Anthony Fenech

Detroit Free Press

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – It is a Wednesday during the off-season, a rare day off. Michael Fulmer is playing golf.

He’s slowly getting better, he says by phone from the first tee at KickingBird Golf Club in Edmond, Okla., but still not any good.

“It’s getting there,” he said.

His golf game certainly wasn’t there in spring training, when Tigers teammate Justin Verlander would spot him 13 or 15 strokes and still beat him.

“All the time,” Fulmer said.

Back then, he was just a promising pitching prospect with an outside chance to make the team. He spoke softly and worked hard. But a sensational rookie season later, the right-hander looks to have the inside track to win the American League Rookie of the Year Award and, perhaps as soon as this upcoming season, become the successor to Verlander as staff ace.

“It’s still hard to wrap my head around a little bit,” he said. “It was a fun season.”

It took a month in the minor leagues and a few so-so starts in early May, but once Fulmer quickly discovered his change-up to complement a mid-90s fastball and wipeout slider, he went on a rookie run not seen in 45 years. At the end of the season — highlighted by a four-hit shutout against the Rangers in early August — he fell just shy of qualifying for the AL ERA title.

But ask about his season, and he talks about the team.

“I just can’t imagine the many more things we could have accomplished, like going to the playoffs and stuff,” Fulmer said. “But I feel like the future is bright, and that’s what I’m thinking about, not the past. I’m already thinking about next year and how to help the team in any way I can, and hopefully get further next year than we were this year.”

Ask how his off-season is going and you find out that, for Fulmer, there isn’t much of an off-season.

A day earlier, Fulmer was hard at work. He was in backyards around the Oklahoma City area digging ditches and changing sewer lines. Replacing old Orangeburg pipes with new PVC pipes. In basements exchanging water heaters, in kitchens replacing sinks and faucets, in bathrooms fixing leaky toilets.

These days, Fulmer works as a part-time plumber.

“I don’t cut him any slack,” Larry Wright, Fulmer’s boss at Cyrus Wright Plumbing, a small, long-standing family business in Yukon, Okla., said. “He digs ditches and gets dirty and does whatever needs to be done.”

It’s Fulmer’s second off-season working with Wright, who is the uncle of one of Fulmer’s good friends. He came aboard last year in a pinch, when Wright’s son — also a plumber — went off on another job.

“He called me, and I said, ‘All right, we’ll see how it goes from here,’ ” Fulmer said. “And I’m still doing it, so it’s fun.”

In his rookie plumbing season, Wright said, Fulmer picked up the common-sense side of things quickly, like how to get from Point A to Point B in a job. Other things, like learning the different equipment, names of the parts and tools, came with time.

“It took him a little while for him to know what everything was called and when I asked for something,” Wright said.

One thing Fulmer didn’t have a problem with was the physical work, and answering the bell a few mornings a week at 8 a.m. for what usually stretched into 10-hour days. At 6 feet 3, 210 pounds, he has become Wright’s right-hand man for the more strenuous side of the job on big projects, like digging those 6-foot ditches.

“Generally, it’s hard,” Wright said. “When he’s working with me, he’s usually digging in or working on jackhammers. It’s pretty physical work, but he’s a great worker. He always wants to know more, he wants to know what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and he never complains.”

Fulmer picked up plumbing last off-season as the latest odd job in his professional career. In the first couple of off-seasons of his minor league career — starting when he was a farmhand with the Mets — he worked at golf courses around the Oklahoma City area, herding golf carts and behind the counter in the pro shop.

There, he picked up golf, taking tips from some of the head professionals. Now, after balancing both side jobs last off-season, he’s focused on plumbing, which serves as a starting point for his off-season workout regimen, which he began a short while ago.

“It’s a different kind of workout,” Fulmer said. “Digging out of 6-foot ditches all the time and shoveling quite a bit. So, it’s a different type of workout, and it helps before I start working out in the off-season.”

Said Wright: “That’s what I tell him. He should be paying me.”

On any given weekday, one of the most up-and-coming pitchers in baseball can be found in backyards, basements, kitchens and bathrooms, serving a working-class job for customers who have yet to recognize the youngster who has won every rookie award to this point.

“He’s gone unrecognized,” Wright said. “He doesn’t carry himself like a big-time person, he’s down to earth, so I think unless you’re a Tigers fan or know him personally, I don’t think you’d recognize him.”

Fulmer, by nature, likes it that way. His big, lumberjack beard gave him an identity throughout much of last season — and one day in mid-August, just like that, it was gone, as he finally fit in with the younger Tigers.

Asked then about the beard, he would say, slyly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Asked whether it was surprising that a pitcher of Fulmer’s caliber — gaining more attention as the season progressed, certainly in line for more if he wins the AL Rookie of the Year Award on Monday like many predict — works in the trenches as a plumber, Wright said: “It does surprise me, because I think it’s just the kind of guy he is as far as being humble, because he doesn’t make near as much money working for me than what he does pitching. So, I think it just kind of keeps him grounded.”

Fulmer was born and raised in Lafayette, La., before moving to Tulsa, Okla., in sixth grade and then to Edmond, Okla., in eighth grade.

His father, J.P., is a production engineer for an oil and gas company, and his mother, Lisa, is a legal secretary. He met his wife, Kelsey, as a freshman in high school. She was student manager of the freshman baseball team at Deer Creek High and kept score every game.

There, Ron Moore got his first look at what he remembers as a pudgy kid whose arm worked well and threw strikes. Moore was Fulmer’s varsity baseball coach and talked of an overnight transition that happened between his freshman and sophomore years when Fulmer, who once was cut from his Little League team, began his steady climb up the baseball ladder.

“His freshman year at our place, he was about 5 foot 9, 5 foot 10, real chunky kid,” Moore said. “And then all of a sudden, he’s 6 foot 3, almost 6 foot 4 and just a skinny kid. He just got stronger and finally filled into that body.”

Fulmer made varsity as a sophomore, moved into the top three in the rotation as a junior and made his biggest impact as a senior — at the plate.

“He came to me, I remember, that summer before we started his senior year, and he said: ‘Hey, what do I need to work on for next year?’ ” Moore said. “And I said, ‘Most importantly, I think you need to play third base for us every day.’ ”

To that point, Fulmer didn’t have good range. He struck out probably every other at-bat, still struggling to adapt to his changing body.

But it didn’t take much convincing for Fulmer, whom Moore describes as “the ultimate team guy,” to buy in. Fulmer heard about how making those strides as an everyday player would help him on the mound.

“I think it helped a lot,” Fulmer said. “Because it kind of kept my mind off pitching all the time.”

During his senior season, Fulmer hit fifth in Moore’s lineup. He hit .436 with six home runs and 43 RBIs, and had looks from all of the Division I schools in the area, including perennial college baseball powers like Texas, Wichita State and Arkansas.

Fulmer blossomed under Moore, who describes his down-home, humble personality with this anecdote: On the night of the 2011 Major League Baseball draft, the Deer Creek team crowded into a nearby Hooters. After Fulmer was selected with the 44th pick in the first round by the Mets, the place, expectedly, went crazy.

“Kind of like it’s what we did,” Moore said. “It wasn’t really what Michael did ... look what we did. It was a pretty neat atmosphere.”

The next morning, Moore was holding a Little League camp at the school. Around 7:45 a.m., Fulmer walked in.

“I said, ‘Dude, what are you doing here?’ ” Moore said. “And he goes, ‘Well, you said you needed help with the camp.’ And I said, ‘That’s unbelievable, man. I consider myself a pretty good guy, but I don’t know if I’d be here right now, to be honest with you, after I knew I was probably going to make a million bucks with a signing bonus.’ But that’s just typical Michael.”

It’s a Fulmer the Tigers have gotten to know in earnest this past season, his first with the team after they traded for him halfway through the 2015 season. That year, he was named Double-A Eastern League pitcher of the year.

Inside a major league clubhouse, Fulmer stands out for his lack of self-importance. He wears cowboy boots and speaks with a southern drawl and doesn’t forget people who helped him to this point, spending his off-seasons at home, talking with his former high school coach at least once a week.

“I was raised right,” Fulmer said. “My parents always told me to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ ‘Yes, ma’am,’ ‘No, ma’am,’ and just kind of respect everybody around me and kind of treat others the way you want to be treated.

“So, I told myself, don’t get to the point where you’re satisfied. Just keep working hard and trying to get better as a player and a person every day. That’s the ultimate goal, to get better.”

And so Monday, he will show up to work as a plumber, around 8 a.m., to dig ditches and earn an hourly paycheck, probably not somewhere you would expect the Tigers’ budding ace pitcher to be.

Contact Anthony Fenech: afenech@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @anthonyfenech. Download our Tigers Xtra app for free on Apple and Android devices!

Detroit Tigers GM Al Avila will remain popular during off-season

Heavy metal

Baseball’s big winners in both leagues will be announced this week:

Monday: AL/NL Rookie of the Year.*

Tuesday: AL/NL Manager of the Year.

Wednesday: AL/NL Cy Young Award.**

Thursday: AL/NL MVP Award.

*Michael Fulmer is a finalist; **Justin Verlander is a finalist.