Blue Jays OF Chris Colabello takes incredible journey to the majors

Howard Megdal | Special for USA TODAY Sports

Any number of challenges could have sidelined Chris Colabello’s career before it even started, kept him out of the Baseball Encyclopedia and, ultimately, away from the Toronto Blue Jays, where he is a key and unlikely contributor on baseball’s most imposing offensive club.

They, for one, are glad Colabello persevered, ignored a million-dollar offer to play in Korea and remained focused on a major league future that didn’t become reality until he turned 29.

“No doubt about it,” his manager, John Gibbons, a longtime minor leaguer himself, said about whether it meant more to him to see someone like Colabello succeed. “First of all, most guys would’ve quit by now. What was it, how many years in independent league? Seven? Most guys would’ve said, I need to get on with my life. But he didn’t give up that dream. Kind of a break over there in Minnesota, and before he got injured, had some good results. That’s what kept him around, really. And then we signed him, and then, bam, you know?”

Everybody knows now.

The kid out of Milford, Mass. with a mere 401 career plate appearances by the time he turned 31 last October entered Friday night’s game against the Boston Red Sox with an OPS-plus of 148 in 2015, trailing only AL MVP candidate Josh Donaldson on a Blue Jays offense nearly 100 runs better than their nearest rival.

Even now, the stories written about Chris Colabello focus on the coming regression—no man can keep up the .415 batting average on balls in play, they read, with a healthy dose of track record to fuel the skepticism.

That’s not how Colabello sees it. If anything, the gap between popular perception of Colabello and reality has narrowed—he tells his agent every year, “I want to be the best hitter on the planet this year.” Toiling in independent ball is pretty far from that recognition. But put up a .329/.376/.528 line for the AL East leaders, and some minds start to change.

Not that Colabello views this as a peak. As far as he’s concerned, he’s just getting started.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be better than I thought I could be,” Colabello said. “I think it would be irresponsible of me to go out there and say, ‘I’m going to hit .250, .260, .270’ or even set a number in my mind. Because I want to see what I can do, start to finish, if I go out and see how many competitive at-bats I can have this year, hit as many balls hard as I can this year.”

Few are doing more of either so far, with Colabello’s line drive rate of 26.6% of his batted balls ranked 10th among major leaguers iwith at least 300 plate appearances.

Before all this, though, Colabello was an undrafted slugger from Assumption College, who stayed right in town in Worcester and set about destroying the independent Can-Am Association. Every year, batting averages above .300, scores of extra-base hits. Trying to make himself more valuable, he learned to play third base, then right field.

Teams would notice - to a point.

“I went to spring training in 2006 with the Tigers, and every year after that I had teams calling me, asking me to work out,” Colabello said. “Scouts coming, asking me to do this, do that. And it finally got to the point where I asked, what are you looking for from me? I’m running the 60, I’m throwing, I’m taking BP, and then you’re telling me ‘Thanks for coming’, and I’m flying home. And I’m spending $1000 to come out there in the meantime, when I’m broke. So what do you need to see me do that you don’t know I can do at this point?

“I’ve always told people, I’m not the kind of guy you can watch on any given day — he’s not going to run faster, he’s not going to throw it harder, he probably won’t hit it farther. He might not look good fielding. But I used to say to people, watch me play for a month, and then tell me what you think.”

Finally, some national recognition came when Baseball America named him Independent Player of the Year in 2011. But by then, the very fact that Colabello hadn’t been signed made him suspect, an opportunity loop many players get trapped in, labeled organizational soldiers. Colabello would have happily become an organizational soldier, if only one would let him.

“2011, I won independent player of the year, the Diamondbacks called me and asked me why no one had signed me. And I said ‘If I knew that, I’d have changed it by now!”, Colabello recalled, exasperated. “I tried everything. I played third base. I played right field. I tried everything. I’d go sell popcorn if you want me to. I’ll pay my own way to spring training. Just let me play. It was hard. It was hard to spend one day with teams when guys I’d played with or against were getting chances in affiliated ball. But I kept going. If I had a uniform on, I had a chance.”

Finally, the Twins gave him that chance, let him go prove he could do to Class AA pitching what he’d done in Worcester. Colabello put up big numbers in Class AA in 2012, then even bigger numbers for AAA Rochester. He struggled at first once the Twins called him up in 2013, but turned down a million-dollar offer from a club in Korea to come back to the Twins.

“The reason I didn’t go to Korea is I knew I had something to offer Major League Baseball,” Colabello said. “And by the end of April, I think I established I could hit. And one of the hardest things for me, at that point, was how are you doing this? When’s your bubble going to burst? It’s very difficult to sit there and think, why are people not happy with what I’m doing, rather than surprised or shocked.”

His season line at the time—.346/.386/.577—was straight out of his Worcester years when he suffered a thumb injury that ultimately involved significant nerve damage.

Weeks of struggles followed, then an unexpected demotion, then more slump as he tried to play through an injury so severe he couldn’t put his pants on at times, the pain in his thumb was too intense when he attempted to pull them up. But Colabello knew how it would look if he complained, knew guys like him don’t usually get second chances. Finally, after an offseason of rest, Colabello warily stepped into the cage at his best friend Bobby Tewksbary’s offseason training facility in Nashua, N.H. and tested out his thumb.

GALLERY: POSTSEASON MATCHUPS AS THEY STAND TODAY

“First time I hit off a tee, I’m dripping sweat, I’m so nervous,” Colabello said. “I took a swing off the tee and I’m like, ‘I’m okay.’ I took another swing, 10 or 15, felt okay. Let’s take some flips. Felt okay, but the real test was going to be taking real BP, getting jammed. The next day, went live arm, 40 feet away, 50 mph, which simulates fastball. And I was hitting balls flush, felt good. Then I got jammed, went—Ugh!—and felt good. It was peace of mind at that point. Eventually, there were live games, and the first time I got jammed in spring training and my thumb felt okay was the moment I knew I could play.”

By then, Colabello had been sent to the Blue Jays by the Twins. And how remarkable his 2015 is can best be understood by the way these two teams saw him coming into the season.

The Twins sent him to Toronto in December to open up a 40-man roster spot ahead of the Rule 5 Draft—Colabello, essentially, was procedural fodder. And for the Blue Jays, the team that acquired him?

“He was brought in as kind of an afterthought, he might be able to help us at some point during the year in some capacity,” Gibbons said. “We brought him to camp with a chance to make the team, but it wasn’t necessarily a realistic opportunity. And then he had a good month, think he was player of the month, and we brought him up here. And he’s been unbelievable.”

Even so, the Blue Jays brought in a number of reinforcements around the trade deadline, and Colabello now finds himself in a platoon with Justin Smoak, no longer an everyday presence in the lineup. Fortunately, playing sporadically is something Colabello’s worked on—figured out how to avoid treating a few days off as reason to overthink the return to the lineup — and his batting line since Aug. 1, when the regression was supposed to happen, is .388/.446/.687.

But Colabello, the 31-year-old nobody wanted, the man who went broke just searching for a chance to play baseball, looked surprised when asked if 2015 exceeded his own expectations, starting in Buffalo and ending up with a key role for a team streaking toward the playoffs.

“Whether it’s true or not, I’ve always felt like every day is still about having to prove myself,” Colabello said. “I guess I’m never going to get to the point where I feel comfortable enough with where I’ve gotten in my career. Because I’m always going to want more. I’m always striving for more.”