Last week against the Tampa Bay Rays, he pitched seven scoreless innings in the second game to help the Royals sweep a doubleheader, and he earned his first win in the majors. He was optioned to Triple-A Omaha right after the game.
“I just got to remember to stay relaxed out there and just trust my stuff,” Sparkman said.
Now that he’s back with the big club, Sparkman will work out of the bullpen as he had earlier this season (his first three appearances this season were in relief).
Sparkman has averaged 93.5 mph on his fastball in the majors this season, but the manner in which he pitched in his spot start in last week’s doubleheader earned him another look in the bullpen.
“He had everything working, but he was on the attack, throwing strikes,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “He wasn’t trying to pick. He wasn’t trying to be too fine.”
Yost pointed to Sparkman’s last appearance out of the bullpen earlier this season an example. Sparkman pitched three innings in relief of Heath Fillmyer against the New York Yankees in the Bronx.
Sparkman also needed 74 pitches to get through those three innings, something that caused Yost to raise an eyebrow because a pitcher with what he considers “great stuff” shouldn’t need 74 pitches to get through three innings.
“It depends on him how long he’s going to stay here,” Yost said. “He’s got really, really good stuff, but you’ve got to attack with it. That’s the same with everybody, all of our young guys. They’ve all — for the most part — got really good stuff, and they’re all figuring out what they’ve got to do to be successful.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2019 at 7:54 PM with the headline "Royals pitcher Glenn Sparkman, back in the majors, returns to where it all began."
