Drew Gagnon, Journeyman

Drew Gagnon is not, shall we say, a household name. Mets fans, holding all else equal, might be most familiar with his career, but particularly fastidious baseball fans might just as well have familiarity too. Many more fans might become familiar with him soon though, as he is one of a handful of MLB-tested players currently under contract with a KBO franchise. This of course comes as ESPN and the KBO have agreed to a deal which will enable ESPN to present KBO games in the coming weeks. Gagnon (pronounced GAHN-yo), is presently a member of the Kia Tigers, and figures to get some airtime.

Drew Gagnon is the topic of this post because his career is simultaneously an interesting case and a very typical one. Gagnon, and players “similar” to him, have all at once achieved incredible success while grinding in ways maybe only possible for players who feel they have considerably more to achieve.

Drew Gagnon was born on June 26th, 1990 in Columbia, California. While it’s perhaps mildly strange to drop a player’s date of birth in the opening lines of a blog post, birthdays are of heightened significance for professional athletes. Gagnon’s is noteworthy for a couple reasons. For one, his birthday falls right ahead of the domestic June draft, and he was drafted in an era where amateur players’ ages (versus that of their competition) was gradually becoming more scrutinized. Second, his birthday comes before a popular, yet arbitrary, cutoff for seasonal age. In a five month minor league season, Gagnon would spend nearly three of those months a year younger (on paper) than his season-age on a site like baseball reference would indicate. It’s semantic, but a bit of a tough break in a world where page-glancing evaluators put a premium on youth.

Gagnon was drafted twice. He was first taken in the 10th round of the 2008 draft by the Pirates, but no deal came of it. Three years later, after having successfully raised his personal stock at the baseball player assembly line that is Cal State Long Beach, Gagnon was the 100th name called (good for a third round selection) in the 2011 MLB draft. With that, he became a member of the Milwaukee Brewers organization.

His professional career got off to a bit of an ignominious start. Gagnon reported to Helena, Montana, to play in the eight team Pioneer League. There, he promptly permitted 35 baserunners in just 19 innings, which led to an ERA north of 8 and a winless record. His next campaign, in 2012, gave way to stronger results. Split evenly between low- and high-A, Gagnon played competition aged slightly his senior, and played well. In all, he provided 149.2 innings of work with a sub-3.00 ERA and solid peripherals, even if his strikeout rate (6.9 K/9) against young players left something to be desired.

Here Gagnon’s trajectory took somewhat of a turn. From 2013-2016, more often than not, streaks of success were framed by stretches of adversity. Gagnon had a particularly brutal AAA debut in what is truly a high elevation hellscape for pitchers, Colorado Springs. In 89.2 innings with the (then) Sky Sox during the 2015 season, Gagnon owned a 1-11 record to go along with a 6.93 ERA, 1.81 WHIP, and more walks than strikeouts. The Brewers brass began to lose faith; in 2016 Gagnon returned to Colorado Springs in a relief role. Following that campaign, he was made a “throw in” in an offseason deal that also sent Martín Maldonado to the Angels.

Gagnon’s circuitous path through professional baseball, specifically the minor leagues, is part of what makes him typical. Like hundreds of others, and thousands before them, Gagnon rode the carousel that is the minor leagues. From Biloxi to Binghamton, Helena to Huntsville. Like so many others, his movements have been dictated by other powers; like so many others, he has been promoted, demoted, traded, and released.

Gagnon’s final year under a minor league contract was spent treading water at another brutal pitchers’ park in Salt Lake City of the PCL, again primarily in relief. With that, Gagnon became a 27-year-old minor league free agent. That winter, he played in the Venezuelan Winter League and performed well in a brief audition, striking out a batter per inning. Just before New Years 2018, news “broke” that Gagnon had signed as a minor league free agent with the Mets.

While being invited on board with a team via a minor league deal is no small feat, given the level of competition, minor league free agents are very far from being sure bets. Early on in 2018, Drew Gagnon looked like a bet that simply would not pay off. Playing on another PCL launching pad, this time in Las Vegas, Gagnon served up 14 home runs in his first 8 starts with the (then) 51s, on his way to a 7.14 ERA and a .969 opponent OPS.

Rather suddenly though, things changed. Over his next 9 starts, Gagnon struck out 55 batters in 56 innings and, maybe most crucially, permitted just 3 home runs. For that stretch, his ERA was a formidable (especially in the PCL) 2.89 and opponents were held to a .629 OPS. He may have exorcised some demons along the way too. In June, he made a quality start in Colorado Springs and struck out 9 over 6 innings. Later that month he faced Salt Lake City, and struck out 10 batters over 7 shutout innings.

Days later, Gagnon got news that the Mets, in a flurry of moves revolving around an upcoming doubleheader, were creating space on the active roster for his contract to be purchased. On July 10th, 2018, Drew Gagnon made his MLB debut, roughly two weeks after his 28th birthday.

Of course, things didn’t suddenly get easy from there. Gagnon’s home run troubles haunted him in his debut, as he gave up two in 4.2 innings of work and eventually took the loss against the visiting Phillies. Reassigned to AAA, but still a member of the 40-man, Gagnon put together a strong finish with the 51s, striking out 68 over 61.1 innings in his next 10 starts, all the while limiting opponents to just 6 long balls. In September, he was back with the Mets, chipping in 7.1 innings in relief while allowing just 1 earned run.

2019 had perhaps a similar cadence as 2018 for Gagnon, though possibly lacking a bit of the desperation characteristic of a player who hasn’t made his MLB debut. A member of the Mets 40-man throughout the offseason and Spring Training, Gagnon started the season in AAA (this time at the Mets’ new home of Syracuse in the International League), but was (twice) an April call up. After a long relief mop-up job in mid-April, Gagnon found a bit of a groove in the Mets bullpen in May, where in 10 appearances Gagnon contributed 11 innings of 3.27 ERA ball.

At the big league level, things began to unravel from there. Most significantly, the home runs plagued him. From June onward, Gagnon surrendered an unpalatable 10 home runs in the just 46 plate appearances against him. Despite a 2.33 ERA in 88.2 2019 AAA innings, Gagnon couldn’t replicate that success at the highest level. After the conclusion of 2019 season, the Mets chose to clear some space on their roster and released Gagnon in late November.

His AAA performance in the latter half of 2018 and throughout 2019 did not go in vain though. Less than two weeks following his release, Gagnon signed with the KBO’s Kia Tigers, securing himself a lucrative salary (relative to MiLB) and a position on the Tigers pitching staff. As Ben Clemens of FanGraphs noted, Gagnon will likely draw upon his strong feel for the strike zone in tandem with his “honest-to-god plus [changeup]” to be successful.

There are hundreds of personal baseball sagas like Drew Gagnon’s. All things considered, his is a real success story. Still, you figure he, and countless others, envision additional success for themselves. You can be sure that Chris Flexen, another ex-Met, envisions success in the KBO too, just as Josh Lindblom did, and Eric Thames before him. Taking greater stock of the paths traveled by players to reach the MLB, the KBO, or any other league, makes it that much easier to appreciate them, regardless of whether or not they are a household name.