Luke Westphal's Long Road To The Twins

Luke Westphal was born and raised is the town of Clintonville, Wisconsin. Clintonville has a population just over 4,500 residents. It is located about 45 miles north of Oshkosh in northeast Wisconsin. He pitched for four years at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, a school that was a huge Division III powerhouse for decades.

However, following his four seasons of college baseball, Westphal wasn’t drafted. Following his 2013 graduation, he received an opportunity to pitch in the independent Frontier League, for the Gateway Grizzlies. The team is located in the St. Louis area. He posted a 1.59 ERA and struck out 21 batters in 17 innings coming out of the bullpen.

He returned to the Grizzlies in 2014 for the full season. He went 3-5 with a 2.91 ERA in 52.2 innings over 35 games. He struck out 68 and walked 39 batters.

So how did he wind up playing in Australia? Westphal recalled, “I had a teammate out at Gateway who was actually from Australia. One day, he was just talking to a couple of my other teammates who had played over in Australia also. He was talking about guys heading back. I thought it sounded like a great plan and a good idea. I approached him and asked if there was any way there would be any interest in me playing over there. He said he’d make a couple of phone calls. I got an e-mail within the next couple of days asking if I’d like to come over and play.”

He jumped at the opportunity and went to Australia for the winter. Now, he didn’t play in the Australian Baseball League. Instead he played for a team in Doncaster, in Victoria.

Westphal was excited for the opportunity in baseball, but also for an opportunity to see something new.

“That was my first time out of the country, and it was an absolutely amazing experience. I went over there. Friendliest people you’ll ever meet.” He continued, “My teammates were terrific.”

He had been a starter in college, but with the Grizzlies he had pitched out of the bullpen. He wanted another opportunity to start. “I had been in the bullpen in independent ball but I’d like to start. So, I had the opportunity to start over there. They let me build back up as slow as I wanted. It was four innings the first two outings. Five innings the next two. Six. Seven. They let me build my pitch count up. They were great with me, and I had an unbelievable experience. It was awesome.”

Though we don’t have final statistics, at one point right before the end of the season, Westphal had 136 strikeouts in just 74 innings. That’s 16.5 strikeouts per nine innings!

It wasn’t the Australian Baseball League, so the competition wasn’t quite as high, but there was still some really good talent. According to the left-hander, “It was a very wide range of talent. Every team had a couple of terrific hitters. Every team had a couple of guys with affiliated experience, whether it was High-A or AA. Then every team had a couple of guys that were 18, 19 years old, looking to go to college or to sign with somebody. It was a big gap. It was a wide range. It was different.”

The Twins had scouted Doncaster before. In fact, Lewis Thorpe was signed after playing for Doncaster. Matz Schutte was signed as a 16-year-old from The Netherlands, but the Twins sent him to Australia to play with Doncaster as well.

Twins scout Howard Norsetter who is responsible for so many of the Twins international signings, particularly in Australia, got the chance to see Westphal pitch, probably by accident. Westphal said, “The club that I played with is where Lewis Thorpe had signed out of, Doncaster. Actually Daniel McGrath, who is with the Red Sox, he signed out of Doncaster as well. And then Matz is with the Twins. He was over there to get innings. So I think Howard probably showed up to see Matz, and I was starting and then Matz would come in after me most games. He watched me the first time he saw Matz.”

Doncaster, he said, typically played on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Westphal usually was the team’s pitcher on Saturday, but late in the year, he was asked to make a couple of starts on Tuesday instead. It can be a little more difficult, you see, because Westphal had to work Monday through Friday.

In his second-to-last start, his first Tuesday start, he had his worst outing of the year, by far. In about the fourth inning, one of his teammates pointed to the stands and told him that there was a Twins scout (Norsetter) there.

Understandably, Westphal was quite disappointed. He said, “Oh great, that’s the game he came here to watch. Went home, wasn’t in a great mood and was watching some ESPN. Ended up finding a voice mail on my phone. He had actually called me after the game and said he wanted to talk to me. I couldn’t believe it. He liked what he saw and wasn’t too worried about the results. He’d seen me previously as well, and he gave me the opportunity.”

Westphal is a left-handed pitcher, listed at 6-3 and 240 pounds. He throws fairly hard. Asked what his pitches were, he said, “Right now I’m throwing a four-seam fastball, a two-seam fastball that sinks a little bit. Curve ball, slider, change-up. So, four pitches with a little two-seam variation off my fastball. I’d probably say that I like to go to the slider, especially to the lefties. I like my two-seam versus lefties or righties. I like my curve ball as well. The change-up is probably the pitch I use least.”

As for his hopes for 2015, Westphal is keeping it simple and enjoying the ride. “I’m just super thankful for the opportunity, and I’m really hoping to come in to spring training, throw as well as I can, show them everything I have, and when we break camp, I just hope I’m with a team and whatever level they decide they want to put me at, I’ll be happy with that as long as I have the opportunity to make it out of spring and try to move up from there.”

Westphal is another guy you can’t help rooting for. Just seeking an opportunity, the 25-year-old southpaw from Wisconsin traveled halfway across the globe to sign with the team from Minnesota. Baseball can be a funny game.