{"id":329826,"date":"2026-05-23T22:36:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T22:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/329826\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T22:36:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T22:36:32","slug":"casey-schmitt-became-unlikely-giants-star-after-trauma-doubt-and-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/329826\/","title":{"rendered":"Casey Schmitt became unlikely Giants star after trauma, doubt and loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

The Giants\u2019 Casey\u00a0Schmitt,\u00a0rounding\u00a0the bases after hitting a two-run home run on May 5 against the San Diego Padres at Oracle Park, is posting career highs in batting average (.293), on-base percentage (.337) and slugging percentage (.529) this season.<\/p>\n

Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n

Casey Schmitt<\/a> might have the perfect temperament for baseball, especially for bouncing around the field and even taking on the San Francisco Giants\u2019<\/a> designated hitter\u00a0role, too, at a young age\u00a0\u2014 never an easy task.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His teammates, coaches and friends universally describe Schmitt as a goofball, a fun, loosey-goosey type who\u2019s quick with a joke and never seems in a bad mood. These are ideal traits for the nonstop grind of the majors, and for the never-ending failure that defines hitting, in particular. And at 27,\u00a0Schmitt, finally with a firm regular role, is coming into his own while providing one of San Francisco\u2019s few bright spots of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCasey doesn\u2019t take himself too seriously,\u201d third baseman Matt Chapman<\/a> said. \u201cSometimes I think that\u2019s a superpower.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Schmitt entered Friday leading the team in homers (nine), RBIs (22) and, among players with more than 15 games, OPS (.866) and OPS+ (146). Were\u00a0Luis Arraez<\/a> not doing his hit-up-a-storm thing coupled with newly standout defense at second, Schmitt might be the team\u2019s top All-Star candidate, had he a firm position.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Giants<\/a>\"Casey<\/a><\/p>\n

A lot of Schmitt\u2019s success is, of course, sheer ability. He always has been a tremendous fielder, though mostly at third until the Giants signed Chapman before the 2024 season. Schmitt hit, and hit for power, at San Diego State and in the minors. He was even a good closer in college. He combines his skills with an ability to keep things from getting to him, at least not much or for long.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI just keep that confidence in myself. I\u2019m not dwelling on past days or past mistakes,\u201d Schmitt said. \u201cEvery day is a new day for me, and I try to just keep it as simple as that. (Last week) I struck out four times against the Dodgers, but I\u2019m not worried about what happened in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This mindset was something Schmitt had to learn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been through a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s maybe why I don\u2019t let things bother me too much: Life\u2019s fast. You can never know what will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Giants\u2019\u00a0Casey Schmitt hits a two-run homer in the first inning on May 5 against the San Diego Padres at Oracle Park.<\/p>\n

Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n

When Schmitt was 4, his older brother, Nick, then 9, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and required surgery; the tumor was benign and Nick Schmitt is now married with a family and is a firefighter driver\/engineer in Riverside County. Still, it was a scary time for the family, and several years later, in 2007, came another such ordeal: Schmitt\u2019s dad, Dan,\u00a0fell off a ladder<\/a> and incurred a serious brain injury.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe almost died,\u201d said Schmitt, who was 8 at the time. \u201cHe was carrying tiles up the ladder, the ladder went out and he fell head first; they didn\u2019t think he was going to make it. He was in a coma for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Over the course of the next year-plus, Dan Schmitt \u201chad to learn how to walk, talk, feed himself, like the whole nine yards,\u201d said Schmitt\u2019s mom, Tina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job was to get back to 100%, so I was at therapy five days a week, eight hours a day,\u201d said Dan\u00a0Schmitt, a former San Diego child abuse-homicide detective who was by then working in the district attorney\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The injury was so severe, his dad didn\u2019t know who he was, Casey Schmitt said, and he struggled to remember much from before the accident. After his intensive rehab, though, he was able to go back to work. More tough stuff for a kid to go through, but the power of hard work was a firm lesson; Schmitt\u2019s so known for his work ethic with the Giants that as a minor leaguer, coaches often had to tell him to dial it back.<\/p>\n

When Schmitt was 10, his 20-year-old cousin, Michael, died of cancer, and in the past five years, Schmitt has lost three close friends; one to a fentanyl overdose, another to a car accident and, just before this spring, another to leukemia. \u201cThey were all my age,\u201d Schmitt said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been tough on all of us,\u201d said Ben Ramirez, a former Mariners prospect who\u2019s been Schmitt\u2019s pal since middle school. \u201cWe were all on the same travel ball team. It\u2019s really weird, it\u2019s hard. It definitely reminds you that there are bigger things out there than baseball. You get your priorities in check.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Willy<\/p>\n

Willy Adames hugs Casey Schmitt as he returns to the dugout after his solo home run against the Padres on May 4 at Oracle Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n

On the baseball side, there were rough spots, too, starting with 2021, when while playing at Class-A San Jose,\u00a0Schmitt was drilled by a fastball in the face, leaving him bloodied and with two black eyes; his nose was fractured \u201cpretty badly,\u201d he said, but in order to keep playing, he postponed surgery until after his season was done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His parents were watching on TV and alarmed\u00a0\u2014 he left the game under his own power but they had no further information. \u201cWe kept texting him, and he wouldn\u2019t answer so we thought he passed out or something,\u201d Tina Schmitt said. \u201cHe finally texted us a picture of what his face looked like\u00a0\u2014 and it was really, really bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schmitt was back in the lineup four days later, but it took some effort and a lot of work with then minor-league instructor Pat Burrell. \u201cGetting hit in the face was a low, it was a tough thing to get through, just getting back in there, but Pat helped me get through that,\u201d Schmitt said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a lot of work in the cage, Casey was willing to put himself through a lot,\u201d Burrell said. \u201cThen he had wrist surgery and missed the rest of the year. When you go through trauma like that, it can creep back in at times, but he came back the next spring a different guy. Being able to find comfort when you get in that batter\u2019s box is No. 1, and it can be a challenge, but Casey\u2019s a better player because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Over three levels, Schmitt hit .293 with 21 homers in 2022, and the next year, he earned his first call-up and figured he was on his way. Instead, he didn\u2019t make the team out of spring training and bounced up and down four times, with his best position, third base, no longer an option.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was having a tough time mentally,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know if I wanted to keep playing \u2014 but I also just wanted to play so badly. I kept going. I kept showing up, and I\u2019m proud of myself for that. Whenever I\u2019m feeling down or struggling, I look back at those tough times that were dark and think about the fact that I\u2019ve been through worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schmitt dedicated himself to getting familiar with every position possible. He has played everywhere in the infield for San Francisco and, in the past week with Heliot Ramos out, has picked up left field, too. Schmitt is up to 15 different gloves \u2014 minus the left-handed one he\u00a0ordered off Amazon\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 and he could wind up one of the game\u2019s great utility players, a la Ben Zobrist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Giants\u2019\u00a0Casey Schmitt, fielding a groundball during spring training in February at Scottsdale (Ariz.) Stadium, has played every infield position as well as left field this season.<\/p>\n

Carlos Avila Gonzalez\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n

Schmitt’s teammates, though, including Platinum Glove third baseman Chapman, believe Schmitt will settle into one spot and will win Gold Gloves, wherever that might be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to be the jack of all trades and play every single position and play it well and not really know what your role is sometimes,\u201d Chapman said. \u201cIn my opinion, Casey is good enough to be an everyday player at one position\u00a0\u2014 you know he\u2019ll get the opportunity one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapman, like most of the Giants players, considers Schmitt to be like a younger brother. \u201cIt\u2019s like he\u2019s 12 years old,\u201d Chapman said. \u201cHe\u2019s like a little kid\u00a0\u2014 but he\u2019s not dumb. He\u2019s really smart. He just likes to see how much he can get away with.\u201d<\/p>\n

That always has been the case: Schmitt\u2019s parents said he had a racket going as a kid, blackmailing his brother for his allowance and then using that money to pay others to do his chores, Tom Sawyer style.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d go up and down the street and find a gardener to mow the lawn,\u201d Tina Schmitt said. \u201cWhen he was older, he would tell the cleaning lady, \u2018If you scrub the pool for me, I\u2019ll give you an extra 20 bucks.\u2019 He was always finagling a way to get out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That left-handed glove wasn\u2019t Schmitt\u2019s first foray into the world of internet shopping. He brought four pairs of orange Nike cleats off eBay, and as a teen, Ramirez said, Schmitt regularly bought Z 1000 bats off an app, and they\u2019d drive around San Diego picking them up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His treasured Franklin batting gloves, though, met a sad end. \u201cIt was super rainy and they got wet, so Casey was like, \u2018Well, we have a microwave,\u2019 and put them in there,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cWe were like, \u2018What are you doing?!\u2019 then we all kind of got intrigued, like, \u2018What\u2019s going to happen?\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe put them in for 30 seconds and when he pulled them out, they were like gloves for a toddler. They\u2019d shrunk down to infant size. We were all just dying because they were miniature. Our stomachs hurt from laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Giants\u2019\u00a0Casey Schmitt celebrates a double against the St. Louis Cardinals last season at Oracle Park.<\/p>\n

Scott Strazzante\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n

Things like that have endeared Schmitt to his teammates and coaches from the amateur ranks on, but there is so much more than meets the eye, Burrell said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has funny little jokes that nobody other than him would tell, and you know there\u2019s some corniness to it\u00a0\u2014 at the end of the day he\u2019s just a good guy,\u201d Burrell said. \u201cBut he\u2019s also grown so much from a maturity standpoint, from a plate-discipline standpoint. He\u2019s made some incredible adjustments, really advanced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCasey\u2019s been so resilient, he\u2019s had more than his share of adversity, but he\u2019s arrived. And it\u2019s been an interesting road to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Giants\u2019 Casey\u00a0Schmitt,\u00a0rounding\u00a0the bases after hitting a two-run home run on May 5 against the San Diego Padres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[69957,10897,101,4820,103,102,104,106,105,127],"class_list":["post-329826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-casey-schmitt","tag-giants","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}