First baseman Matt Hague might be 30-years-old, but he’s not giving up on his Major League Baseball journey just yet — and with good reason. The Toronto Blue Jays think he can play a role on the club during their 2015 pennant race.
Drafted in the ninth round of 2008 by the Pirates out of Oklahoma State University, Hague spent all of his time in Pittsburgh’s organization before being selected off waivers by the Blue Jays on August 18 of 2014.
Hague appeared in only 33 games for the Pirates. Across eight seasons of minor league ball, he’s a career .301/.375/.434 hitter. In 2014 playing for both Pittsburgh and Toronto’s Triple-A affiliates, Hague slashed .282/.371/.465 with 15 home runs and 76 RBI. Not at all bad numbers, but he wore out his welcome after 6.5 seasons in the Pirates’ systems with neither of two call-ups resulting in positive enough results.
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Something clicked in 2015 for Hague during a full season with the Buffalo Bisons. His batting average jumped 56 whole points from 2014 and he composed a slash line of .338/.416/.448. Earlier this month, the Bellevue, WA native was named the International League’s MVP. As if the Blue Jays needed anymore offense. But the expansion to a 40-man roster on September 1 brought the hard-hitting club just that.
Hague hit 11 homers in the minors this year and drove in 92 runs. He led the IL in batting average, OPS, total bases and struck out only 65 times in 523 at-bats, the fifth most registered by any player at Triple-A this season.
Toronto currently employs a committee of players seeing starts at first base. Justin Smoak typically starts against right-handers, while Chris Colabello has seen most of his playing time against southpaws. Edwin Encarnacion also plays plenty there when he’s not slotted in the designated hitter’s spot.
In Triple-A, Hague hit both righties and lefties very well with a .327/.377 split. Right now, Hague will primarily serve as a pinch hitter for the Blue Jays during their stretch run. He is nonetheless a name to keep an eye on for the remainder of the season.
Smoak is a six-year veteran and has never hit better than .239 over an entire MLB season. Colabello has been a pleasant surprise, but it’s Hague who might have more upside offensively for Toronto when Encarnacion starts at DH.
In a Saturday loss to the Red Sox, Hague came up big for the Blue Jays in the bottom of the ninth. After Jose Bautista blasted a two-run bomb to close the deficit to one-run and with Encarnacion lifted for a pinch runner in the eighth, Hague pinch hit for Dalton Pompey in a 7-6 ball game. With two out and the bases empty, Hague hit a line drive to center field over Jackie Bradley‘s Jr’s glove with an 0-1 count that smashed off the wall and resulted in a stand-up double. The Blue Jays now had the tying run in scoring position, but Smoak grounded out to end the ball game rather anti-climatically a few moments later.
In baseball, better late than never happens a lot. Many players don’t make their footprint in the big leagues until well into their twenties and early thirties. In 2012 at age 26, Josh Donaldson was a relatively unknown infielder for the Oakland Athletics. Three years later, he has transformed himself into a leading candidate for an AL MVP with the Blue Jays. That’s not to say Hague is worthy of a comparison to Donaldson, but every year there seems to be a life-long minor leaguer that makes his mark with a big league club in the postseason.
Colabello himself is a shining example of better late than never. He didn’t record his first big league at-bat until his age 29 season with the Twins in 2013. Before that, he wasn’t even in a farm system, having played most of his career previously on baseball teams from independent leagues.
Just last year, a 30-year-old Travis Ishikawa swatted a walk-off three-run shot against the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS that catapulted the Giants to their third World Series appearance in five years. To date, Ishikawa has logged 3398 at-bats in his minor league career to only 943 at the MLB level. In 2015, he spent most of his time playing Triple-A ball for the Giants and Pirates.
A native of Washington State just like Ishikawa, Matt Hague could be this year’s version of the former for the Toronto Blue Jays in the postseason. All he needs to do is have a bat in his hands at the right time and place. From there, the rest could be history.