Yesterday, I profiled the college career of pitcher Max Bain up to the point where he was not taken in the 2019 MLB Draft on June 6. I used comments from an interview I did with Max last Monday to highlight and give some depth to his story. Today, Max is going to do most of the talking about the six months in his life in which he transformed himself from a nondrafted free agent to how he signed with the Chicago Cubs.
While Max was not picked last June, he still had the urge to play the game he loved. He had some ideas about why he was not taken that he talked about yesterday, but he knew that he had to keep on playing. His first stop would be back in the Northwoods League for the Kalamazoo Growlers. In his brief stay there, he struck out 18 in 11.2 innings out of the bullpen. His ERA was a sparkling 2.31.
But playing for no money in a summer wooden bat league is not going to get you signed. So Bain wound up signing his first professional contract as a pitcher with the Utica Unicorns in the United Shore Professional Baseball League as he waited for the big leagues to come calling. As a Unicorn, Bain pitched in 14 games and put up 21 strikeouts while increasing his velocity. Still, no one one came calling to sign Bain when the season was complete.
Bain would say this of his first professional experience:
I convinced myself at that time, I thought that what was maybe holding me back was just exposure based upon what people around me and told me and what not, that exposure was the limiting factor. I was convinced that going to Utica and putting up numbers was going to be enough to get signed. It was a great, great experience and I had great teammates. I was catch partners with the former first round pick in Ty Hensley. My assistant coach, who is now working with a MLB organization, was Willi Martin. Those two people were kind of astronomical in showing me what it was like to be a professional baseball player.
So, we ended up winning the league in the USPBL, which was awesome, which was great, but I think deep down I knew that I hadn’t made the steps that I needed to make personally to sign an affiliated contract. When I went there, and anybody who knows how to work Google can pull this off. I made a ton of movement base changes in my delivery and I showed horrible control. I think I had 24 walks in 22 innings or something like that, It was not good. And I think if I would’ve had more time, I would’ve got that under control. It wasn’t the immediate success that I needed to get signed. So, overall, I view that as a lateral step in my career instead of making progress where I wanted to be.
What makes Bain’s tale so interesting is his own self awareness. He’s able to evaluate the situation, figure out what’s not working and try to come up with a solution that does work. Sometimes it takes a while for everything to sink in, and this was the case last fall after no one came calling to sign him up after his tenure with Utica. As a result, he knew he had to make different changes and do so quickly. A lot of his changes took place at Prime Time Velocity in Waterford, Michigan. In addition, he also used his connections and relationships that he built up over the past four years to help him along the way.
Right after that, I had that moment where I was really needing to start taking ownership of my career, development of myself. and I moved on from the whole socially insecure thing.. That was kind of when that all ended. I think it’s really hard because the longevity of your career is based upon others making decisions for or against you and ultimately that’s going to determine your career longevity.
However, that being said, I made it a priority to control what I could to the best of my ability. You can’t worry about stuff you can’t control. Things will fall into place one way or another. So I completely moved on from all that and just wanted to control what I could. But if I felt that i did that, one of two things was going to happen. The first of which, which did happen, with my ability to prove to be enough to sign an affiliate contract second, if I never earned a contract, I would be able to be honest with myself in terms of my evaluation of how good I really was, that I did everything that I could during that contract which is giving me that I thought was appropriate closure.. One or two things was going to happen and the first did, obviously being a Cub and all.
From September to January, Bain totally reshaped himself physically, mentally, and what he threw at Prime Time Velocity as his fastball jumped from the low 90s consistently into the middle 90s sometimes touching 98 (I will go into more detail of how he did later in an article for Cubs Insider).
But like the old adage, if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if no one‘s around to hear it? The same could be true for Bain in his career at this point. He needed somebody to see the changes that he made at Prime Time Velocity. So, he used video from his workouts and some assistance from the Twitterverse to help get “Max Bain 2.0” out there on the market.
Once I started seeing the gains, I used every connection I had, I had to take advantage of who I knew. Three people in particular that helped me get the Cubs to scout me were Nick Swanson, who was running the business here at Prime Time Velocity, Austin Atwood who I now work with at Prime Time Velocity, and Mark Sackett, who owns the building. So Mark actually put me in touch with Charlie Haegar, the Cubs’ pitching coach at AA Tennessee. He came to see me throw three times between December and January.
But in doing all of that, I wanted to use Twitter to its fullest extent, too. Rob Friedman of Pitching Ninja was huge in helping me. He retweeted my first video where I showed 93/94 with a curveball. It was all right. It was a decent video but I didn’t hear anything from that video. I had already thrown for Charlie twice (by then), but in terms of getting extra interviews I didn’t hear anything from that video (Note- it was tweeted on December 27, 2019).
What came next just a week later was mind blowing. Max would release a second video on Twitter on January 3, 2020 and everything changed after that.
When I posted that 94 to 96 touching 98, I had 18 teams reach out. It was pretty crazy, it was in a five day span. Email and phone were blowing up. Going through all of that, I talked to Charlie a lot and he was huge in getting me here/getting me where I needed to be. He put in a word for me, got me in touch with the right people. He was awesome!
In having those conversations, the Cubs were always the preferred destination because they just revamped the investment into pitching development and their willingness to treat players well. That was a huge factor for me and ultimately deciding to sign with the Cubs. I couldn’t be happier to be with the organization now
It’s pretty cool to hear Max talk about the passion he has to be a professional baseball player and how much he’s willing to transform himself and to look himself in the eye and to make his own path. His Twitter account is really a tale of aspiration from September through December and then it becomes a tale of inspiration once he signs with the Cubs.
The rest of the interview and his physical and pitching transformation will be detailed at Cubs Insider in the coming days. Max will do most of the talking as he tells his story of exactly how he went from an 89 to 91 pitcher to a 94 to 96 arm at Prime Time and just exactly what he’s done since becoming a Cub.
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