EASTLAKE, Ohio — It’s when Tyler Naquin’s mind is clear that the vision appears. He’ll be driving west along I-90, headed home after another game with High-A Lake County. Or deer hunting deep in the woods in Central Texas, where the only sound is the tall grass crunching beneath his boots.
That’s when his imagination conjures up the usual scene: The green-padded bullpen door swings open, and Naquin zips down the steps and zooms toward the mound at Progressive Field for the first time, in front of roaring fans who have only ever known him as a right fielder.
Naquin is 34 years old, sporting a dark-roast-colored mustache and conducting an interview in a mildly irritating drizzle. He’s standing behind the right-field wall of an A-ball stadium with a scoreboard that needs some repairs so fans can see the home team’s line score. Why is he doing this?
The word he can’t shake is “unfinished.”
The reason he’s wearing a Lake County Captains uniform — or, on this late-August evening, a Picantes de Lake County jersey — is that there’s more left for him to accomplish. He’s certain of it.
His last few weeks as a New York Met in 2022 left him dissatisfied. His bid to extend his big-league career in 2023 fizzled. His phone stopped ringing in 2024.
And so, the 2012 first-round pick and 2016 ravishing rookie, the guy who spent parts of eight seasons in the majors as a solid left-handed-hitting outfielder? He’s a right-handed pitcher now.
“God gave me a really good arm,” Naquin said, “so I was like, ‘I feel disrespectful to the guy upstairs if I didn’t at least try it out.’”
It takes a certain type of position player — maybe daring and brave, or foolish and naive — to even consider such a sweeping change, to attempt slinging sweepers and changeups after years of swinging at them.
Naquin isn’t the first to try. In fact, it’s become an alluring option to several players in recent years, with so many more resources available to anyone who can grip a fastball. There are more coaches with more data and technology that can provide more immediate feedback.
That doesn’t mean it’s simple, though.
Charlie Culberson always thought about pitching, since he topped out at 96 mph in high school. After he totaled one plate appearance in two month-long stints with the Atlanta Braves in 2023, he called GM Alex Anthopoulos and asked if he could try pitching. The Braves had removed him from the big-league roster, but he signed a minor-league deal so he could tackle his new venture at Triple-A Gwinnett, about 45 minutes from his home. His 11-year run as a big-league utility player was over.
Culberson spent six weeks on the developmental list to build up arm strength. The last week of the season, he joined Gwinnett’s active roster and made three appearances. Culberson trained that winter as a pitcher and attended minor-league camp with the Braves. That spring, he made three appearances in minor-league games on backfields in front of an intimate audience, and he had three outings in Grapefruit League action, with more eyeballs and more pressure.
The first one went well. He hoped he had demonstrated to Atlanta’s evaluators that they were making a worthwhile investment. The other two went poorly.
“After my last one,” Culberson said, “I was like, ‘Well, that sucked.’”
Anthopoulos called him and told him the Braves were releasing him. They didn’t have a spot for him in Triple A. He didn’t hear from anyone else with the organization, and he didn’t care to leave his wife and three kids behind to chase the pitching dream elsewhere.
“Once it was done,” Culberson said, “it was like crickets. … Life goes on. The season’s about to start. People are busy. I’m going to close this chapter and just move on. It was a little abrupt, a little sooner than I thought. I thought I would have gotten a little more of a chance. But it’s OK.”
Now, he’s rooting for Naquin and for Joey Gallo, his former teammate with the Texas Rangers, who teased earlier this year that he would pursue a pitching career after years of piling up homers and strikeouts. Culberson, like Naquin, had visions of pitching at Truist Park in Atlanta and jogging to the mound “as an actual pitcher, instead of a position player who’s throwing in a 10-1 ballgame.”
Just to be clear, I will be pitching.
— Joey Gallo (@JoeyGallo24) March 16, 2025
David Fletcher, Alex Blandino, Brian Anderson, Ben Davis and Brett Eibner are among the names once penciled into big-league starting lineups who attempted the swerve into pitching.
It’s rare that one of these converts actually claws their way back to the big leagues in that new profession, however.
A couple years after starting for the Braves in the World Series in the mid-’90s, second baseman Mark Lemke was floating knuckleballs toward the plate for an independent outfit in Little Falls, N.J.
Jason Lane spent parts of six seasons in the majors as an outfielder and, after a seven-year hiatus, returned to the big leagues in 2014 for three pitching appearances (including a six-inning gem) with the San Diego Padres.
Brett Phillips, a few years after delivering a walk-off hit for the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series, granted himself a one-year trial as a pitcher, first with the New York Yankees, and then with the independent Kane County Cougars. When that one-year period expired, he accepted a coaching role with the Cougars — coaching hitters, not pitchers.
Still, there are success stories.
Anthony Gose spent parts of five seasons as an outfielder in the majors with the Toronto Blue Jays and Detroit Tigers before switching gears. He battled command issues for years in the minors with several organizations before he broke through (again) to the big leagues with Cleveland in 2021.
Gose spent mornings as a minor-league pitcher with a fishing rod in his hand, wondering if the second act was worth the trouble.
“I love the game,” he said a few years ago. “I love to play. I guess I’m too stupid to quit.”
It’s hard to bail when you throw 100 mph with your left arm. Former Cleveland teammate Adam Cimber once joked, “It was always a life-or-death situation” playing catch with Gose. Scouts implored Gose to pitch when he was blowing fastballs past high school hitters, but he preferred to play every day, so he entered the draft as an outfielder. Nine years after he was drafted, he finally relented to that original advice.
When the pandemic paused baseball in 2020, Gose worked at a Circle K distribution center, as a door-to-door salesman and a plumber’s apprentice, and he covered the front lawns of unsuspecting targets with plastic flamingos for a company that fulfilled customers’ prank requests. In between each odd job, he’d throw. He traveled to Tokyo to play for Team USA in the 2020 Olympic Games and while there, he leaned on veteran pitchers David Robertson, Edwin Jackson and Scott Kazmir for advice on arm care, routines and balancing velocity with command.
The last part was key; once Gose reduced his walk rate, it cleared his path to the majors. He debuted as a pitcher in September 2021, and he didn’t want to take off his uniform after the game. Gose is known as a stoic guy with an icy glare, but he held back tears as he thanked Cleveland’s brass in the manager’s office after the game.
Gose said his pitching debut was more meaningful than his actual big-league debut. The journey back was, in fact, worth the trouble.
Naquin threw a scoreless inning in his debut with High-A Lake County in July 2025. (Photo courtesy of the Lake County Captains)
Naquin was sitting in the parking lot of his buddy’s gym in College Station, Texas, in January 2024, when he decided to try pitching. He and that friend, Clay Tillman, picked up their gloves and started playing catch. Naquin hadn’t pitched in a competitive setting since a Texas A&M scrimmage in 2010.
Last year, as he assisted the A&M coaching staff, he used their resources and leaned on superiors’ expertise. Naquin’s agent connected with Cleveland’s front office in January 2025. Naquin was hoping the Guardians would bite, given his history with the club and their reputation for developing pitching.
He regularly ranked among league leaders in outfield arm strength, even into his 30s. He had worked his way up to 96-97 mph on the mound. The Guardians dispatched area scout Brett Stevenson to watch Naquin throw a bullpen session.
“First and foremost,” said Stephen Osterer, Cleveland’s vice president of player development, “it was, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’”
The Guardians studied video and TrackMan data from Naquin’s bullpens. They consulted with coaches who were working with him to gauge how serious he was about the pursuit. They wanted to make sure Naquin knew he wasn’t going to start in the upper level of the minors, and that this would be a multi-year process.
“It got above the threshold,” Osterer said, “of, ‘Yeah, we have the space for him. Let’s try this.’ It was very interesting — and still is.”
Naquin has connected with an array of pitchers, from Cy Young Award winners Max Scherzer and Corey Kluber to relievers Nick Goody and Hunter Strickland. He spent a few hours in Tyler, Texas, working on plyometric drills with former teammate Josh Tomlin. He has worked closely with a couple of former Cleveland pitchers, Cam Hill and Michael Peoples, who now coach in the system.
Former Guardians starter Shane Bieber, now with Toronto, watched one of Naquin’s first bullpens in Arizona in the spring and marveled at his athleticism on the mound. He told Naquin he wished he could move so free and easy.
“He’s like, ‘You’re chasing something that I want to feel all the time,’” Naquin said.
The feeling was mutual; Naquin wished he could summon Bieber’s command. That’s the key to this entire operation.
“He’s watching how well I work,” Naquin said, “while I’m watching how the catcher doesn’t move his glove whenever he’s on the mound.”
He’s throwing a fastball, a cutter and a changeup, and he has been workshopping something he described as a “death ball sweeper-type thing,” a pitch he lets “do what it wants to do,” as long as he can repeat it. That sounds like a guy still navigating his way through a new world.
The one thing he knows is he has to throw strikes. It’s all he talks about. At times, it’s proven challenging, as he works toward consistent mechanics on the mound. He knew he would hit a rough patch at some point. In his first eight innings for Lake County, Naquin allowed one hit and no runs. He walked four. It was rocky after that, with 14 walks and 13 earned runs across his final 8 2/3 innings of a season that wrapped last week.
He searched for routines to guide him back on track, just as he did when he endured a slump as a hitter. That can be a challenge.
“There are only so many baseballs you can throw in a day,” Culberson said. “There’s really not much else you can do, so there’s a lot of extra time. As a position player, I’d get a workout in and stretch and hit the cages and go outside and do infield drills and take ground balls and fly balls.”
Phillips has monitored Naquin from afar. There’s a bit of a brotherhood, with those who have tried to make the switch rooting for those still undertaking it. He insists his input means little, but Phillips did offer Naquin, and any other hitter-turned-pitcher who may be looking, four bits of advice.
1. Find the right arm care routine that’s consistent with how you feel on a particular day.
2. Throw strikes. Phillips said he tried to “grip it and rip,” and struggled to harness his secondary stuff.
3. Take defensive drills seriously because it’s embarrassing as a pitcher when you mess them up. “I messed them up a lot,” Phillips said. “Couldn’t pick. Couldn’t throw to bases.”
4. “Have fun out there. Baseball is fun.”
Naquin knew when he began that he would start at the ground floor. He was pitching against teenagers at the Guardians’ Arizona complex until early July, and then in front of a thousand fans against the Lansing Lugnuts, Fort Wayne TinCaps and Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. He keeps dreaming about pitching in front of a capacity crowd at a big-league venue against hitters who are thinking all the thoughts he used to cycle through in the batter’s box.
Some days, it seems plausible. Others, he’s not so sure. But he remains hopeful.
He knows how absurd this journey might seem to the outside world. It’s absurd to him, too.
“Trust me,” he said, “I wake up in downtown (Cleveland) and I’m coming to Lake County to pitch.”
In his mid-30s, on a Captains roster full of teammates all at least nine years younger, he knows the clock is ticking. He said if the experiment stalls, the team would probably cut ties with him before he decided to bail. That’s how it ended for Culberson. That’s the challenge Gose has faced in recent years, as he’s bounced from the Guardians to the Mets to the Diamondbacks. That’s how it ends for a lot of players in this situation.
“I’m a realist,” Naquin said.
His arm feels great, though. His mind, too. And the growth he’s witnessed in one calendar year has him dreaming on those long drives or those quiet afternoons in the woods.
“I’ve had a great career. I have,” Naquin said. “I’m not saying I haven’t. But there’s more, I believe. And now we’re here.”
(Top photo of Naquin courtesy of the Lake County Captains)