Sometimes I like to look at a player’s journey and their unlikely road to getting to the present day. And while every player has a tough journey to the big leagues, sometimes that journey involves getting drafted in the high rounds, going through the system methodically, and then making your MLB debut with the team that drafted you. Doesn’t make for an interesting story.
Interesting stories reside in the bullpen. Every bullpen has a few guys that shouldn’t be here, if you looked at how infinitesimally small their chances were at making the big leagues given where they started. This certainly applies to Riley O’Brien. O’Brien attended Shorewood High School in Shoreline, Washington and got zero attention from colleges. He enrolled in nearby Everrett Community College, also in Washington, where he worked out of the bullpen for two years.
He transferred to the College of Idaho, an NAIA program, where he started in 15 games in his junior season pitching fairly well, to the tune of a 3.23 ERA. They certainly used him in a unique way in his senior season, where he threw in 20 games, but only made 6 starts. However, he threw 2 less innings than the year before, so clearly he was either a follower or a multi-inning reliever when he wasn’t starting. He converted 4 saves and had a 2.15 ERA. It convinced the Rays to draft him in the 8th round of the 2017 draft.
Already 22 when drafted, the Rays wasted no time with O’Brien. They sent him to a league that no longer exists, the Appalachian League, where he pitched in 11 games and threw 41 innings. He had a 2.20 ERA, but the underlying stats were less impressive. He was sent to full season Low A for the 2018 season where he truly dominated, striking out 35.7% of batters. He was promoted midseason and wasn’t dominant, but still reasonably effective at High A in 10 appearances.
He repeated High A for six starts to begin the 2019 season. Upon promotion to AA, he was pitching pretty well in AA until an injury ended his season early in late July. Then the pandemic happened. This was especially harmful for a player like O’Brien who was drafted older than typical, so he was gearing up to play his age 25 season in AAA. On top of that, O’Brien just stayed at home, not being invited to the 60-man player pool, and he believed his mechanics changed inadvertently.
According to a New York Times article, O’Brien raised his arm slot trying to chase vertical movement on his four-seam fastball. He didn’t feel like the same pitcher after the pandemic for those first few seasons. Despite not playing at all in the 2020 season, he did manage to get traded at the deadline. To bolster their bullpen, they traded O’Brien for left-handed reliever Cody Reed. Reed threw 12.1 more innings in his career, all for the Rays in the next two seasons. It looks like injuries is why his career ended prematurely.
The Reds kept him in the rotation in AAA, where he made 22 starts. I would describe his stats an uninspiring for a 26-year-old, not really the kind of stats that make me think you have an MLB future. The Reds did give him a late season promotion though, allowing him to make both his MLB debut and his first career start. It did not go well. He walked three and allowed two homers in just 1.1 innings pitched, although mercifully, both homers were solo shots and ended up being the only runs he gave up.
He survived the offseason on the 40 man roster and even got optioned to the minors to begin the season, but he made just one appearance before they DFA’d him because they needed the 40 man spot. Before he cleared waivers, he was traded to the Mariners, for a player who never made the majors. They needed him for one inning in an early May game – he didn’t allow a run in this one – but was optioned the next day. Later that month, he was DFA’d for a second time. He went unclaimed.
He truly collapsed as a pitcher at this point. He walked 4, hit a batter and struck out nobody in his next two appearances, lucky to only allow two runs combined. After an okay outing following that, he allowed 11 combined runs in 3 innings in his next two appearances. The Mariners then put him on the development list for about a month, where he didn’t appear in any games. He wasn’t fixed after this, although he did have a run of success. But he still had a string of four straight games where he allowed at least 2 runs in every appearance.
I would certainly give up on this guy at this point. He had an unimpressive year in AAA as a 26-year-old, albeit as a starter. His transition to the bullpen didn’t really go that well. He had truly awful stats and it wasn’t clear going on the development list actually worked – he had a 6.63 ERA after returning to games. He’s going to be 28. These kind of stories are a dime a dozen. Most of them don’t become anything notable.
But he stayed in the Mariners organization. He got invited to spring training. And he utterly dominated in AAA that year. He struck out 37.7% of batters while getting groundballs 57.1% of the time anyone made contact. He had a 2.29 ERA and 15 saves. He was never called up. He never got his chance to prove his success. This was the year he probably re-found his mechanics and.. he just stayed in the minors all season. When the season was over, the Mariners didn’t have room for him on their 40 man. So they traded him to the Cardinals.
Things didn’t go that well for him in that first season, mostly because he was injured for most of it. He got put on the 15-day IL to begin the season, later changed to the 60-day IL. He spent his full allotment of time in rehab, where things didn’t really go that well. He had a good ERA, but didn’t strike anybody out. When his time was up, there wasn’t much season left and the Cardinals wanted to preserve his last option, so he threw 8 pretty bad innings to end the year.
And then well you know the rest of the story. He was up-and-down for the first half of 2025, before the Cardinals just kept him up for good. His first half of 2026 got him an All-Star nod, and while the 2nd half didn’t really go the way I imagine the fans or Riley himself wanted, I feel like we would be perfectly fine with how he pitched… if he wasn’t the closer. It’s a tough life being a non-elite closer.
Technically speaking, O’Brien was more likely to make the majors than my next focus, because he was drafted in the 8th round. He clearly had MLB stuff, he was just at a lesser-known school. Justin Bruihl on the other hand, did not get drafted in the 8th round. He didn’t get drafted at all. And this was when there were 40 rounds. He did go to a Division I school though. He went to Cal Poly, which has a rich tradition of future MLB players. It was once home to Ozzie Smith and broadcaster Mike Krukow, but more recently, it can claim Bryan Woo, Brooks Lee, and Mitch Haniger.
Bruihl clearly displayed something very special in high school, because he missed his entire senior season due to Tommy John surgery and yet still managed to secure a scholarship to Cal Poly, a Division I school. He pitched fairly poorly in his only college season, although he did follow it up with a fantastic performance in a summer league. He does not appear to have pitched at all in the 2017 college season, and the Dodgers took full advantage, signing him as an amateur free agent after he went undrafted. He did not pitch for the Dodgers that season either.
In his professional debut, he was sent to the Pioneer League, another league that doesn’t exist anymore. He wasn’t that impressive in relief, although he did strike out quite a few batters and most contact was on the ground. Probably due to this, he began the 2019 season in Low A. He dominated Low A, with a 0.79 ERA and 64.9 GB%, prompting a late season promotion to High A. He was pretty effective in 4 games and 7.1 innings to end his season. Then the pandemic happened.
The pandemic didn’t hurt Bruihl though. I’m not even sure it delayed his MLB debut by much. Surely he would have repeated High A if the 2020 minor league season happened. To begin 2021, Bruihl began the year in AA. And he needed just 8 games to prove he should be promoted. In AAA, he was more good than great, but still got a promotion on August 8th of that year. He was reasonably effective in a LOOGY-ish role, although his strikeouts completely vanished. He even made the playoff roster, throwing 3 extremely good innings.
Things were looking up for Bruihl, but his 2022 season didn’t go especially well. He stopped getting groundballs and his K/BB ratio at both AAA and the majors was bad. He was used as a shuttle reliever in the 2023 season, but the Dodgers were no longer enamored by him so he was traded to the Rockies at the deadline for cash, because I’m assuming the Dodgers ran out of room for him. And he had settled into more of a replacement reliever than I’m sure they were hoping.
Unfortunately for Bruihl, this is where having his career sounds less fun and he starts getting passed around more than a blunt at a college party. He pitches absolutely horrible for the Rockies in 3 games and gets DFA’d before August is through. He goes unclaimed and reaches free agency. He signs with the Reds. He pitches pretty good, but isn’t called up so in June, it says he got released, but I’m fairly certain that part of his contract was that he could re-enter free agency if not called up by June.
He signs with the Pirates three days later. The Pirates immediately have use for him, but he doesn’t really pitch that well for them either, and after going up and down a couple times, he gets DFA’d by them in July. He goes unclaimed and spends the rest of the year playing for the Indianapolis Indians. He elects free agency at the end of the season. He signs with the Blue Jays. His contract gets selected in June this time and the Blue Jays take full advantage of his last option, as he gets optioned and then recalled four times after his contract gets selected.
But they did not want to keep him without options, so on December 16 of last year, he was DFA’d again. A day later, he was traded to the Guardians for cash. He wasn’t a Guardian for long. Two weeks later, he was traded for cash again, this time to our Cardinals. In 2026, for the first time in his career, he spent the entire season in the majors, despite this being his sixth season to appear in an MLB game.
Their stories are unique, but their circuitous route to where they are now is very much not unique if you’re a reliever in the major leagues. It’s almost stranger if you haven’t gone through at least three teams by the time you click with a team as a reliever.
Book Corner
I’m tackling a heavyweight this time. I have began Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I’m only through the first two parts, and I’m actually extremely curious how there are six parts of this book. The story right now feels rather small – not in a bad way – but given the stature of the book and that there are four more parts to this story, I feel like it will manage to feel epic.
For example, there have been seemingly random asides that will probably feel less random the more I read. In fact, I already feel the effects of that. It’s also interesting and I imagine groundbreaking for the time, to read a book from the perspective of someone who is genuinely insane (or seems that way). The character is not particularly likable either. It’s actually kind of creepy getting into the mind of someone like that, although compelling certainly.
Those are all the thoughts I have so far. Hard to give a full report on an unfinished work.