Red Sox reliever John Schreiber’s unlikely road to dominance

By Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writer

John Schreiber’s story was already a pretty good one.

Before he was one of the most important pitchers on the Boston Red Sox, Schreiber had already lived out the ultimate baseball dream: playing in the big leagues for the team he grew up rooting for.

Born and raised just outside Detroit, Schreiber was selected by the Tigers in the 2016 MLB Draft and made his big-league debut at Comerica Park just three years later.

Now, the “hometown kid plays for hometown team” trope is hardly a new one, but it never gets old, especially when the path a player takes to get there is especially unlikely. Not to take away from the Cal Ripken Jr.’s and Barry Larkins and Joe Mauers of the world, but those guys were destined to be big-league stars from an early age, and it just so happened to work out that their hometown teams could draft them.

Schreiber, meanwhile, was hardly a sure bet to play professional baseball, let alone at the highest level. Without any offers to play Division I baseball out of high school, he played two years of junior college at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan, before transferring to the University of Northwestern Ohio. UNOH is one of the stronger NAIA programs in the Midwest, and it’s well-known for its uniquely colored infield — baseball’s version of Boise State’s blue football field.

Schreiber was the closer for the UNOH Racers for two years and set several school records along the way. He posted a 1.56 ERA in 63.1 IP across 44 games, recording 23 saves. But this was still a 22-year-old side-armer who barely touched 90 mph putting up numbers against highly variable competition. There are hundreds of those at all levels of college baseball; it would’ve been a stretch to call Schreiber a professional prospect then.

Still, having played high school and junior college ball locally, he was on the Tigers’ radar, as teams tend to prioritize scouting their own backyards. Schreiber pitched well in the Alaska Summer League in 2015 and carried that momentum into his senior spring, after which he was named an NAIA All-American Honorable Mention. The Racers’ season ended May 9, and about a month later, the Tigers selected Schreiber in the 15th round of the 2016 draft. His signing bonus was $6,000.

Following a dominant full-season debut with Low-A West Michigan in which he walked just eight batters in 50.1 IP, Baseball America tabbed Schreiber as the pitcher with the best control in the Tigers’ farm system. Still, he wasn’t on any Tigers’ top prospect lists, so he continued to climb the MiLB ladder relatively anonymously.

When Schreiber reached the big leagues in 2019, the focus of his arrival remained on how cool it was that he had made it at all, rather than viewing him as some sort of impact addition to Detroit’s roster. 

Shortly before spring training in 2021, the Tigers DFA’d Schreiber. At that point, he could’ve faded into baseball obscurity, a fun footnote to an otherwise lousy couple of years for the Tigers. Things might not have gone particularly well, statistically – Schreiber posted a 6.28 ERA in 28 appearances — but who cares? He made it to the big leagues with the team he cheered for as a kid. It was an enormous success story and something he’d surely cherish forever. 

But it turns out that DFA might have been just the beginning. 

Claimed by the Red Sox a week later, Schreiber was then DFA’d by Boston at the end of spring training, but he cleared waivers and was outrighted to the minors. He spent nearly all of 2021 with Triple-A Worcester, where he began the transformation into the big-league weapon he is today.

The funk and deception of Schreiber’s side-arm delivery remained intact, but Boston’s player development staff helped upgrade his pitch arsenal dramatically. Most incredibly, he experienced a significant uptick in velocity: His four-seamer now averages 94.8 mph, up from the 91.8 mph he showed his rookie year in 2019. 

A couple of weeks ago, in fact, he unleashed a 97.1 mph fastball, the fastest pitch of his career — fittingly, against Detroit. In addition to the added heat, Schreiber has relied on his sinker and slider this season much more than he ever did with the Tigers.

Just 16 months removed from being DFA’d by one of the worst teams in the league, the 28-year-old Schreiber is now one of the most vital cogs for a Red Sox team with postseason aspirations.

Through Tuesday’s games, he is one of just six qualified relievers with an ERA under 1.00. He has allowed an earned run in one of his 26 appearances this season — on May 27 vs. Baltimore — and has recorded 14 consecutive scoreless outings since then. 

His remarkable run of success quickly earned manager Alex Cora’s trust in increasingly high-leverage situations.

Player development stories such as Schreiber’s, especially among relief pitchers, have become commonplace within certain organizations, including Milwaukee, Cleveland and Red Sox GM Chaim Bloom’s former organization, Tampa Bay. It’s one thing to identify a player as a possible big leaguer, and the Tigers deserve credit for taking a chance on Schreiber when it seems unlikely that any other MLB team would have. 

But it’s another thing altogether to cultivate and maximize a player’s talent and channel that into effective performance at the highest level of the sport the way Boston has with Schreiber. 

He’s no longer just a really good story. He’s also a really good pitcher. 

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He lives in D.C. but is a huge Seattle Mariners fan and loves watching the KBO, which means he doesn’t get a lot of sleep. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.