August 25, 2013 by Wayne McBrayer
We first got an opportunity to meet Brad Brach at the San Diego Padres Foundation & Awards dinner in February where both he and Brad Boxberger were seated at our table. It was fun to catch up with him during our visit to the Tucson Padres in June and then to see him called back up to Petco Park in July.
Brad Brach is a young pitcher with a lot of talent. Brad got his start in baseball playing whiffle ball in the backyard with his brothers, and then started playing Little League by the age of 6. Growing up and watching baseball, Brad admired and looked up to Cal Ripken Jr. “He played hard every single day and was someone I aspired to be like. He was an All-Star when I was growing up and was out there every single day.”
Drafted from Monmouth College with the San Diego Padres 42nd round draft pick in the 2008 draft, Brad has moved quickly through the Padres farm system. Between the 2008-2012 seasons, he has saved 115 games and is looked at as a future setup man or closer by the club. Brad was part of the 2009 Fort Wayne Championship team, which he says is his proudest moment to date as a player; “The whole playoffs and everything was unbelievable. Everyone had a part in it. It was just a whole lot of fun to be on a team like that.”
With a fastball which has been clocked as high as 94 MPH and his slider comes in between 80-85 MPH with a lot of movement, he shows a lot of promise but as Padres pitching coach Darren Balsley says, “he needs to trust his stuff.” We found out from talking with him he loves history and told us if he wasn’t playing baseball he would be “a High School history teacher. I have a degree in History Education, so that is what I would be doing, teaching, coaching, stuff like that.” Brad was called back from the Tucson Padres to join the San Diego Padres this weekend.
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Interview & Story by Wayne McBrayer, TheCasualFan
Editing & Photography by Rebecca Herman, TheBaseballPHD
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