Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times
On December 29, the Dodgers traded for relief pitcher Garrett Cleavinger in exchange for first basemen Dillon Paulson and a player to be named later in a three team trade. Cleavinger has strong ties to the West Coast and should fit right in with the Dodgers organization.
He has come a long way since being a pitcher from Kansas that got his first taste of the West Coast with the University of Oregon. He pitched there for three years before being selected by the Orioles in the 3rd round of the 2015 Draft.
After spending some time within the Orioles and Phillies organizations, he now comes to a Dodgers team that is loaded with talent.
He understands well what type of team he’s coming to and looks forward to working with the Dodgers staff, stating, “as we started to get the logistics figured out, and everything, I became super excited that we’re getting the opportunity to come out to LA and play for, you know, a team that just won the World Series.”
One of the things the Dodgers will be getting out of him in return is toughness — someone that refuses to back down from a challenge given to him.
“He had a really good toughness level, Brad Stoll, Cleavinger’s coach at Lawrence High School said, “which is, I think, one of his best attributes, and he just comes from a competitive, hard nosed family.”
Stoll has reminisced about the times he was coaching Cleavinger and being one of his baseball mentors. The connection to sports was always there for the pitcher, as his mom played softball throughout her youth and his father was an all-around great athlete, so you can say he was born to play this game.
Coach chuckled as he recalled the time that Garrett wasn’t on the varsity team in high school (instead pitching on JV) and they had Garrett go against the Varsity hitters.
“He was carving. Just was dealing against a very, very good offense. So at the time it raised some concerns for me about our Varsity team,” Stoll said.
But as anyone that understands baseball would say, performance is only half the game. The other is mental, and the ability to bounce back after giving up a home run or getting into a jam does wonders for a pitcher’s confidence.
“I think something that stands out along with that competitive fire and toughness also came at first, some inability to move on past mistakes, and he would get really frustrated. So it was fun to watch him mature and get through that. And by the time he was a senior, he just had really great composure and if he got a bad call, or if a teammate made an error. He just moved onto the next pitch,” Stoll said.
In Cleavinger’s debut, he pitched against the Mets at Citizens Bank Park. He was up two strikes against Robinson Cano and Garrett seemed to remember it, clearly stating “I feel like I was making pretty good pitches. I feel like I had Robbie Cano struck out and then you know, I hung a slider and he knows what to do with it.”
However, Cleavinger was able to bounce back and get Pete Alonso to ground out to third and then finish it up with his first big league strikeout of Andres Gimenez. He showed off that maturity that Coach Stoll was talking about.
Coming over to the Dodgers organization, he’s ready to join his new club and help defend their title. “I mean, you’ve got Clayton Kershaw in there, you’ve got Mookie Betts in there, who’s been out of this world the last couple seasons, and then, you know, you have some younger core pieces like Walker Buehler, and you know, Corey Seager and Will Smith, who I got to play with back in 2017,” Cleavinger said.
He’s also excited to be working with pitching coaches Mark Prior and Connor McGuiness, who he had former ties to back in 2017.
Despite coming to a new team, he’ll have some teammates he’s already worked with in years prior to joining the club.
Back in 2014 in the Cape Cod League he was pitching for the Falmouth Commodores and he crossed paths with Buehler, who was pitching for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox at the time. While Garrett didn’t pitch in that game, Coach Stoll remembers “Walker Buehler beat us in Game Two of the championship series. So if you had those arms like that, you got no shot.”
Buehler went 8 innings, allowing no runs on only three hits and striking out eight in that game.
Cleavinger has shown he has what it takes to dominate at the big league level and help the Dodgers sustain the type of success they are used to. He’s highly regarded from his high school coach as a hard working player and a good person both on and off the field.
The Dodgers definitely have someone special that has the potential of being lights out in whatever role they put him in, and there’s no doubt Garrett will accept it with grace.
Jacob Cisneros is a writer for Dodgers-LowDown. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @_JacobCisneros.