The Tampa Bay Rays had an astonishing nine first-round picks in the 2011 MLB Draft. Until Saturday, only four of them have made the major leagues, with Blake Snell being the lone impact player of the group. With the MLB debut of Jake Hager with the Mets on Saturday, that list has now grown to five.

When Hager pinch-hit for Kevin Pillar in the ninth inning of the Mets’ 12-5 loss to the Rays, it was the completion of a baseball odyssey began nearly a decade ago. After being selected 32nd overall by Tampa as a shortstop, he bypassed a chance to play baseball at Arizona State University to begin his professional career.

He grew up in the baseball hotbed of Las Vegas, where as a kid he was a teammate of Bryce Harper and Joey Gallo in travel ball. At Sierra Vista High School, Hager was ranked as the No. 2 player in Nevada and the No. 1 infielder in the state by Perfect Game, and was a 2011 Rawlings Preseason All-American.

Hager hit well enough to progress through the low levels of the minor leagues, but he never turned in the monster numbers that you might expect from a top prospect. His best season came in 2012 with Single-A Bowling Green, when he hit .281/.345/.412 in 114 games. That was the only time he posted an OPS above .700 until 2018.

He played the entire 2014 season with Double-A Montgomery with aching knees, and after the season had surgery on the patellar tendons in both his left and right knees. Recovering from the surgeries was a grueling process that forced him to miss the entire 2015 season. He would get up in the morning, rehab at the Rays complex in Port Charlotte, Florida, then go to a coffee shop and read positive, mental books to keep focused on the goal ahead – getting back on the field.

“When I was going through that season in Montgomery, it hurt to swing, to load on my legs,” Hager said in 2016 to a Durham Bulls team blog. “When I’d run, I couldn’t stop. I had to slowly gradually stop, but now I’m more explosive. I’m not thinking about it. I can stop hard, it feels great.”

When he returned to play in the 2016 season, he hit .233/.270/.330 split between Montgomery and Triple-A Durham. Including nine games with Syracuse this season, Hager spent parts of the next five seasons toiling in minors’ highest level.

After he struggled in Durham again in 2017, Hager elected free agency at the end of the season. In February that offseason, Hager signed with the then-independent St. Paul Saints (now the Twins Triple-A Affiliate). A week and a half after that, the Milwaukee Brewers came calling, and he spent the next two years in their organization.

“I was just grateful for another opportunity,” Hager told WTNH-TV in Connecticut of his stint in the Brewers system. “I ended up having a great year with them in 2018 … unfortunately things didn’t go the way I thought they were going to go in 2019.”

Following a .242/.304/.413 line with Triple-A San Antonio in 2019, he once again elected free agency and signed with the Mets in January 2020. He spent the pandemic season at the Mets Alternate Training Site in Brooklyn as part of their 60-player pool, and re-signed with the team after the season.

“The Alternate Site was a battle,” Hager said. “We were just playing against each other every single day and hoping to get the call it was a long two-and-a-half months.”

Finally playing games again, Hager started the season with Syracuse on an offensive tear, hitting in all nine games he played to begin the year. He had a 4-for-4 day on May 9 against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, and hit a grand slam off former Miami Marlins reliever Kyle Barraclough earlier in that series.

It looked like things were finally looking up for the 28-year-old utility infielder, who found himself hitting .405/.426/.703 through 39 plate appearances in 2021. With the Mets experiencing a rash of injuries he finally got the call to join the team’s taxi squad this weekend, and soon after found himself batting against Cody Reed, lining out to deep center in his first at-bat.

To this point there has been no storybook ending for Hager. He is 0-for-4 at the plate in his MLB career and has made the final out in the game for two straight days. Undoubtedly after this long and winding journey to the big leagues – riding buses through country back roads and playing for teams nicknamed the Hot Rods, Biscuits and Flying Chanclas – perhaps the fact that he persevered and became the 19,991st MLB player is the storybook ending in and of itself.

Joe Vasile is a broadcaster for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders and Bucknell University. He also hosts the baseball history podcast, Secondary Lead.

2 comments on “Perseverance leads to MLB debut for Jake Hager

  • Wobbit

    Nice to get a back story on a callup… rooting for the kid to have some success… baseball a very tough game.

    Mets might look like a AAA team the next few weeks… bench players and minor league callups getting the playing time. Luckily the rest of the division is struggling to tread water also. This is when you see what the manager has under the hood.

  • Metsense

    Nice article Joe, very upbeat and put a smile on my face.

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