Brad Brach: From Small School Afterthought to Baltimore Orioles Closer

Brad Brach has gone from a 42nd round draft pick to the current closer for the Baltimore Orioles.

When it was revealed that Zach Britton would be out for 6-8 weeks due to a reported forearm strain, the already-productive run of Brad Brach as the Baltimore Orioles closer was extended by two months.

This led to the question – who exactly is Brad Brach? Where did he come from?

The story is quite intriguing…

Background

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After graduating from Freehold Township High School in Freehold, New Jersey, Brach began his collegiate career at Monmouth University, who a quick Google search reveals has a student enrollment of ~6,300 students.

Monmouth’s baseball team plays in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, a Division 1 conference. As a freshman, Brach worked his way into the starting rotation, where he was elite as a sophomore and junior, making 28 appearances, 27 of them starts, with a 2.69 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, and an 8.1 K/9.

After his junior year, Brach was being considered as a feasible pick in the 15th-25th round of the draft, but he had a fall back year in his senior year, not performing poorly, but not dominating the way a senior in a small conference would be expected to, as he posted a 3.36 ERA, 1.42 WHIP, and 7.84 K/9.

This led to Brach falling all the way to the Padres in the 42nd round of the draft. How late in the draft was this? The round no longer exists. In the collective bargaining agreement that started in 2012, the draft was limited to 40 rounds.

Padres career

The Padres moved Brach immediately to the bullpen. He was still using a starter’s repertoire, with a fastball that worked around 90-92 MPH, along with a split-change and a slider.

Brach moved up quickly, going from the Arizona Rookie League in his draft year in 2008 to full season ball in 2009, where he saved 33 games and posted a 1.27 WHIP and to the Cal League and high-A ball in 2010, where he continued his success, posting a 2.47 ERA and 41 saves.

In 2011, after a good performance in both AA and AAA, Brach broke through to the major leagues. While he didn’t perform well in the majors, he’d posted a 2.89 combined ERA between AA/AAA with 34 combined saves.

Brach split the next two seasons between the major leagues and the Padres, but he just never seemed to be able to produce similar results in the majors as he was getting in the minor leagues, predominantly because his velocity hovered around the 90 MPH mark.

Before the 2014 season, he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles for minor league starter Devin Jones. Jones pitched one season for the Padres organization and was completely out of professional baseball after 2015.

Baltimore Orioles breakthrough

Coming over to the Baltimore Orioles, Brach discussed with David Laurila of Fangraphs this spring that he made a mechanical adjustment to open up his delivery from throwing across his body like he was doing in San Diego and leaning in his delivery to being more direct to the plate and square with the plate in his approach.

This and forcing him to focus on just his primary three pitches (Brach has tinkered with a number of other pitches over time) allowed Brach to experience an uptick in his velocity where he is sitting at 93-95 and can touch 97 along with cutting loose with more of a true split fastball than a split change, seeing the pitch touch 90-91 MPH rather than sitting more around 82-83 MPH.

The results have been obvious. Brach worked on his new approach in AAA for Baltimore early in 2014, but once he came up, he was very good. From 2015 to current, however, he’s been absolutely dominant, posting a line of a 2.39 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 9.94% walk rate, and 28.27% strikeout rate, earning his first All-Star appearance last season and putting up numbers worthy of similar consideration this season, especially considering that he’ll likely be the closer still for the Baltimore Orioles when the All-Star break comes.

While the path may have started abnormally, Brach is certainly in the class of the best relievers in the game now, and he’s got the closer role on a first-place Baltimore Orioles team now.

Next: MLB Mock Draft, Version 2.1

When Brach first came on my radar (and interestingly I picked him up for the first time in a dynasty league I am in) was a performance in 2014 over the Pirates that had multiple people very impressed. Here’s the video of that game:

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