ATLANTA -- When a switch-hitter is due up for the opposition and you’re going to the bullpen, who do you call upon?
The switch-pitcher, of course.
So there was Mariners prospect Jurrangelo Cijntje on Saturday afternoon at Truist Park, thrust into action in an entertaining bottom of the second inning of the Futures Game that gave a wider baseball audience a look at his unusual ambidextrousness.
Cijntje, the only active switch-pitcher (switcher?) in pro ball, pitched a scoreless inning for the American League in a 4-2 loss to the NL.
“I was a little bit amped up,” the 22-year-old Cijntje said afterward.
Amped up and armed up.
He threw right-handed to strike out switch-hitting Brewers prospect Jesús Made, who was batting righty. (In these situations, Cijntje first declares which side he will be pitching with, and then the batter has the choice of batting right-handed or left-handed.)
He threw left-handed to retire lefty Dodgers prospect Josue De Paula on a fly ball to left.
He put his right arm back to work against right-handed D-backs prospect LuJames Groover, who reached on a comebacker that Cijntje couldn’t corral with either hand (the ball deflected off the special six-fingered glove that Cijntje uses to seamlessly switch sides between batters).
But then, interestingly, Cijntje stayed right-handed against the lefty-hitting Marlins prospect Joe Mack, who struck out to end the inning.
“I was settling in from the right side,” he said, “so I just stayed from the right side to get that out.”
Cijntje, the Mariners’ No. 8 prospect, left his prospect peers in awe.
“We were sitting there watching it like, ‘This is unreal,’” Royals catching prospect Carter Jensen said. “Never seen anything like that. Hat’s off to him, I can’t imagine doing that.”
Should he make it to The Show, Cijntje, who is currently at Single-A Everett, would not be MLB’s first full-time switch-pitcher. That honor belongs to Pat Venditte, who pitched in parts of five MLB seasons from 2015-20 and inspired a rule that ambidextrous pitchers must declare which hand they will use to pitch to a particular batter before the at-bat begins.
But whereas Venditte was a mid-80s-tossing curiosity who, to his credit, plied his way to a big league relief role after getting taken in the 20th round of the 2008 Draft, expectations are higher for the Netherlands-born Cijntje (pronounced Sain-ja), given that he was taken 15th overall out of Mississippi State by the Mariners in last year’s MLB Draft.
“I’m just trying to take care of my body and try to do this,” he said. “I want to do this at the highest level.”
To do it ambidextrously at the highest level will require better success from the left-hand side. As a lefty in his first professional season, Cijntje has allowed a 1.354 OPS in 30 plate appearances against lefty batters and a 1.200 OPS in 14 plate appearances against righties. His most successful matchup has been as a righty against righties, who are slashing just .150/.226/.239 against him in 124 plate appearances.
Overall, Cijntje has a 4.95 ERA in 56 1/3 innings across 16 innings. He’s been employed primarily as a Saturday starter, with a few Wednesday relief appearances. He has a slider from both the left-hand and right-hand side that gets strong grades from scouts, but, as the stats might lead you to assume, his fastball has more life from the right-hand side.
And in case you’re wondering, Cijntje signs autographs with his right hand, as he did after the game when teammates started passing items around.
Righty isn’t even Cijntje’s natural side. He only took it up because his father, Mechangelo, a professional catcher in the Netherlands, was right-handed and young Jurrangelo wanted to be just like him.
“We just went out in the backyard one time and we just grabbed a ball and threw the ball [right-handed] through a tire,” Cijntje said, “and the rest is history.”
Or, in this case, Future.
Actually, Cijntje was on the mound at the Futures Game at the exact same time Shohei Ohtani was pitching for the Dodgers. If Cijntje can stick as a switcher and make it to the Majors, he can, like Ohtani, become a source of freakish fascination for fans.
This exhibition outing was a high-profile step on his ambitious, ambidextrous path. Afterward, he promised a representative from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum that he would donate his glove from this outing to the museum’s collection at season’s end.
“I was just trying to catch my breath a little bit,” he said. “I didn’t feel the best, but I was just trying to compete.”
Now you know both sides of the story.