The first time I met Tim Melville, he nearly broke my hand.

The incident happened a few months before the 2008 MLB Draft, 11 long, often-tumultuous years before Melville picked up his first long-awaited big-league win on Aug. 21, and then threw five brilliant shutout innings for the Rockies against the NL East-leading Braves at Coors Field on Monday, retiring perennial All-Star Freddie Freeman with the bases loaded to end his day.

Melville, then a strapping prep right-hander with a fastball that broke a sweat at 90, started revving up at 92 and hit 95 when it was really humming, was considered one of the best pitching prospects in that June’s draft. RISE magazine ranked him as the top high school prospect in the country, and Baseball America had him slotted 19th in its final mock draft.

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And I was, well, standing too close during his pregame warmup session one spring afternoon. Melville let loose with a low fastball that his catcher missed completely and came hurtling right toward my right shin. I was maybe 20 feet behind the catcher, standing with a large group of scouts who were watching, with radar guns all pointed at the Holt High ace.

Instinctively — and, yeah, stupidly — I reached down and snagged the sphere with my right hand, instead of just jumping out of the way, then flipped it back to the catcher in one motion. The pain was immediate, and pretty intense, but I couldn’t let that show. There were scouts and baseball players around.

“Yeah, you’ve got to shake that off,” Rockies scout Mark Germann said with a laugh.

Germann was one of the scouts with the radar guns trained on Melville that day in suburban St. Louis, and he laughed as he was told the story on the phone Monday afternoon. Germann — then an area scout for the Rockies and now a major league scout for the same franchise — was one of the scouts featured in a photo that ran on the first page of what was a six-page spread in Sporting News magazine about Melville (he’s in the red).

Wrote a feature on prep star Tim Melville leading up to the 2008 MLB Draft for @sportingnews magazine.



11 years later, he finally picked up his first MLB victory. That’s perseverance, folks. Follow-up story coming shortly. pic.twitter.com/1i7ikGpItK — Ryan Fagan (@ryanfagan) August 28, 2019

The headline of the story: “That feeling of being watched.” All eyes were on Melville that spring, leading up to the draft. Melville had a bargaining chip — a scholarship offer to college baseball powerhouse North Carolina — and questions of signability led to a drop into the fourth round of the 2008 draft. The Royals, though, picked him and signed him, a $1.25 million bonus that was the largest for any player in the third or fourth rounds.

Germann’s 2008 draft report — he looked it up last week — projected Melville as a No. 4 starter in the bigs. He started scouting Melville during his sophomore season at Holt High, and Melville consistently checked progression boxes, in terms of physical development and mental approach. What couldn’t be predicted, of course, were the injuries — including Tommy John surgery in 2012 — Melville would have to deal with in his professional career.

And what would be impossible to project was that Melville wouldn’t pick up his first big league win for 11 years. Before this season, Melville had made exactly six MLB appearances — three for the Reds, two for the Padres and one for the Twins — and owned an 11.05 ERA in those 14 2/3 innings. In two starts for the Rockies this year, Melville — who turns 30 in October — has fashioned a tidy a 0.75 ERA.

“Truly, kudos to him for staying with it for so long, through so many injuries, too,” Germann said. “Injuries can sidetrack you, in so many different ways. He’s had shoulder problems, elbow problems and still he’s found a way to persevere. I give him incredible credit for that.”

'The biggest thing is just trust'

Melville was brilliant in his Rockies debut. With Dom Nunez, his catcher all year at Triple-A Albuquerque behind the plate, the right-hander tossed seven strong innings on the road against the Diamondbacks, allowing just two hits, one run and two walks while striking out four in 101 efficient pitches.

His second start, Monday against the Braves, was impressive in an entirely different way. First of all, the second one was at Coors Field, where runs have been cheap this season (again). Secondly, it was against the Braves, the team with the second-best record in the NL and a fearsome lineup deep with All-Stars. He wasn’t as efficient, but he made big pitches whenever he really needed them.

After Ozzie Albies doubled with one out in the first, Melville struck out Freddie Freeman and Josh Donaldson to end the inning. With a runner on second and one out in the third, Melville retired Ronald Acuna on a grounder and Albies on a strikeout. With Matt Joyce on second and two outs in the fourth — after Freeman had been thrown out at home — Melville struck out Dansby Swanson. And with the bases loaded and two outs in the fifth, Melville got Freeman to ground out — on his 36th pitch of a grinding inning.

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I couldn’t help but think about what Melville told me on the phone two days earlier, when I asked him what he thought the biggest impediment, aside from injuries, had been during his up-and-down path through baseball.

“The biggest thing is just trust,” he said. “You’ve gotta trust your stuff out there against the best in the world. I think for me it was understanding that — what I had, what I was able to do — just having trust in that.”

The Rockies are, by my count on Melville’s Baseball-Reference page, the seventh MLB franchise and 19th different professional team for which the right-hander has suited up. That includes two separate stints with the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League and one winter with Hermosillo in Mexico. It’s not been the journey anyone expected back when he was an elite draft prospect.

And it would have been understandable if, somewhere along the way, he abandoned the chase. But the thing is, Melville just loves the game.

Same pic.twitter.com/fERj5wWIHI — Subscribe to Cut4 on YouTube!!!! (@Cut4) August 26, 2019

He didn’t see trips to the Atlantic League or Mexico as demotions or failures, but as opportunities.

“It was great. It’s such a light atmosphere, like when I was playing in high school, a great team atmosphere,” he said.

He mentioned, several times during our phone chat, how thankful he was to the Rockies for giving him yet another shot.

“It’s really something special for me to chase my dreams,” he said.

I asked Melville what advice 2019 Tim would offer to 2008 Tim, if given the chance.

“Mainly this: A lot of the decisions you need to make are gonna be tough ones, but make sure you're always discovering yourself. Whatever path you're gonna take, make sure it's a road of discovery,” Melville said. “If you've got to challenge yourself or question yourself, always be in a learning mode and continue to understand how you want to live your life, how you want people to perceive you or how you want to act around other people. It's just a constant idea, just getting better in life, not just in baseball.”

Melville’s first stop as a professional was in Burlington, Iowa, home of the Royals’ Class A team in the Midwest League, for the 2009 season. Joel Adam, his high school coach at Holt, made the three-hour drive from Wentzville, Mo., to see him.

“I’ve told this story a hundred times,” Adam said with a laugh. “I saw him in Burlington, and he came out after the game with two guys, his roommates. He says, ‘I want you to meet my friends, Eric and Mike.’ You know both these guys: Mike Montgomery, who got the final out for the Cubs in the 2016 World Series, and a dude named Eric Hosmer. I thought, of those three guys, he would have been right there with those guys. He definitely had the talent.”

Adam — who coaches the Holt softball team, too — has had five players drafted, including Ross Detwiler, who was a first-round pick of the Nationals in the 2007 draft out of Missouri State.

Detwiler took a more direct route to the majors than Melville. He made his debut with a scoreless inning in 2007, then after a bit more seasoning in the minors, made 69 starts (and 15 relief appearances) for the Nationals from 2009 to 2013, though injuries were a factor in those years. He spent 2014 in the Washington bullpen, then was traded to Texas that offseason. From there, he became a bit of a journeyman, pitching for the Rangers, Braves, Indians, A’s, Cubs and Mariners organizations from 2015 to 2018, sometimes in the majors and sometimes in Triple-A. He started both 2018 and 2019 in the Atlantic League.

Melville started the 2019 season in the Atlantic League, too, and Adam noticed that their schedules overlapped. A few text messaged later, this happened.

Recapping the last 2 days of former Holt baseball players. Melville (Rockies) 7 inns, 2 hits, 1 run. Detwiler (White Sox) goes 6 inns, 3 hits, 8 Ks, 1 run... both were pitching in independent baseball a few months ago. Here is a great photo they sent me.. maybe one of my favs. pic.twitter.com/BjGBvZu5i8 — Holt Varsity Softball (@HoltVSoftball) August 23, 2019

“That might be my favorite picture of all time,” Adam said. “Tim could have given up a hundred times, with his arm issues. Being in independent baseball, my lord, being that far away from Major League Baseball … that’s a long ways away.”

Melville signed with the Rockies after two Long Island starts and joined Triple-A Albuquerque. Detwiler hooked up with the White Sox after three starts with York and joined Triple-A Charlotte. And a day after Melville’s gem for the Rockies against Arizona, Detwiler — who had been called up by the Sox in late June — turned in his best big league start since 2016, striking out eight and allowing a single run in six innings against the Rangers.

Like Melville, he earned the win. You can bet Adam noticed.

“Not many high school coaches can say their guys picked up big league wins on back-to-back days,” he said, with more than a hint of pride in his voice. “To think that those guys, where they were at just a few months ago and where they’re at now, is absolutely incredible.”

'A happy place for me'

Chances are, if you’ve read anything about Melville in the past week or so, you know about Little Miss BBQ. It’s the best barbecue joint in Phoenix, lines form long before opening each day, and if you wait less than an hour at any point during the day, you’re blessed.

Melville took a job there during the offseason, a fact that’s spawned several excellent stories you should definitely take time to read. I found it kind of odd that, after his long, roller coaster baseball journey, he’s suddenly known as the Little Miss BBQ pitcher.

“I'm pretty proud of that,” Melville said. “I can't give those guys enough press. They're just such a cool story. Bekke and Scott Holmes, they're just great, genuine people. It's a good role in life, to surround yourself with those types of people. As I go through this game and my life and career, whether it's inside baseball or outside baseball, I’m always looking to be near those types of environments. That's definitely a happy place for me.”

So it was fitting that Melville’s return to the majors for the first time since 2017 would happen in a place — Chase Field, home of the Diamondbacks — just 8.9 miles up 7th Street from where Melville found himself in the welcoming world of barbecue. Melville's Rockies won that game 7-2, behind his stellar effort.

“I have a lot of good buddies out there that were able to make it to the game and kind of see that moment,” he said. “They’re kind of grinding with me, as well. So that was really special.”

Little Miss BBQ has been a happy place for Melville, and it's been a growing place for him, too. He’s worked pretty much every job at the Sunnyslope location — cashier, cutter, smoker, etc. — but when you’re working up front at Little Miss BBQ, you have a special job.

“It's called the senator rule. You go around and talk to the tables, ‘Hey, how's your food? Need anything? Can I get you anything?’ ” Melville said. “... Being able to crack open conversations on a whim with complete strangers on a daily basis to 200 or 300 people was really something I kinda latched onto. I hadn’t really done it before, so it really felt like a good learning moment for me.”

Melville can’t help but connect the Little Miss BBQ senator rule with his own baseball experience and perhaps a shortcoming of his at times during the journey.

“You have to be able to communicate properly,” he said. “I think, at times, you get frustrated and you don’t really communicate the right way or you don’t communicate at all. You’re missing a chance to learn right there, right off the bat. You kind of suck up those emotions of failure, but come back the next day with questions and look for answers in the right direction.”

One thing I noticed about Melville, comparing our 2008 conversations with our 2019 conversation: He’s much more communicative. A more introspective, open conversationalist, especially when he’s talking about the Little Miss BBQ folks. I asked him whether he’ll take the lessons he’s learned working there and apply them on his own in the future. That’s not his primary concern right now.

“I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “I just like doing things that are in that same realm, a good environment in whatever it is. Baseball is such a great opportunity to have that, with the team, with the clubhouse, just kinda the same feel. We’re here to win, man. At the barbecue place, they try to make the best barbecue in the country every day and make sure everybody's doing great while they’re there.”