Aaron Barrett Returns to MLB
September 7 vs. Atlanta Braves
There's no game, series or storyline that better embodies that STAY IN THE FIGHT mantra than Aaron Barrett. The Nats selected the right-handed hurler out of Ole Miss in the ninth round of the 2010 MLB Draft. The Bear worked his way through the Minor League system and eventually made his big league debut on Opening Day of the 2014 season, striking out two batters and earning the #CurlyW in a 9-7 win against the Mets.
Over the course of the 2014 and 2015 seasons, Barrett appeared in 90 regular season games for Washington, pitching to a 3.47 ERA while striking out 84 batters in 70 innings pitched. On September 5, 2015, Barrett felt tightness in his forearm while facing the D-backs in DC, and shortly thereafter underwent successful Tommy John surgery to repair the UCL in his pitching elbow.
In July of the following season ó after 10 months of work and mere weeks away from beginning a rehab assignment in the Minors that would have ultimately led down a path back to MLB, Barrett was pitching on the back fields of the team's Spring Training complex when he fractured the humerus bone in his throwing arm, an injury no one expected Barrett to fully recover from. But the Bear went back to work.
After another successful surgery, Barrett began the long road to recovery, literally teaching himself to throw again. Teaching himself to trust in his arm and his strength and his talent. He started at square one and worked his way back to full health, and back through the team's Minor League system.
Barrett returned to professional baseball during the 2018 season, pitching for the Auburn Doubledays of the New York-Penn League at age 30 when the average age of opposing hitters was just 21. He joined the Nats at Major League Spring Training prior to the 2019 season and was later dispatched to Harrisburg, where he spent the season with the Senators maintaining a 2.75 ERA, earning 31 saves and capping off a no-hitter early in the year.
Major League rosters expanded on September 1, and a few days later ó the morning after the greatest comeback in franchise history, in fact, Barrett again found himself in the Nationalsí clubhouse — this time tearing up as he thanked his doctors for making him whole again, the organization for sticking with him, and his wife for being in his corner throughout the entire ordeal.
A couple of days later, the phone rang in the visitors' bullpen at Atlanta's SunTrust Park and Barrett was told to warm up. After the last out of the top of the fifth inning, that bullpen door swung open and Barrett jogged to the mound. It had been 1,495 days since his last MLB appearance, 1,499 since his last big league strikeout. And here, in the middle of a pennant race, on the road against a divisional foe, Barrett was ready to complete his comeback.
After walking the first batter on four pitches, Barrett buckled down and induced a pop-up for the first out of the inning. Then reigning NL Rookie of the Year Ronald Acuña Jr. stepped in. Barrett started him off with a called strike, painting the inside corner with a 91 mph fastball. He got Acuna to chase the second pitch out of the zone for strike two. Acuna must have been sitting on a fastball on 0-2, because Barrett spun a beautiful slider over the plate and caught the bottom of the zone for his first Major League strikeout since September 1, 2015.
Barrett then got Ozzie Albies to fly out to end the inning. The Bear stomped into the Nats dugout — 2019 ERA of 0.00 in tow — and wept through an enormous smile as manager Dave Martinez, pitching coach Paul Menhart, and teammate after teammate came over to congratulate him on what turned out to be the only comeback in franchise history more impressive than the seven-run ninth inning just a few days earlier.
It took more than four years, but the Bear had come back over the mountain.
