Royals pitching prospect Alec Marsh ‘crushed’ his goals without a minor league season
Kansas City Royals minor-league pitcher Alec Marsh has an extreme affinity for baseball combined with a deep-seated need to step on a mound and compete. By the time an offseason ends, he has had an intense desire built up, bordering on a compulsion, to show what he can do.
But what happens when the offseason doesn’t end?
A 6-foot-2, 220-pound right-hander drafted 70th overall out of Arizona State in the 2019 MLB Draft, Marsh didn’t exactly embrace the idea that he might have to sit tight for months while baseball rode out the coronavirus pandemic.
Patience has never been his thing. After he signed his contract with the Royals, he basically had a quick meet and greet with the pitching coordinator and player development staff in Surprise, Arizona, and then he got right on the road and drove 14 hours over two days — eight hours one day, six the next — to Idaho Falls, where he made his first professional start for the Chukars the day after he arrived.
Ultimately, his 2020 campaign included several months of training in Arizona with a month-long detour in California, a short stint pitching in an independent league in Texas on his way to the Royals alternate training site in Kansas City, Kansas, and finally the club’s Fall Camp at Kauffman Stadium.
“My goals, personally, I kind of crushed them this year for the most part,” Marsh said in a phone interview with The Star. “I think there was a lot of people who didn’t have access to the opportunities or didn’t have access to a gym or stuff like that to kind of get the work in that I did. A lot of people look at it differently. I wouldn’t say I’m in the majority. … I thought it was a great year. I thought it was one of the most successful years so far for me in my career.”
Extended offseason
Marsh helped Idaho Falls win the Rookie level Pioneer League championship in 2019, and he even started the championship-clinching game.
Motivated by that experience, he spent his offseason training at home in Wisconsin and showed up to spring training in February anxious to get into games.
He entered the spring determined to force his way to Double-A by season’s end through his performance and sheer force of will.
“I got to spring training and pitching coordinators and guys were telling me to slow it down a little bit because I was coming in guns blazing and maybe throwing a little too hard from the get-go,” Marsh said. “I think we got to our second live batting practice in spring training, the one right before games were going to start.
“Then everything got shut down when COVID hit and all that stuff. I think the hardest part about it was just not knowing what the next day was going to bring. We’re players that are accustomed to routine. Once COVID hit, I think no one really had a routine. No one knew what was going to happen.”
The week after MLB shut down camps, he drove his girlfriend back home to Los Angeles. He stayed there with her family, expecting the whole shutdown might last a few weeks. While there, he threw with a Royals teammate who lived nearby and worked out in a garage gym of a family friend of his girlfriend.
In late April, his agent called and told him about a facility in Tempe, Arizona, where he could train along with other professional players with masks and health and safety measures in place. He’d held onto his apartment in the Tempe area while staying in California, so he moved back to resume training in hopes of playing somewhere.
“The place where my mind was, ‘All right. I’m just going to take it one day at a time because no one is giving me answers because no one knows the answers.’ I pretty much told myself you’re going to play at some point this year. Just stay ready. Treat this like a season.
“Instead of shutting down when COVID hit, I just kept going and treated it like I was going to go play a season.”
He continued to see progress on the mound as well as in the weight room. Meanwhile, he knew of other teammates who were training by carrying cases of water in lieu of working out in a gym.
“They did an amazing job with contacting us,” Marsh said of the Royals. “Every week we were hopping on Zoom calls. We were sending in video. The main thing for me was being coached. I get to a point where I’m a new guy in the system, one year in. My goals are always to get better and make strides to get better. But it’s kind of hard to do that by yourself with no one watching.
“They were doing the best job they could when it came to that situation. I thought it was way better than every other organization because I had friends who said they weren’t getting contacted three, four, five months into the COVID season.”
Off to Sugar Land
Royals minor league director of pitching performance Paul Gibson joked that Marsh was “biggest pain in the butt” in the organization because of Marsh’s constant inquiries over the spring and summer about when the minor-league season might start or when the Royals would hold some sort of camp.
In August, Marsh’s agent again called and told him about the chance to pitch in the Constellation Energy League based in Sugar Land, Texas. Marsh received permission from the Royals to play, and he stayed with a fellow member of the 2019 Royals’ draft class Grant Gambrel. Gambrel, who lives in Texas, also pitched in that league.
By the time he got to Sugar Land, Marsh hadn’t pitched in a game since the end of the Pioneer League playoffs 11 months earlier. However, his velocity had consistently ticked up to 98 mph.
After months of non-stop training in what felt like the longest offseason in the history of time, he just wanted to play.
“I don’t care where it’s at,” Marsh said. “It could be at high school for all I care. I just need to get on a mound and get some reps in and feel those competitive juices again.”
Marsh pitched for the Eastern Reyes del Tigre, a club managed by former Royals pitching coach Dave Eiland. The roster also included several former major-league pitchers including Anthony Vasquez, T.J. House and three-time All-Star Scott Kazmir.
He made just three appearances and pitched four innings in Texas before he received word the Royals intended to add him to their alternate training site group.
Marsh spent roughly three weeks in Texas before he switched gears again. If nothing else, he used that time to pick the brain of some pitchers and a coach with time in the majors.
“I think the biggest thing for me was I was the youngest guy there,” Marsh said. “There were a lot of guys that had some minor league time and some big league time. I think that was the biggest takeaway.”
Showing he belongs
Marsh made the transition from pitching in games to throwing live at-bats and simulated scrimmages at the alternate site.
While it was a bit of a downshift, Marsh was working side-by-side with highly touted pitching prospects such as Jackson Kowar and Daniel Lynch. Both are viewed as on the verge of being ready to make the jump to the big leagues as Brady Singer and Kris Bubic did this summer.
Marsh spent time with that group during the Instructional League in 2019.
“I want to be talked about how those guys are talked about,” Marsh said. “It was cool to go kind of scale up next to those guys, put my stuff up against their stuff and realize that I’m not far off if not right there with them.”
In 2019, Marsh posted a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 38-to-4 in 33 innings for Idaho Falls. He earned a reputation for not overwhelming with pure “stuff,” but knowing how to keep hitters off-balance. MLBPipeline rated his curveball the best in the Royals farm system.
While training this spring and summer, he felt like he improved to the point where all four of his pitches — fastball, slider, curveball and changeup — were on equal footing and could be thrown in any count.
Gibson described Marsh’s repertoire as “special” by the end of Fall Camp at Kauffman Stadium. He showed the increased velocity along with the “pitchability” that had previously been his calling card.
Marsh’s ability to read swings and adapt accordingly impressed Gibson. Because of his four-pitch mix, he can attack hitters different ways from one outing to the next.
“He was just really outstanding in the Fall Camp,” Gibson said.
By the end of the fall, Marsh accomplished his adjusted goal of having joined the 60-player pool. He saw improvement in his pitches. He showed that player development staff whey he thinks he should be viewed in a similar light to the organization’s top pitching prospects.
He even started reading a bit more and listening to podcasts. He said he became more even-keeled and found a way to be more “at peace” in the moment as opposed to anxious to prove himself every time he stepped on the mound for a side session.
“I don’t think this is the case for a lot of people, but personally I don’t think it was a lost year at all,” Marsh said.
