SURPRISE, Ariz. — What’s the best way to impress a new manager in your first trip to big league training camp before exhibition games even start? Try a fastball that can reach 100 mph, a sweeper with a high spin rate that can be “devastating,” per MLB Pipeline, and a deceptive arm slot to deliver it all.
“That,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said, “will open your eyes.”
How did right-handed pitcher Gavin Collyer — a late-round draft pick six years ago with a career 4.36 ERA in the minor leagues — get here?
“A lot of failure throughout A-ball,” Collyer said Thursday morning. “After the 2022 season, I think I maybe topped out at 93 that year, and it was like, ‘I’ve got to figure something out or my career is over.’ Everyone is throwing 96, 97. This is not going to play.”
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Collyer trained his arm to throw harder that winter with a diet of weighted balls, plyometric workouts and more intentional bullpen sessions. His velocity began to climb and so did he through the minor league ranks. Collyer pitched two seasons at High-A Hickory before he made his Double-A Frisco debut at the end of the 2024 season. Last year, which included a promotion to Triple-A Round Rock, his four-seam fastball ran 95-98 mph and paired well with a high-spin sweeper.
“It’s a sigh of relief,” Collyer said. “When you do get done with a live, and they say you’re sitting 97, 98 — you just want to smile.”
The 24-year-old Lawrenceville, Ga. native has been among the buzziest names through a week plus of live bullpens and side sessions at his first major league camp. The Rangers selected Collyer in the 12th round of the 2019 draft, gave him a $585,000 bonus to woo him away from a Clemson scholarship and re-signed him to a minor league deal this winter when his first contract expired.
He was a non-roster invite this spring and will be among a host of veteran and internal minor leaguers who’ll vie for one of the two or three jobs available in the Texas bullpen.
“If he’s around the zone,” Schumaker said. “He’s got elite swing and miss with a fastball, which you just don’t see in the game.”
The hurdle that Collyer will need to clear in order to solidify himself as a legitimate bullpen candidate this season is his walk rate, which Schumaker classified as “not healthy,” and his ability to throw strikes. He walked 6.15 batters per nine innings at Frisco last season and threw only 57% of his strikes after his Round Rock promotion.
Collyer added a low 90’s cutter to his arsenal prior to last season and exclusively threw it to left-handed hitters. He wants to use it against both sides this season to get ahead in counts and set up his four-seam fastball and sweeper as “the two-strike, swing-and-miss pitches.”
“I’ve got to get ahead,” Collyer said. “I’ve got to get that first-pitch strike.”
It could get him far.
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