I got real enjoyment following Jared Koenig‘s recent major league shot with the Oakland A’s. I had noticed Koenig back in 2018 when he had a big season in the fly-by-night Independent-A Pacific Association, truly the bottom of the professional baseball barrel. The start of the Covid pandemic in the early Spring of 2020 killed off the Pacific Association after six seasons of play, apparently for good.
Koenig struck out 140 batters in 96.2 IP for the 2018 San Rafael Pacifics, which earned him a promotion to the Frontier League in 2019, where he struck out 133 batters in 104.1 IP and posted an excellent 2.24 ERA. He continued his terrific 2019 campaign with six well-pitched starts in the winter Australian League.
The Frontier League and the Australian League are still a long, long way from the Majors, but they are at least leagues where someone might take notice if you play as well as Koenig had. The Oakland A’s clearly took notice because they signed him in December 2019 and brought him back in 2021 after the Covid pandemic prevented Koenig from playing in 2020. It certainly did not hurt that Koenig had once been a 35th round draft pick by the Chicago White Sox out of an Arizona JC in 2014, even if he hadn’t pitched well enough subsequently at four-year schools to get drafted again.
Koenig had a strong season at AA Midland in 2021, and started the 2022 season at AAA Las Vegas, a tough place to pitch. In eight starts and nine appearances, Koenig posted a 2.21 ERA and a pitching line of 53 IP, 39 hits, 4 HR and 15 BB allowed and 61 K, earning a shot in the worst-in-the-AL A’s’ starting rotation.
Koenig was not surprisingly overmatched in his first taste of MLB action at age 28. Although the A’s won two of his four starts, Koenig had only one effective start and 6.38 ERA. He did earn a major league victory, which I am certain made all the toil for peanuts Koenig went through to earn that moment worth it in his own mind. His peripheral numbers suggested he needs more time working on his pitching at AAA, and the A’s sent him down on June 26th.
2022 has been a great year for the Pecos League’s business model. The Pecos League is a pay-to-play league where players have to pay to submit an application and then get paid a stipend of $550 for a compressed 11-week season. That’s $50 a week, and not enough to feed a hungry young athlete.
The Pecos League is for undrafted college players not impressive enough to sign contracts with the better and more established Indy-Leagues (the Atlantic League, the American Association and the Frontier). The business models of the best Indy-A leagues still requires each team to fill at least a third (usually more) of their rosters with players with no or only one season of prior professional baseball experience in order to stay below each team’s salary cap amount. Thus, the players in the Pecos League are all guys who just want to give professional baseball a try even if they have to pay to do it.
By my count, at least five players who played in the Pecos League’s first ten seasons from 2011 to 2020 have subsequently made the majors. Jon Edwards (2011) has probably had the most successful pro career of anyone starting his career in the Pecos League. He pitched 49 games in parts of four major league seasons, enough to earn his MLB pension, and then pitched two years in Japan for NPB’s Hanshin Tigers, where my sources say he earned a total of 160,000,000 yen, which amounted to almost $1.5M when Edwards earned it in 2020-2021.
Chris Smith, who pitched all of four games for the Blue Jays in 2017, also pitched in the Pecos League in 2011, after one unsuccessful relief appearance in the Frontier League in 2010.
April 2021 White Sox phenom Yermin Mercedes played in the Pecos League in 2014. Mercedes had played three years in the Dominican Summer League as a Washington Nationals prospect, but failed to stick and used the Pecos League for his age 21 season as a way to get more professional experience and keep himself in the eyes of MLB scouts. It worked, as the Baltimore Orioles signed him to a contract in 2015.
Jared Koenig pitched in the Pecos League in 2017, pitching well enough to earn a five-start look from the American Association’s Salina Stockade later in the summer 2017 season. The best performers in the Pecos League typically get shots from American Association teams as soon the 11-week Pecos League season ends. Most do not stick in the American Association on their first attempts, as the jump in competition is steep, probably the equivalent of jumping from the Dominican Summer League directly to a full-season MLB-system A league. That’s how Koenig ended up pitching in the Pacific Association.
However, Koenig is not the only 2017 Pecos League/Pacific Association pitcher to pitch in the major leagues this year. Logan Gillaspie pitched 10.1 innings in 11 relief appearances for the Orioles this season in May and June before the O’s sent him down to AAA Norfolk on June 18th.
Gillaspie’s 4.35 ERA for the Orioles wasn’t bad, but his peripheral numbers were much less impressive. However, Gillaspie has pitched well in 19.1 AA and AAA innings this year, and, like Koenig, could return to the Show later this year if he can continue to pitch effectively at the AAA level.
Gillaspie was only 20 when he played in the Pecos League, apparently coming out of a JC in Oxnard. Although he also failed to stick in a brief opportunity with the Salina Stockade and finished the season in the Pacific Association, he had the advantage of being younger than most of the players coming out of four-year schools in the Pecos League and received a contract with the Milwaukee Brewers’ organization before the 2018 season began. There is no substitute for tender age when it comes to getting a minor league contract from an MLB organization.
For a league like the Pecos League, having two veterans reach the major leagues in the same season is pure public relations gold. The league can continue to pay its players peanuts for years to come on the proven-not-impossible (but still extremely unlikely) dream that playing in the Pecos could be a stepping stone to the majors.
Other than Koenig and Gillaspie, the only other Pacific Association veteran to reach the majors that I could find is now-former Tampa Bay Ray Chris Mazza. After being released by the Marlins’ organization, Mazza, a Diablo Valley product, was able to turn effective pitching for the San Rafael Pacifics in 2018 into a contract with the Mets’ organization and reached the majors only a year later.
Mazza pitched briefly for the Mets, Red Sox and Rays over the last four major league seasons, but the Rays released him on June 22nd. At age 32, Mazza may have to return to the Indy-A leagues if he wants to keep his professional career going. At least, he has earned his MLB pension with more than a year of credited major league service.
The Pacific Association was only able to attract about half a dozen former major league players in its six years of operation, perhaps most famously Jose Canseco when he was in his early 50’s.
As a final note, the San Rafael Pacifics joined the Pecos League as a franchise for the 2021 season, and the Pecos league also has a franchise in Martinez, California, where I saw my one and only Pacific League game in 2018.