Former Pirates and Cubs left-hander Steven Brault signed with the Atlantic League’s new Frederick club last week, and it seems he’ll do so as the hopeful first step down a new career path. Brault has already played left field for his new club, and MLBTR has learned that the 31-year-old plans to become a position player on a full-time basis. He’ll hope to use this opportunity in the Atlantic League to land a minor league deal with an affiliated club and eventually return to the Majors as an outfielder.
Brault may never have garnered as much attention as some of the other best-hitting pitchers in the National League, but he certainly qualifies among them. Back in college, Brault was a .397/.416/.554 hitter in 199 plate appearances. He batted .419/.419/.484 in 36 minor league plate appearances and is a career .258/.275/.337 hitter with a homer — a second-deck, 441-foot bomb — four doubles and just a 14.9% strikeout rate in 101 big league trips to the plate. He’s gone 1-for-8 to begin his season with Frederick. Baseball America’s scouting reports on Brault from his early days in the Orioles system note that he was a plus athlete and the first player in Rocky Mountain Conference history to earn all-conference first team honors as both a position player and a pitcher.
Brault’s move away from the mound comes on the heels of several injury-plagued seasons. Shoulder and lat strains regularly hampered Brault from 2019-22, limiting him to a combined 192 2/3 frames in the Majors over that four-year period. Most of those innings came in 2019, when he tossed a career-high 113 2/3 frames but also missed more than a month with a shoulder strain.
In his career on the mound, Brault at times looked like a viable starter and multi-inning reliever, but injuries derailed some otherwise promising stretches on more than one occasion. In all, he’s tallied 352 1/3 innings at the big league level with a 4.73 ERA, 18.8% strikeout rate, 11.3% walk rate, 0.97 HR/9 and 45.5% ground-ball rate.
Only time will tell whether Brault can successfully make the move to the other side of the ball at age 31, but it makes for an interesting subplot to keep an eye on throughout the season. His raw batting numbers in the Majors certainly don’t leap out relative to other full-time hitters, but it’s clear that Brault has more of a knack for handling the bat than the majority of now-former mound counterparts.
He wasn’t too bad as a pitcher last year, although the sample size was small.
I guess he’ll still be able to pitch, but there is much more room in the major leagues for a left-handed pitcher, then an outfielder
He’s got the bat for it. Good for him. I was his biggest critic as a Pirate pitcher but he’s a great athlete, I can see him making it.
Fun fact. His brother Roger was one of my best friends up until I moved away from San Diego, and I remember watching his first game live.
Through his 1st couple innings, he didn’t allow a run, and got a hit in his first ab..at which point I texted Roger and congratulated him on his brother having the lowest era, and highest batting average in MLB history.
Wishing Steven the best! He’s a great dude!
Aside from Ankiel, I can’t think of any others reaching it to MLB. Anyone?
Anthony gose went from a hitter to a pitcher
Cristian Bettencourt made the majors as a catcher, switched to pitcher and had a few appearances out of the bullpen before going back behind the plate.
Ankiel is a notable recent example.
Adam Loewen is another, with not nearly the success as a hitter or arguably as a pitcher either. Loewen’s high draft position, injury problems, and modest success on a MLB mound may be a good comp for Brault.
David Peralta may be the most successful active hitter who transitioned from full-time pitching, though he never pitched in the majors.
Like the others Kenley Jansen did the opposite. Dodgers drafted him as a catcher and transitioned him to pitcher, and the rest is history. Not too many examples of pitchers transitioning into position players with much success………aside from Babe Ruth.
I believe he was a catcher for team Netherlands in WBC like 12yrs ago
Mychal Givens is another who went the opposite route. Drafted in 2009 by the Os in the 2nd round as a SS, he converted to pitching full time in ‘13 and debuted 2 years later in the show. Pretty nice career with 8.8 bWAR as a late inning RP thus far.
Best of luck with the career/position change – I hope you make it back to the bigs!
He had 34 plate appearances in the majors at the start of his career before striking out. Impressive.
Sounds like a hit.
Always liked Steven. Frustrating on the mound sometimes but liked him pretty well. Seems like a good guy.
Good luck Steven!
Agreed. He was Jeff Locke 2.0 with his plate nibbling on the mound and drove me up a wall, but I never thought he lacked effort or enthusiasm. And he sings a pretty good national anthem too.
I always thought Searage was going to turn Locke around but it never happened. Never really knew what you were going to get with him and he was the weak cog in the rotation
That said, I’d put Brault a couple notches down from there. You’re right, he’s the same style of pitcher but with him, you’d get one good start and then three where he’d get shellacked
Another guy who I thought was going to be ok but had this love affair with missing dead red
The issues for both Brault and Locke were very similar. Both had good enough stuff to deserve a shot at the back end of a MLB rotation, particularly the Pirates pitching staffs they were on, but neither had overwhelming stuff to consistently miss bats. So they both had to live on the edges of the strike zone but neither had the command to consistently be successful with that approach. So when they were on and hitting theirs spots they’d have great outings. Too frequently though they missed, walked a few too many guys and have to groove low 90’s fastballs over the heart of the plate that got crushed.
He’s transitioning.
Does this mean his pronouns are changing? (Waiting for the tomatoes and beer bottles to come cascading down on me any minute now). 😛
now he can sing all he wants out there in the outfield. closer to the fans to hear him.
The new Rick Ankiel without the yips
The next ohtani
If he fails he has to face the fact that he Brault this all on himself.
Skeptical-I had heard that that was the Pirates all time record.
I always liked Brault and hope he does well.I thought that he was going to make a decent pitcher but injuries held him back.
Hope he can make it back. One of the good guys.
His last full season as a starting pitcher prior to the DH he actually slashed .333/.349/.429. in 50 PA’s. Even the year prior his average exit velocity was 92mph even though he wasn’t getting hits, and he struck out less than 15% of the time in his career. He even went 4/10 as a pinch-hitter in his career and was used as a pinch runner several times. He’s worth more WAR as a hitter in his career than a pitcher.
Having said all that I still don’t expect him to make the majors changing positions at age 31. Had he switched a few years ago I think he would have had a legit shot.