Seven Years in the Minors, One Phone Call: Herons Reliever Nate Coleman Gets His Shot

Nate Coleman was asleep in a hotel room outside Omaha when his phone rang at 5:40 on Tuesday morning. The River City Herons had a day game against the local Triple-A club, and Coleman, who had pitched two innings the night before, assumed someone in the team’s travel office had made a mistake. Then he heard the voice of Herons manager Bill Torrance. “Pack everything,” Torrance said. “You’re going to the big leagues.”

By 9:15 a.m., Coleman was in an airport terminal with two duffel bags, a glove and a boarding pass to join the Bay Mariners in the middle of a pennant race. He had been in professional baseball for seven years, pitched for five minor-league teams in four states and been released once. He is 28 years old. On Tuesday night, he sat in a major-league bullpen for the first time, and on Wednesday he pitched a scoreless eighth inning in a one-run game.

A long road to one phone call

Coleman was a 22nd-round draft pick out of a small college in Georgia, a right-hander with a decent fastball and very little else that scouts could put on a report. He spent his first three seasons as a starter in the low minors, posting earned run averages above 5.00 in two of them. The organization that drafted him released him in spring training four years ago.

He spent that summer pitching for an independent-league team in Pennsylvania, driving to games in a 2009 sedan and coaching youth pitching lessons in the mornings for $40 an hour. “I gave myself one more year,” Coleman said by phone from the Mariners’ clubhouse on Wednesday. “If nobody called, I was going to finish my degree and teach. I had the paperwork filled out.”

Someone called. A Mariners scout who had seen him in an independent-league game liked his arm speed and recommended a minor-league contract. The team moved him to the bullpen that fall, and the move changed his career.

The slider that changed everything

As a starter, Coleman threw four pitches and none of them particularly well. The Mariners’ pitching development staff, led by minor-league pitching coordinator Ellen Fisk, suggested he simplify. They dropped his changeup and curveball and spent an entire offseason redesigning his slider using high-speed cameras at the team’s training complex in Arizona.

The adjustment was small to look at and large in effect. Coleman shifted his grip so his middle finger sat along the seam, and he began throwing the pitch harder, closer to his fastball speed. The result was a slider that breaks late and sideways, at about 87 miles per hour, instead of a slower, loopier pitch that hitters could track early.

The numbers followed. This season with the Herons, Coleman posted a 2.31 ERA across 54 relief appearances, striking out 81 batters in 62⅓ innings. Opposing hitters batted .171 against his slider, according to team tracking data.

Nate never once complained about where we sent him. He just kept showing up with questions. Guys like that tend to figure it out eventually, and he did.

Ellen Fisk, Mariners minor-league pitching coordinator

Why the Mariners need him now

The call-up was not purely a reward. The Mariners’ bullpen has been stretched thin over the last three weeks. One setup man is on the injured list with forearm tightness, another has pitched in four of the last six games, and the team’s starters have averaged fewer than five innings over that span. Manager Gary Holbrook said he needs innings, and he needs someone who can get right-handed hitters out late in close games.

“We have seen the reports for two years,” Holbrook said before Wednesday’s game. “The slider plays. We are going to put him in spots that matter, and we are going to find out pretty quickly.”

Holbrook did not wait long. With the Mariners leading 3–2 in the eighth inning on Wednesday, he sent Coleman to face the top of the opposing order. Coleman struck out the leadoff hitter on a slider in the dirt, got a weak ground ball to second and ended the inning with a fly out to center field. Eleven pitches, eight strikes. The bullpen gate barely had time to close.

The people who made the trip

Coleman’s mother, Denise, drove nine hours overnight from Macon to be in the stands on Wednesday. She arrived with about two hours to spare and a sign she had made at a gas station in Tennessee. His college coach watched on a laptop in his office. His independent-league manager from Pennsylvania texted a photo of the clubhouse television, which the team had turned to the Mariners game.

Several people along the way are still in Coleman’s phone as favorites. Asked to list who he called first after Torrance hung up, he named them in order:

1. His mother, who answered on the first ring and started crying.
2. His fiancée, Rachel, a nurse in Charlotte who was just finishing a night shift.
3. Ellen Fisk, the pitching coordinator who rebuilt his slider.
4. The scout who signed him out of independent ball, who did not pick up because he was asleep.

Life in a big-league bullpen

The adjustment off the field has been as dizzying as the one on it. Coleman’s first locker in the Mariners’ clubhouse sits between two veterans who have combined for more than 1,100 major-league appearances. One of them handed him a list of unwritten bullpen rules on his first afternoon, including who sits where, who brings the sunflower seeds and how long a reliever should wait before starting to stretch in a close game.

The paycheck changed, too. Minor-league players earn a small fraction of the major-league minimum, and Coleman has spent most of his career sharing apartments with two or three teammates and driving an old car. A month on a major-league roster will pay him more than any full season of his career. He says the first thing he plans to buy is a plane ticket so Rachel can watch him pitch in person. The second is new tires.

What comes next

Nothing is guaranteed. Relievers called up in September often bounce between the majors and minors for years, and the Mariners will have decisions to make about their playoff roster in a few weeks. Coleman’s fastball, which sits around 94 miles per hour, is good but not overpowering, and big-league hitters will adjust once they have seen his slider a few times.

Coleman knows all of that. He also knows he has already done something that most of the players he started with never did. “I have thrown in a lot of empty ballparks,” he said. “I am going to remember the sound of that crowd for a long time, no matter what happens next.”

Back at the riverfront ballpark, the Herons have already hung a small framed photo of Coleman in the hallway outside their clubhouse, next to the other players who made it to the majors from River City. There are 31 frames on that wall now. The newest one still has a sticky note on it, written by a clubhouse attendant: “Year seven. Never quit.”