‘This is bigger than baseball.’ Dunbar, EKU grad’s pro career in limbo.
In the best of times, the life of a minor league baseball player is filled with uncertainty.
Clearly, these are not the best of times.
Like it has nearly every sport, COVID-19 has left professional baseball in a state of limbo as decision-makers work to plot a path forward amid a pandemic. A rising star from Lexington is among the throng of young players whose dreams of climbing into the ranks of Major League Baseball have been put on hold because of the coronavirus.
Aaron Ochsenbein starred at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School before putting together a standout college career at Eastern Kentucky University. The 6-foot-3, 225-pound right-handed pitcher was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the sixth round of the 2019 MLB Draft, and after a promising partial season on the team’s farm circuit he appeared poised to take another big leap this year.
However, two weeks into spring training he was sent back to his new home in Fort Collins, Colo., and left to wonder when his march to the majors would resume. Ochsenbein said information about a potential start to the season has been difficult to come by in the last couple of months.
“I haven’t really been informed about anything relating to the minor league season and if or when it’s going to happen,” Ochsenbein told the Herald-Leader in a recent phone interview. “The Dodgers just say that they’re pretty optimistic that something is going to happen but they don’t want to give us any false hope or false information until it’s concrete. We’re still kind of in the dark right now.”
Ochsenbein hit the mound running in the minors, spending just five games among two Dodgers rookie-ball squads before being called up to and finishing the season with their Class A affiliate, the Great Lakes Loons. In 18 appearances last season he pitched 25 innings, striking out 35 batters and walking just six on his way to a 1.44 earned run average. He picked up three saves along the way and did not allow a single home run.
Because of that body of work, Dodgers brass told Ochsenbein he was being promoted to their High-A affiliate, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, in California to begin this season. He was stoked for his next step up the ladder.
“When we were in spring training the Dodgers had a meeting with me to map out a player plan for the upcoming season and told me I’d be starting with the Quakes,” Ochsenbein said. “I was really excited. You put in all the work in the offseason thinking it’s going to be a great year. We even got a taste of it with a couple weeks of spring training.”
Ochsenbein was stunned at how quickly things changed.
“The Dodgers said we were going to have an off day just so they could have meetings … about the coronavirus and the next day we had a big camp meeting at the facility and they said ‘we’re going to send you guys home due to the coronavirus,’” Ochsenbein said. “And they had no clue how long we’d be gone or what was going to happen. It was a big shock to everybody.”
To have the rug pulled out from under him was tough, but Ochsenbein is clearly keeping a level head amid the uncertainty.
“It’s hard, but this is bigger than baseball, so it’s not that difficult to put it aside and avoid being selfish,” he said.
Ochsenbein has been patiently preparing for a return to baseball while living with his fiancee, former Dunbar soccer standout Katie Craft, in Fort Collins. While Craft has been busy with graduate school at Colorado State University and a summer internship, Ochsenbein has been training.
“I’ve been lucky. The indoor facility I’ve been working out at over the offseason, the owner has kept it open to pro guys and some college guys as well,” Ochsenbein said. “So we’ve been taking the necessary precautions and training. There’s five or six of us that go four or five times a week and we get our work in. I’ve been really fortunate.”
Ochsenbein is also fortunate to be working for a franchise that continues to pay its minor leaguers even though no games are taking place. The Dodgers have committed to paying their minor leaguers $400 per week through at least the end of this month, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Meanwhile, Dodgers star pitcher David Price will give $1,000 each to 220 minor leaguers in the Dodgers system as a goodwill gesture.
Ochsenbein is hopeful he can get back to baseball soon, though he worries about how fallout from the pandemic will affect other Americans.
“It’s tough, it really is. I’m so eager to get back out there,” he said. “I don’t have any concerns about myself because of coronavirus but I’m worried about everybody’s jobs and what’s going to happen to all these small businesses. I know a lot of people are hurting.”
As one might expect from a humble player who’s clearly keeping things in perspective during these difficult times, Ochsenbein said among of his favorite aspects of minor league baseball are traveling and getting to know people whose backgrounds differ from his.
“You see all these different parts of the U.S. that you might not have got to see otherwise and you meet so many people from different countries,” Ochsenbein said.
“We’ve got guys from Germany, South Korea, Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican (Republic). It’s cool to meet all these guys with different backgrounds. You get to mingle and mesh with them, it’s really great. I definitely look forward to getting back to that.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 8:02 AM.
