The baseball season ends and most fans put the sport out of their mind until pitchers and catchers report to spring training around five months later outside of the occasional transaction over the offseason. Its not so easy for the players themselves. In fact, the offseason is when they can focus their energy on making significant strides in their development. Whether its adding a new pitch or putting on good weight to improve their power. Of course improvements can be made during the season and that’s where you can really see the results of the hard work being put in but in this two part series I wanted to take a look at what exactly goes into an offseason routine for developing minor league prospects. I talked to one pitcher and one position player in the Orioles system. First up was right handed starting pitcher Zach Peek, acquired from the Los Angeles Angels in the Dylan Bundy trade and currently ranked as BSL’s 29th best Orioles prospect.
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Peek is a big part of the underrated depth in the Orioles farm system. He started the 2021 season with low A Delmarva and earned a promotion to A+ Aberdeen in mid-July after striking out 31.4% of batters and only giving up two homeruns over 45.1 innings. He was a bit unlucky en route to a 4.37 ERA due to a high BABIP but his fielding independent pitching for the Shorebirds was 3.38. One thing he needed to do was cut down on the walks and he did that once he was with the Ironbirds, lowering his walk rate from 4.17 per nine to 2.82 per nine over a similar amount of innings (45.1 in low A, 44.2 in high A). He gave up a few more homeruns up there and the strikeouts dipped just barely to a still very good 29.1% but with less runners on base he was able to post a 3.22 ERA. As a top 30 prospect in our latest ‘On the Verge’ top 50 I predicted he would start the year in AA Bowie’s rotation once games start up in April. Facing what is most likely the biggest jump in talent that he will be facing at the minor league level, what does a player like Peek do over the course of an offseason to prepare?
“The offseason is full of a lot of work that nobody gets to see.” Peek told me when I spoke to him last week. When the season ends, the regular throwing schedule doesn’t. “You maybe give it two weeks, three weeks at the most. Then you’re back in the weight room, back to moving your arm around just like you never took any time off.”
I was curious about how often you pick up the ball over the winter, whether its more often but less pitches thrown. “You try to stick to that five day schedule as much as you can. So, end of January into February is kind of when you’re ramping up to prepare for early camp. So the way I structured it this year was I would with like a (bull)pen on Wednesday and then live either Friday or Saturday. Had a couple of pro guys there and we just set that schedule up.”
So how much can you really accomplish in one offseason? And what was the plan for Peek and the Orioles when it came to his throwing program? “They do a really good job of keeping it individual. A lot of us have offseason goals that we’re trying to accomplish so we’ll go over that kind of briefly in our exit meeting and then you have a point man for the offseason. They’ll give you little things to work on or something they want you to completely overhaul. Like before last spring training my offseason goal was to move better with the lower half so pretty much all of my offseason work was built around trying to move better with the hips. This offseason my goal was to be more rotational into arm path. Last year my arm was climbing a little bit with the elbow so I’d get to a point so then my elbow would come up and then down, so we just worked on smoothing that out to have more of a rotational movement.” That is all about being more efficient and putting less stress on his elbow. But that’s not all the Orioles had him working on over the past few months.
“I was in instructs camp last year a couple weeks after the season and got a chance to talk with Holty (Orioles pitching coach Chris Holt) and we spoke about throwing a slider, throwing it hard, so that was a pitch that they wanted me to gravitate towards there at instructs and then the rest of it was on my own, trying to develop that pitch. I think it’s the right call. I have a big, huge curveball so something else that looks like fastball and then dives to make use of the arsenal.” He is already comfortable enough with the new pitch to throw it in games and is getting swings and misses with it early on in camp. “Once I found the cues and what I was working for to throw that and what I wanted to see out of it was the best part for me because then I was like OK, now I know what I’m looking for let me just repeat that.”
If Peek is going to have a plus hard slider to pair with his fastball along with his already effective changeup and looping curveball, watch out. He is a big time breakout candidate as he reaches the upper minors at 23 years old (he turns 24 on May 6th). We had already talked about him as having the floor of a very effective reliever at the major league level given his swing and miss stuff on BSL’s own ‘On the Verge’ podcast (where Peek himself has previously been a guest) but if the Orioles are adding pitches to his arsenal that speaks to them seeing him being able to stick in the rotation long term which we already thought was possible before finding out that information. It will be exciting to watch his progress this year whether that includes a quick stop back in Aberdeen due to some congestion in the upper minors or if he starts immediately with Bowie and his pitching coach from the Ironbirds last season, Ryan Conway, as I have predicted.
When I asked him what his goals were for the 2022 season Peek’s response was ambitious but realistic. “I’d like to pitch good enough this year to get up to AAA and see how my stuff plays at that next level so I can start working to make adjustments.” As you can see it won’t be a lack of hard work that keeps him from reaching his goal and shooting even higher up our prospect rankings as the 2022 season gets underway. I agree with him that he should be able to reach AAA Norfolk this season, I see no reason to hold him back if he pitches the way he did in 2021 or better. I also wouldn’t be surprised if he performs well enough when he gets there that fans are calling for him to get the call before the season ends. But at the very least he should be an easy choice to add to the 40 man roster and protect from the rule 5 draft heading into the 2023 season.
Keep an eye on Zach Peek’s name as you’re looking at minor league box scores and stay tuned to the second part of this series which will focus on 2021 draft pick out of Kentucky, outfielder John Rhodes.
BSL Analyst
Bob is a co-host of ‘On the Verge’ an Orioles podcast focused on the O’s farm system here on BSL. He used to run the baseball blog ‘The Oriole Report’ before transitioning to podcasting about movies, TV, Video Games, and MMA. ‘The Redbox Report’ movie podcast was started in 2013 followed by ‘The Redbelt Report’ MMA podcast in 2016. Bob has also written for Konsume.com and BaltimoreSportsReport.com and delivers mail for a living in Baltimore County. Follow him on Twitter @TheOrioleReport.