“I figured it was back to gator skinning and wallaby walloping for me,” Stranaghan said.
When the check came in, though, the guy his friends call “Poison,” grabbed his girlfriend by the arm and hopped on a plane to Alamogordo, New Mexico, where he joined the YS9 rookie ball club. “I loved the teams name,” he said when asked about his first opinion of the place. “The Road Runners. Quite the fuggin Aussie, eh?” Turns out, his girlfriend loved the place, too. “She enjoys big open spaces with nothing in them,” he said. “And New Mexico is nothing if not that.”
Oddly enough, things started turning around. Replete with some real coaching, Stranaghan posted a 2-2 record in four starts, augmented with a 3.00 ERA. He struck out 12 hitters in 27 innings, but walked only five. A 1-1, 3.63 start to 2040 was enough to get him promoted to Cat Island, the club’s low-level A-ball club, where he again impressed, going 5-3 in 13 starts, and finishing with a 3.03 ERA.
“Kat loved Cat Island, too,” the right hander said. “Go figure, eh? I mean, there’s only like 1,000 people in the whole place unless it’s game day. Totally beautiful.”
The problem, of course comes in the fact that this year the team assigned him to their full A-ball club in Fort Worth Texas, which is neither small, nor isolated. While Kat may be a little on the Hot Tin Roof in Texas, scouts are beginning to take notice. Since he was signed, the fastball is up a nice 5 MPH, and the projections sit at a not unenviable 6/6/3. No one is yet saying he’s going to take Carlos Valle’s position at the top of the Nine rotation any time soon, but his 4-2, 2.13 stat line, complete with 34Ks and only 8 walks are making people notice.
“He’s got a real nice motion on the cutter, and his circle change is growing into something he can use to set people on edge,” one scout wrote. “Could probably get people out in a pinch out of the bullpen right now.”
While that scout may be a little optimistic, it’s true to say there are probably guys drawing big league checks that he’d out-duel in a roping contest. Most serious baseball people say he’s got another step to go before anyone gets all up in arms over him, but followers of the minors are buzzing about him, and suggesting that manager Bill Inkster could be calling on some late inning poison as early as 2043 if a lot of things went right.
For his own point of view, well, Dean Stranaghan is an Aussie through and through. “Just take it one g’day at a time, you know? If I’m lucky I’ll put off the gator baiting for another year.”
Kat, of course, is free to hope that additional year is in, perhaps, Santa Clara. I hear it’s lovely there in the springtime.