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Baseball - Redemption Song: Matt Marley Feature
publication date: Apr 2, 2009
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author/source: Scott Stump
By Scott Stump - Managing Editor
E-mail: stump@allshoremedia.com
RED BANK - If you told Red Bank Catholic senior pitcher Matt Marley two years ago that he would one day be a Division I baseball player, what exactly would the response have been? "I would've thought there was no way at all,'' Marley said before smiling. "I figured I would be lucky just to even play high school baseball and then be done.'' "It wouldn't have even been a thought in your head at that point,'' said RBC senior catcher Jake Beim. "I was very surprised he was able to do it, but it shows what happens when you work hard, and it shows a lot about his character.''
The Transformation One year later after Marley had been cut as a sophomore by previous coach Tony Martinez, first-year head coach Buddy Hausmann sat with current assistant athletic director Devitt Gillroy in the school cafeteria and watched as Marley, who had transformed himself from a catcher into a pitcher, threw bullets off a makeshift mound during tryouts on a wintry day. Marley had started to gain confidence after playing in the summer as a pitcher for the first time in his career, but the tryouts were the true test of whether this experiment was going to work or not. "I'll never forget sitting in the cafeteria with a mound set up with Devitt, and Marley threw just five pitches and I just looked at (Gillroy) and said, 'This kid is on the team,''' Hausmann said. "I knew I could work with him. His arm was live, he was loose, and he was big and broad.'' "When I got cut I went to go talk to Tippy (Martinez) and asked him what I could improve on,'' Marley said. "He said, 'I liked your throwing mechanics and you have a pretty good arm for a small kid,' because I was small at the time, and he wanted me to try as a pitcher next year. (On that day in the cafeteria), 'Haus' liked what he saw, I guess.'' Rather than give up on his baseball career, Marley drove his work ethic up a notch and remade himself into a player with a bright future. His swimming career also helped in that it developed size in his shoulders and back that coupled with a live arm to produce a right-handed pitcher who came out throwing in the mid-80s right off the bat. It also helped that Hausmann's expertise is pitching, as he is a former star at RBC who led the state in strikeouts as a senior, went on to throw at Seton Hall and was drafted by the Mets before arm injuries derailed his career. "I love baseball and I didn't have a great tryout, so I knew I could come back the next year and show them what I got,'' Marley said. "I just got in the weight room and did what I had to do. I also was playing football at the time and lifting had just really started for that after I got cut, so I just went in and worked as hard as I could.'' Marley also kept playing on recreation and travel baseball teams and when he returned as a junior, Hausmann was sufficiently impressed enough to give him some early work out of the bullpen in low-pressure situations at the beginning of last season. Despite never having played at a level higher than freshman baseball, Marley soon gave Hausmann enough confidence to stick him into tougher scenarios out of the bullpen and he excelled, going 3-1 as a junior and carrying an ERA of under 2.00 for most of the season. "He was so successful early on that I started pitching him more and more and by the end of the year, he was our No. 1 guy,'' Hausmann said. "For a kid who had never been in those situations, nothing bothered him. You wouldn't know if he was getting ripped or if he was mowing people down. He was always the same kid, and that's hard to teach.'' He relied primarily on a cut fastball that occasionally flashed into the high 80s along with a curveball, and it was enough to put him on the radar of Division I schools only a year after he was a kid watching from the stands. That furious rise to prominence also made him an easier sell to college coaches for Hausmann because Marley has only scratched the surface of his potential. "It's only been a year, and that's the big thing that I told all the colleges - this is a kid who is not overworked,'' Hausmann said. "He hasn't thrown 300 innings already, and he's not overused or someone who's had arm injuries. Try to find a kid at 18 years old who hasn't really pitched that much. That's what so intriguing about him.'' Iona clearly felt the same way, and just like that, Marley was suddenly a Division I baseball recruit after making a verbal commitment to the Gaels. From Novice to Ace After pitching primarily out of the bullpen last season, Marley had to prepare himself for a senior year in which he would be the Caseys' No. 1 starter in only his second year of ever being a pitcher. That meant he had to pump up his stamina, expand his pitching repertoire and put in more hard work across the board. During the summer, he played with the highly-competitive New Jersey Twins travel team, and worked tirelessly with current Minnesota Twins minor-league pitcher Rob Delaney to continue to absorb the nuances of pitching. "He just needed experience and that's what he got last year, and then he threw a lot in the summer with the New Jersey Twins,'' Hausmann said. "I just picked the brains of everyone I worked with and tried to absorb as much as I could,'' Marley said. He quit football this past fall to focus on getting prepared for baseball, and during swimming season, he could often be found in the RBC weight room only an hour or so before he had to go swim in a competitive meet. He did whatever he could to build the arm strength he would need to go deep into games as a senior starter. "He was driving on Friday nights to Paramus to work out with the head Twins scout from 8 p.m. to like 10:30,'' Hausmann said. "Any other high school kid is not hanging out in Paramus on a Friday night, but he never missed a workout.'' Another goal was harnessing his raw stuff, as he often couldn't get both his fastball and curveball clicking simultaneously last year and often relied on the cutter to a fault. "Last year he had more games where his fastball was working but he had trouble with his curveball or his curveball was working and he had trouble with his fastball, so it was more just getting both of those pitches down consistently so that he could throw them both in games for strikes,'' Beim said. "I've got good speed and movement, I've just got to put it where I want to, which was a problem last year,'' Marley said. On a frigid day at Count Basie Field on Wednesday, Marley unveiled how far he has come in a short time. He threw a complete-game four-hitter, striking out nine and walking four while allowing just two earned runs on a pair of solo homers in a 6-4 nondivisional win over Ocean in the season opener. More importantly, he showed impressive stamina with 110 pitches with temperatures in the 40s and struck out the side in the seventh inning, polishing off the final batter after Hausmann made a visit to the mound with two outs. "I just wanted to get that last batter and I wanted (Hausmann) to give me the chance,'' Marley said. "I've been working hard in the off-season, and I wanted to show him I could do it.'' Marley also showed some early confidence in his changeup, a pitch he worked heavily on during the summer. He said he threw six of them in one inning at one point against the Spartans. "His changeup looked very good today,'' Beim said. "His velocity and consistency have improved, and other than the two balls he left out over the plate (for the home runs), he spotted everything pretty well. At the end I wanted him to stay in there. I wasn't going to let 'Haus' take him out.'' Despite the high pitch count on Opening Day in less-than-ideal conditions, Hausmann said that Marley is such a rubber-armed pitcher that Hausmann will have to talk him out of any heavy throwing or shagging flyballs on Thursday. However, it's that type of relentless attitude that reshaped Marley's entire future. "He believed he could do it, and he's showed everyone else,'' Hausmann said. "That's just the kind of kid he is.'' Marley's emergence is also particularly crucial to the Caseys because he is the main returning pitcher with any experience, as senior Mike Nicola is out for the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. The rest of the Caseys' staff is talented and promising, but completely unproven, so had Marley decided to hang it up two years ago, RBC might be searching for a bona fide No. 1 starter right now. Instead, he reinvented himself through hard work, dramatically altering his future in barely over a year. "I'm a fighter, I guess,'' he said before smiling. "It just goes to show that it's not over if you're willing to put in the work.'' |
