Growing up, Andrew Albers never thought he was better than everyone else.
The son of Denise, an x-ray tech at the hospital, and Bernie, the former parks and recreation director for the city of North Battleford, Albers spent the majority of his time playing sports of all kinds.
“When you’re six years old, the goal is to be a Major Leaguer and everybody thinks they’re going to be that,” he said. “As you grow up, you kind of realize that’s a bit unrealistic. As I got into high school, the goal became to get a scholarship to college.”
Albers attended John Paul II Collegiate in North Battleford, refereeing hockey and umpiring baseball when he was younger.
Unlike many future professional athletes there was never a point where Albers felt like he was a step above his peers in the game of baseball, despite having scouts come to a few of his games and going to a baseball camp in British Columbia.
“Not a lot, at least not that I knew of,” Albers said of scouts watching his games. “It’s a long trip up here for scouts and there aren’t a lot of guys they’re coming up here to look at. I was fortunate to have my dad as a coach throughout high school and he took me to a few showcases, to a camp in B.C., and that’s probably the big reason I got drafted.”
One of the instructors at that camp was a scout for the Milwaukee Brewers, who ended up selecting Albers in the 12th round of the 2004 MLB draft, which came as a surprise.
“I actually wasn’t expecting to get drafted at all,” he said with a laugh. “I remember being on a school trip to Ranger Lake, and I remember coming home and my mom and dad sat me down and said we needed to talk. I was shocked at how high it was because I told pretty much everyone I had talked to that I was going to go to school.”
The MLB Draft consists of players being drafted out of high school and college, with practically all high school players already being committed to play in the NCAA. After drafting a player, teams then have a few weeks to negotiate with players to try to get them to forgo their NCAA commitment, and sign a professional contract.
Depending on where a player is drafted, there is a suggested “slot value” for how much of a signing bonus the player will generally receive should they sign with the team.
Albers was quite convinced he wasn’t going to play professional baseball just yet.
“It was going to take a pretty substantial offer from any team to get me to not to go to school,” he said. “It was going to take probably close to mid six figures. I didn’t think I was quite good enough where it was going to be worth me not going to school. I talked to the assistant GM and their director of scouting. They made a great case and I felt alright about it, but at the same time I felt going to college would be the better opportunity for me.”
Albers didn’t sign and went to the University of Kentucky on a four-year scholarship, a decision he doesn’t regret.
Like any athlete, he remembers the good and the bad during his time in the college ranks.
“I remember facing Vanderbilt a couple times my sophomore year and coming in and throwing really well in relief and getting a couple wins that weekend,” he reminisced. “They had (current MLB stars) David Price and Pedro Alvarez. Some bad memories as well, I remember blowing a couple games against LSU on Sunday in the ninth, that happens too.”
After his four years in university and armed with a teaching degree, Albers was eligible for the 2008 MLB draft and this time he was ready.
“I thought I could go anywhere from the eighth to the 15th round,” he admitted. “I’m not going to lie I was sitting at my computer watching the draft and finally saw my name come up. Being Canadian I had to get a visa and that took a little bit of time. I was supposed to go to Eugene, Oregon but since I needed a visa they had to send me to the ‘rookie ball’ team in Peoria.”
Albers was selected in the 10th round by the San Diego Padres, and signed with them to begin his professional career.
Upon arriving in Arizona, Albers vividly remembers his first thoughts after landing.
“I remember getting out of the airport and feeling like I was just swarmed with a blow dryer,” he laughed. “It was super hot, they were in the middle of a heat wave in Arizona. I think it was 110 to 120 degrees (43 to 49 C) for 14 days straight and I honestly didn’t see a cloud in the sky. As far as the team goes, there was few college guys that I latched onto. The days were long. Rookie ball was tough. It’s not a lot of fun and it’s certainly not what you expect professional baseball to be.”
Albers pitched just seven total innings for the Arizona League Padres in the 2008 season, because of a nagging injury that wouldn’t go away.
“Somehow in between the college season and going there I hurt my elbow and when I got down there it never went away,” he said. “I got invited to their fall ball team in November to try and work on extra skills and tried to throw and same thing, it never went away.”
Over the offseason he tried to rehab the arm, but the injury persisted, and ended with him tearing his ulnar collateral ligament during spring training in 2009. He thought he would just need minor surgery, but received some bad news.
“I had a bunch of MRIs done. I had stress x-rays and they all came back negative,” he said. “It was pretty frustrating because you know something is wrong, but all these tests are coming back negative as if you should be OK. Eventually we decided to just go to San Diego and originally thinking we were going to do arthroscopic surgery, but when I went down there the doctor did one more x-ray and apparently my ligament had opened up a little more. He sat me down and we had what seemed like a nonchalant conversation where he said ‘Hey your ligament has opened up a little more and we’re going to do Tommy John Surgery on you tomorrow’ and I almost missed it and I thought ‘wait, what?’”
Originally thinking he would be out for about six weeks, Albers was now facing a year-long recovery with Tommy John Surgery.
The procedure, aptly named after former MLB pitcher Tommy John, is a medical practice that replaces the UCL with a tendon found elsewhere in the body. Common in pitchers because of the stress they put on their arms, a number of former and current MLB stars have had the procedure, and returned to the level of play they had before the surgery.
After missing the entire 2009 season recovering, Albers was released by the Padres, which came unexpectedly.
“I was shocked,” he said. “I thought they would at least give me that year to see what they had. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to compete and I was pretty disappointed that they didn’t give me that opportunity.”
Despite being a tenth round pick just two years earlier, Albers couldn’t get a Major League team to take a chance on him, and went to Independent League baseball to show he could still play.
He spent the 2010 season playing for Les Capitales de Quebec, dominating the league en route to a 1.40 ERA in 57.2 innings out of the bullpen.
“It went about as well as I could have hoped,” he said. “But at the same time it was frustrating because I was pitching about as well as I could, and yet there were no job offers from the affiliated teams.”
After being in contact with his agent throughout the winter, Albers still didn’t have any offers to attend spring training with a Major League team for 2011. The only opportunities he received were some open tryouts with a few teams in Arizona. To prepare for the tryouts, Albers went to the University of Kentucky and threw a few pitching sessions with his old coach, who brought in a few scouts to watch.
After open tryouts with the Colorado Rockies and Brewers and still not receiving any offers, he called one of the scouts who was at the University watching him prepare, and asked if there was anything he could do to get Albers a chance to come to spring training with his team, the Minnesota Twins.
“He told me ‘we might be able to fly you out here, take a medical, you can throw for a couple guys higher up in the organization and maybe we’ll give you an invite to spring training,’” he reiterated. “I thought about it, called him back said ‘how about this, I’ll hop in my car, I’ll make the drive over, if you guys like me enough to bring me to spring training you can reimburse me, if not don’t worry about it I’ll just go home.’”
The Twins agreed, and Albers made the 36-hour drive from Arizona to Florida. Sure enough, he was invited to Spring Training and subsequently signed by the Twins on March 10, 2011.
Albers began his professional career with the Fort Myers Miracle, the Class Advanced A affiliate of the Twins, and continued to pitch the way he did in Quebec with a 4-1 record and a 1.55 ERA in 52.1 innings.
He was then called up to the AA league New Britain Rock Cats, and again showed the Twins they wouldn’t regret signing him. He had a 4-1 record and 2.91 ERA in 43.1 innings.
“The AA league was a bit of a jump, the players started getting better there,” he said. “I had a lot of success early and it just gave me the confidence that I can play with these guys, they aren’t any better than I am.”
After spending most of 2012 in AA, this time almost exclusively as a starter, he finished the year with a 4-3 record and a 3.75 ERA in 98.1 innings, earning himself a chance to play in AAA in 2013.
Once again Albers pitched well, making 22 starts with a 2.86 ERA in 132.1 innings, before he was finally called up to the Minnesota Twins on Aug. 3.
“Usually when guys get called up their first time we have a team meeting,” he explained. “We were in Lehigh Valley playing the (Philadelphia) Philles AAA team. I had a feeling that I might be the one, because I was really the only guy down there who hadn’t gotten that opportunity yet.”
After getting the news, he naturally called his parents first.
“Unfortunately they weren’t home,” he laughed. “So I called my sisters and talked to them for a little bit and then I finally got a hold of mom and dad a little bit later. I called my agent, called my college coach and the scout with the Twins who gave me an opportunity.”
Coming into a Major League clubhouse for the first time can be a nerve racking experience for any baseball player, but Albers felt he didn’t have any issues transitioning.
“I got to go up a couple days early, get a feel for the guys, just be in that clubhouse, so that helped out,” he explained. “The unfortunate thing was we just got trampled the night before (his first MLB start.) Going into my start I just wanted to eat up some innings and give the bullpen a bit of a rest.”
When Aug. 6 came it was time for him to appear in his first MLB game, and while he wasn’t nervous the night before, he was shaky during his pre-game warm up.
“I go out and the first thing I saw was some guys from home with ALBERS painted across their chests, so it helped me relax a little bit,” he laughed. “Then I go and throw my pre-game bullpen and it was probably the worst bullpen I’ve ever thrown in my life. I wasn’t anywhere close to locating any of my pitches. Our poor pitching coach had to be thinking ‘we’re about to send this kid out there and he looks awful.’”
Once the game began however, he settled in nicely.
“I remember my first thought was I want my first pitch in the Major Leagues to be a strike, I didn’t care if the guy hit it a mile,” he admitted. “I was going to throw a strike right down the middle and it was against Lorenzo Cain and he took it for strike one, from there it kind of just rolled.”
That might be an understatement. Albers finished his first Major League game throwing 8.1 innings, allowing just four hits as the Twins beat the Kansas City Royals 7-0.
As if a debut like that wasn’t good enough, Albers went out six days later and threw a complete game shutout against the Cleveland Indians on Aug. 12.
“You always imagine it, right?” he said. “It was incredible. I don’t think I’ve thrown a complete game two-hitter in my life, and somehow second start in the Big Leagues I managed to pull it off.”
Albers stayed with the Twins for the remainder of the 2013 season, making 10 starts with a 2-5 record and 4.05 ERA. During the offseason, the Twins signed a number of pitchers and Albers felt he was on the outside looking in for 2014, so he asked the Twins to sell his rights to a Korean team, the Hanwha Eagles.
“The Korean team approached me and asked if I would be interested,” he explained. “It was a great opportunity and I just felt like I couldn’t pass it up. Unfortunately that experience didn’t go as well as I would have liked. I didn’t pitch very well over there, our team wasn’t very good and I was a big part of that.”
A 6-13 record with a 5.89 ERA wasn’t exactly what Albers had in mind when he went to Korea, but says he doesn’t regret his decision to go.
“The first half just went awful. I was really bad,” he said. “I’m pretty disappointed in my performance over there, so that made for a long season. The culture was a lot different. The manager made all the decisions and nobody ever questioned him, even though at times I felt he did some questionable things.”
While he knew the language barrier was going to be a factor, it was more difficult than he anticipated.
“It was an issue. We had a translator who spoke very good English so that was nice, but it was certainly an issue.” he said. “Communicating with coaches and other players was tough. You end up latching onto the other imports and you feel really isolated because they’re sort of the only people you can talk to. Certainly butted heads with the coaches and the manager a couple times with the lack of communication, because we just didn’t understand what the other person was saying.”
His team option for this upcoming season in Korea was declined, making Albers a free agent again. It didn’t take long for Major League teams to start calling.
“There were a few (teams interested,) I was a little bit surprised, I thought there might be a little bit more interest than there was,” he admitted. “We looked into the teams that were interested and just felt like Toronto was the best fit. They needed a little bit of depth from a pitching stand point, and hopefully I can provide that.”
The Twins were also interested in bringing him back, but Albers says with the young players they have, Toronto was a better fit. It was officially announced he had been signed by the Blue Jays Dec. 19.
Despite his past Major League experience, he says he wants to keep his expectations level headed.
“The expectation is always to get better,” he said. “You can stretch yourself out a lot if you start worrying about ‘when am I going to get called up’ or ‘should I get called up’ or ‘why is this guy getting called up and I’m not.’ That’s a bad game to get into because you just can’t control all that.”
Chances are Albers will begin the 2015 season with the Blue Jays AAA affiliate in Buffalo, but he’ll attend spring training with Toronto before any decisions are made. Feb. 23 is when Blue Jays pitchers and catchers will head to Florida, and Albers says he’s looking forward to getting back into the routine.
“Right now it’s just about taking it day by day,” he said. “Just working hard every day and getting yourself into as good a shape as possible, get the arm ready and feel good going down there.”
Should Albers get called up to the Blue Jays this season, nobody should be surprised if a few North Battleford natives with “ALBERS” painted across their chests are seen at Rogers Centre.
