The first time I saw Brett Cecil pitch, he was two months into his first professional season in Auburn, N.Y. It was August 2007. He had just turned 21, but the big-bodied left-hander was already riding the fast track in a tiny old stadium called Falcon Park.
Cecil had a four-pitch arsenal, and I remember his catcher, J.P. Arencibia, chasing a few of his breaking balls to the backstop, a sign of things to come. The missed balls didn’t matter. Cecil worked four shutout innings.
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The Blue Jays had made him their third overall draft pick in June of that year, behind infielder Kevin Ahrens and Arencibia. Cecil, a compensation pick for the loss of Frank Catalanotto, finished his rookie season with a 1.27 ERA. Two years later, he was starting in the majors.
Some mighty winds buffeted Cecil over his 10 years in the Blue Jays’ system. His was an odd odyssey.
He won 15 games in 2010. He spent chunks of the next two seasons on a roller-coaster, gaining and losing weight and velocity, shuttling between the majors and minors. He cut his thumb making chicken salad in Florida and his index finger cleaning a blender in Boston. He was the last man standing when the Jays set their opening-day roster in 2013.
That was the year he blossomed into a full-time reliever and an all-star. He became a versatile bullpen bulwark for three years and part of a fourth. That part of a fourth – his last 29 outings of 2016, over which he logged a 1.80 ERA – reassured a raft of free-agent suitors, including the Jays.
The St. Louis Cardinals were the highest bidders. In a new, lucrative market for relievers, they gave him a contract worth $30.5-million over four years (the experts predicted he’d get three), with a no-trade clause to boot.
Cecil leaves a huge hole in the Blue Jays’ bullpen and an unusual legacy. Soft-spoken yet proud, he typically toiled in the shadow of others, grabbing attention mainly when he struggled, all the while serving as a study in perseverance. He started 74 games, finished 64 and filled the gaps in 192 others.
No wonder, when he met the media in St. Louis on Monday, he looked back on his Blue Jays career and said: “My flexibility is limitless.”
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His patience, however, was not.
Following his 15-win season in 2010, he had a 6.86 ERA after his first four starts the next April. The Jays sent him to Triple-A for two months. He understood, but he didn’t.
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“Brett’s harder on himself than anybody else is … There’s no question that Brett is certainly having a hard time with it,” said then-general manager Alex Anthopoulos.
When Cecil returned, he posted a 4.08 ERA in 15 starts, but concerns persisted about his reduced velocity. On several occasions, he threw tantrums in the dugout after he struggled on the mound. He gave up 14 homers in his final 11 starts.
The following spring, his teammates did double-takes when he walked into the clubhouse in Dunedin. He weighed in at 214, having shed 32 pounds. He felt confident, upbeat. He believed he had banished the miseries of 2011.
“It just felt like there was nothing I could do to make anything better, to get back on the right track,” he reflected. “It just felt kind of hopeless. Let me tell you, it’s one of the worst feelings in the world.”
When the season started, he was feeling that way again, back in the minors – in Double-A. He spent most of the season in Triple-A, returning in September to pitch out of the bullpen, his stats sub-par.
But he was beginning to embrace the idea of being a reliever.
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Late in March of 2013, after an unimpressive spring training, Cecil got the call to the manager’s office. He was out of options.
“To be honest, my heart sank,” he said then. “I knew they could release me for certain reasons. I know there are some good reasons.”
Anthopoulos and skipper John Gibbons found reasons to let him stay. He had nudged his velocity back into the low 90s. His curveball was snapping more often.
“You’re only getting better,” Anthopoulous told him.
Then, everything changed for Brett Cecil. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, of course, but over the next three seasons he became one of the game’s most accomplished and reliable left-handed relievers: a 2.67 ERA in 189 appearances, with 216 strikeouts and 63 walks in 168 1/3 innings.
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This past season, the worm turned again. By the end of April, his ERA was close to six. His wife was about to give birth to their third child. A muscle in his back was starting to ache. He was getting roasted on social media.
His patience was not limitless. In early May, he sounded off to TSN beat reporter Scott MacArthur.
“For almost 10 years of my life I’ve put everything I’ve had into this organization,” he said. “It’s the only organization I’ve been with.”
The fans’ criticism stung, he said, but could not touch him when he took the mound.
“I’ve had three great years being a reliever and it’s a shame, I think, people act that way. Like I said, I notice it, it bothers me, but it doesn’t affect me.”
Soon after that outburst, Brett and Jen Cecil welcomed a daughter, Braelynn. After many a home game during the rest of the season, Brett would meet his wife outside the clubhouse, gather up his tiny daughter and bring her to his locker in a far corner of the room for a quiet chat and a cuddle.
And when the Jays celebrated on the field after beating Texas in the division series, Jen handed Braelynn to her husband, who lifted the baby above his head and gave her a triumphant smile.
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Entering the season, Cecil was heading for free agency, expecting a windfall. On July 22, having missed seven weeks with a strained back muscle, his ERA was 6.48.
Then pitching coach Pete Walker made a suggestion. Stop shaking off your catcher. Don’t try to outsmart Russell Martin.
“Pete suggested that I take all the thinking out of the pitching and let the catchers handle that, and just execute the pitch they call to the best of my ability,” Cecil said. “Don’t shake off. Don’t worry about setting guys up or anything like that. So far, it’s been working.”
In his final 29 outings, covering 20 innings, Cecil allowed a mere four runs, walked four and struck out 30. In five playoff appearances, he did not allow a run.
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“You get a little confidence back and get that swag back,” he said. “It’s hard to go out there thinking you’re the man when you’ve got a seven ERA.”
The night Cleveland eliminated the Blue Jays in the league championship series, Cecil said he hoped to come back to Toronto “and take it all the way.” By the following morning, he and his wife began to contemplate the next chapter.
“We have spent the better part of the last eight seasons in this city,” Jen Cecil wrote on Instagram. “My babies have practically grown up at the Rogers Centre. I don’t think there is one person who works there that I don’t hug, or say hi to on a daily basis! Toronto is my home. Toronto is my heart and will always be a place where my family has spent some of the best moments of our lives.”
She thanked the fans who supported her husband. And to those who did not, she added: “You only fueled his fire to work harder, get stronger, and prove you wrong! Which I can gladly say he did!”
Kevin Ahrens, the infielder Toronto picked first in 2007, peaked at Double-A and spent the past season playing in an independent league. J.P. Arencibia, the catcher to whom Cecil has thrown the most pitches over the past decade, spent all of 2016 in Triple-A with two organizations.
Meanwhile, Brett Cecil bounced back from an inauspicious start, as he has so often, and found that windfall he sought. Security, in St. Louis.
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