CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – It almost bordered on monotonous, the surgically spotless outing 2015 Wisconsin right-hander Bryant Jordan turned in Saturday afternoon at the Perfect Game Pitcher/Catcher Indoor Showcase, held for the first time at PG Headquarters’ new, spacious indoor facility.
The performance was remarkable for its redundancy, magical for its monotony, crazy for its consistency. The numbers on the radar screen seemed suspended in time, stubbornly unmoving pitch after pitch after pitch: 89 (mph)-90-90-90-91-91-90-91-90-90-90-90 …
And it continued, as four live batters took their turns failing to make even the most insignificant contact with Jordan’s unhittable offerings: 89-90-90-89-89-89-90-90-89-89 … BOR-ING … but, oh so beautiful.
“Absolutely,” Jordan said when asked if he strives for that kind of consistency every time he steps on the mound. “I have more in the tank for sure and I’m hoping this spring I’m at 93, 94, maybe 95, but that will all come once it starts getting warmer and the muscles start getting loose.”
Jordan, who calls Hubertus, Wis., home, was one of 42 prospects in attendance at the PG P/C Indoor Saturday; about the same number were on hand Sunday. The sun was out and the temperature rose above 40 degrees Saturday afternoon while the foot or so of snow outside of PG Headquarters began to melt away, but the indoor setting was welcome, nonetheless.
At least a couple of dozen scouts gathered behind home plate, radar guns pointing through the netting while 28 pitchers tried their best to stand above the crowd. Jordan’s effort ranked among the best of the day; he joined Lake Forest, Ill., 2016 right-hander Cal Coughlin in reaching the low-90s with their fastballs.
PG’s initial scouting report on Jordan noted that he “topped out at 91 with arm side run and sink on his fastball. Flashed a very good changeup with lots of sink and arm side run. Has a low effort, easy and repeatable delivery.”
It was pretty much what the University of Missouri signee was hoping to accomplish.
“I felt pretty good out there; I thought I did pretty good for February 7,” Jordan said a satisfied laugh. “I loved it out there and I had a great catcher (2017 Jack Hollinshead, Highland Heights, Ohio); it was a lot of fun. I’ve been dying all through January to get at it. I had the (PBR) Super 60 last week and I felt pretty good for that, but I felt a little bit better here; I feel like I’m almost there.”
Jordan has kept extremely busy this winter. He has been involved in a pro workout for three or four hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, working on agility, legs, core and back. He’s been doing arm care and throwing bullpens on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and running four miles a day, every day.
The Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts are done near his home in Hubertus, which is located about a 40-minute drive northwest of Milwaukee. On Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday he spends a few hours working with Greg Reinhard at the GRB Academy in Madison, Wis.
Reinhard, who pitched professionally in the Tampa Bay Rays and Chicago Cubs organizations for five years, first began running camps when he was still a player in 2006. The Madison-based GRB Academy opened in 2011.
Jordan is a very athletic 6-foot-2, 185-pounds and is the product of parents who were college athletes. His father, Bill, played college baseball at UC Riverside and his mother, Janelle, was a track athlete at the same school.
Bill worked with Bryant up until his high school years – “Until he surpassed” Bill, Janelle said with a laugh – and the son benefitted greatly from his dad’s input.
“During my younger years he was out there helping me a lot,” Bryant said. “He worked with me on my mechanics, on my mental mind-set – he worked with me all the time. He could get me to a certain point and that’s when my new coach (Reinhard) took over and took me to the next level.
“But my dad’s been there the whole way, kind of critiquing because he knows the way that I play; he’s been a great influence on me.”
Bill and Janelle felt the trip to Eastern Iowa this weekend would be a nice way to break free from the winter doldrums, even if it did mean more work indoors.
“This is a good way of getting him more visible,” Janelle said. “It was an invite and he felt like it was a good opportunity to showcase himself; it was more exposure for him. … This was good timing for him.”
Bill expounded on that thought:
“The biggest thing for him is focusing on his mechanics right now and we’ll let the velocity and let the other stuff kind of fall where it may. Right now it’s still early in the season – he’s going to do the Perfect Game Spring League – so a lot of his prep in December and January was gearing up for that.
“It’s important at this stage,” Bill continued. “He’s getting some interest from a lot of the major league clubs, and it’s important especially early in the springtime to get him the exposure that he needs; we’ll see what happens come June.”
This is Jordan’s first PG showcase experience and only his fourth PG event overall, and while his PG tournament experience has been limited, it’s also been successful.
He was named to the all-tournament team at the 2013 PG WWBA Underclass World Championship pitching for the St. Louis Pirates; he was all-tournament at the 2014 PG WWBA Kernels Foundation Championship with the GRB Easton Rays; he was a member of the Reds Midwest Scout Team squad that advanced to the second-round of the playoffs at the 2014 PG WWBA World Championship.
It was at the PG WWBA World in Jupiter, Fla., in late October where Jordan really turned heads. His fastball sat consistently at 89-92 mph while he also showed a 73 mph curve and 74 mph slider.
“I had a great fall; my command was there, my velocity was there,” he said. “I went down to Jupiter and I thought I threw pretty well there and during the offseason is when I really wanted to get after it, working pretty much six days a week just getting ready for this spring the upcoming draft.”
Bill and Janelle made the decision to home-school their son because they wanted him to have the freedom to travel with them to visit family that is spread across the country and not be tied to a rigid academic calendar. It’s worked out well as Bryant has met or exceeded every standard to gain admission to Mizzou, a highly respected academic school in the Southeastern Conference.
A drawback of being home-schooled is that Jordan’s options for playing organized ball in the springtime are limited. Fortunately, his home in Eastern Wisconsin is only about a four-hour drive to Eastern Iowa, and he has decided to play in the wildly popular and heavily scouted Perfect Game Iowa Spring League for the first time this year.
The wood-bat league provides excellent scouting opportunities for high school prospects that can’t play for their high school teams in the spring, which includes every prospect from the state of Iowa, with its summer-only prep season.
“I’m really looking forward to that,” Jordan said. “There is great talent out here (for the PG Spring League) and it’s definitely where I want to be.”
Jordan made his commitment to Missouri in October 2013 during his junior year academically. With his college commitment out of the way, Jordan was able to start thinking about an even bigger fish in the pond, the upcoming MLB June Amateur First-Year Player Draft.
The main reason the Jordans felt it was important for Bryant to be at the PG Pitcher/Catcher Indoor Showcase was to get him out in front of the large numbers of scouts that turn out for the event each year.
“I heard there would be some pro scouts here and I’m getting reach for the draft this year,” Bryant said. “I’m working hard for it and I want to see what happens this June. I’ll know more about what’s going on more toward late April and into May, but I’m looking forward to it.”
Bill Jordan said the family has become fairly active in their discussions of the upcoming draft, with those conversations coinciding with the increased interest Bryant has received from several teams. There has been enough information pouring in and enough in-home visits from scouts to have the family pretty excited about what the next four or five months might hold.
“The thing about Bryant is, he’s so level-headed that with all of the things that are going on he knows what he needs to do; for us as parents that’s pretty cool to see,” Bill said. “We don’t have to talk him off a ledge.”
On a relatively warm February day in Eastern Iowa, Wisconsin righty Bryant Jordan showed a large contingent of scouts just how remarkable redundancy can be when a pitcher shows such keen consistency on every one of his pitches. His parents were equally impressed.
“His talent, it’s really unbelievable to watch,” Janelle said. “His progression, and the hard work he’s put into it – he works hard and he wants to take it to the next level.”