HOUSTON -- It was a Saturday night game in the Frontier League between the Evansville Otters and Florence Y’alls, and the house was packed. An overzealous fan dumped beer in the Otters bullpen, which caused tensions to rise and fired up the boys from Evansville.
That included a 24-year-old righthanded reliever named Nate Wohlgemuth, who went into the game that summer night with his adrenaline pumping and his velo humming a few ticks above his typical 92-95 mph fastball.
“I ended up closing that game and my velo was 96, 98 mph and my pitching coach sent all of my pitching data to a close friend of his that was an Astro scout,” Wohlgemuth said. “They like what they saw and they took a flyer on me, and ever since then I've just kept going with the opportunity.”
Signed to a Minor League contract by the Astros in June out of the Frontier League (a partner league), Wohlgemuth pitched in 17 games at High-A Asheville and posted a 3.13 ERA and 1.13 WHIP with 31 strikeouts in 23 innings pitched as a reliever. He’s parlayed that into a spot in the Arizona Fall League, where he’s competing against some of baseball’s top prospects.
“I was probably two weeks into being in Asheville, and I got called into the manager's office and he was like ‘Hey you're going to the Fall League,’” Wohlgemuth said.
“For me, I just took it as I'm getting another opportunity to play professional baseball, and then I told my dad -- and my dad knew a little bit more about the Arizona Fall League -- he was like, ‘Son, you don't understand how awesome this news is.’ I didn’t know much about it, so I started asking a couple people that I was close to on the team about it and they kind of gave me the rundown. Once I figured out more about it, I thought, ‘Wow this is like a super great achievement.’”
Wohlgemuth attended the University of Arkansas out of high school in 2021, and pitched in three games, with more walks issued (six) than outs recorded (four). The next season, he threw in seven games for San Jacinto College in east Houston, before enrolling at Division II Rogers State, which is close to his hometown of Owasso, Okla. He pitched at Rogers State in 2023 and ’24 before signing with the Evansville Otters, a partner league team, this year.
“I threw pretty hard in high school, and kind of lost my velo in my first three years of college, and then ended up just regaining the confidence in the fastball and the velo kind of came back,” he said. “Once you figure out how you can throw it for a strike and you allow your body just to be loose, it's funny where the velo comes [from].”
Jacob Buffa, the Astros’ senior director of player development and performance science, said the club was looking for healthy bodies in the Minor Leagues because of injuries. The team’s player personnel staff scoured the partner ball league looking for talent and found Wohlgemuth, whose arm talent wasn’t to be ignored.
“When you sign guys out of indy ball, there’s not always a ton of confidence in what the stuff is going to look like when they get to the pros,” Buffa said. “Obviously, you have some samples. You try and get some Trackman data from bullpens and whatnot, but that’s different than seeing it in pro games. The fact the stuff came as advertised, it was a very quick leap in being able to execute some of these pitches and follow attack plans, which was awesome to see.”
The events of the last four months have Wohlgemuth dreaming bigger than ever, while still not forgetting the back roads he took to get to Arizona.
“I've always told my dad I just need a foot in the door and with the opportunity that I get, I will run with it,” he said. “I always told him and I think he believed it, and once I got the opportunity with the Astros, I just I haven't really looked back. There hasn't been a whole lot of pressure. I think just getting my foot in the door, like I said, really anything can happen. It's just been it's about being hot at the right time.”