Drew Leach’s Long & Winding Road Back to Baylor
When any inconvenience comes his way, redshirt junior right-handed pitcher Drew Leach often tells his best friend and fellow veteran reliever Cole Stasio, “I’m just happy to be here.”
As of last summer, “here” looked a little different than it does now. Drew was adrift seeking to continue his college baseball career but with minimal options. After mulling over the potential different routes he could take, he decided to do the unthinkable – call the man who had cut him less than a year before.
In July on a golf course outside of Houston, Drew dialed Baylor head coach Mitch Thompson’s phone number and asked, “What are the odds I could come back and have a walk-on spot and an opportunity [to make the team] in the fall? I don’t need anything. I’ll just come in and show you what I’ve got.”
Thompson was receptive and responded honestly, “Drew, we’ve got a lot of guys coming in. It’s pretty unlikely that you’d make this team, but if you do, it’s purely on you because you’ve earned it.”
Fast-forward to April, Drew not only made Baylor’s 40-man roster but has become one of Thompson’s most reliable relief arms. He leads the bullpen in appearances on the mound (16) and strikeouts (24) so far this season.
Before his long and strenuous path back to Waco, Drew was a third-generation Bear and a wide-eyed freshman in the 2020 recruiting class who came to Baylor over a handful of other schools. In his first season in the green and gold, Drew didn’t see much time on the field on a senior-laden team.
“There’s a lot of innings in a season, and the fact that I only threw four made for a long year, but it was a learning experience,” Drew said with a smile in a sit-down interview with SicEm365. “We had a lot of older guys, and I remember after my first game asking Luke Boyd, who was the star closer, a really stupid question about what his mentality was like on the mound.
It’s pretty obvious that, as the closer, you get outs and have an attacking mindset. But those guys had a lot of wisdom for me, and I ended up making some really good friendships along the way.”
Despite having only four innings of work under his belt, Drew spent the offseason going into his second year of college in Kentucky playing for the Hoptown Hoppers, a summer ball team in the Ohio Valley League.
In his fourth start for the Hoppers, Drew tossed five innings before suffering a UCL tear that kept him sidelined for the entire 2022 season. In late July, he underwent Tommy John surgery but arm discomfort would become something Drew would have to deal with for years to come.
“I learned more about myself sitting out than I would have playing,” Drew said reflecting on the 2022 season that he had to witness entirely from the dugout. “The small things matter in everything you do. You have to learn to relax. You have to learn to trust others. You have to trust the process.
Going through that and being able to trust my trainers and trust Josh Barnhill, our athletic trainer. Just being able to go through the small and tedious things like range of motion training, which takes 30 minutes, but every little thing adds up. I think part of my success this year is because I learned to do the little things.”
During his injury, Drew leaned on Kip Wells, the former Bear star pitcher, who had been a mentor to him since he was 12 years old. Wells, who was friends with Drew’s dad, Taylor, during their time together at Baylor in the late 1990s, currently owns Dojo Baseball – a training program aimed at developing young pitchers.
“He became kind of my first pupil to go from Little League to a college player,” Wells said. “He was physical; he had some size to him. That made it easier for him to produce the power needed to throw hard because he was already a bigger-framed kid. So that's kind of where it started, and I’ve basically stayed involved since.”
With a little over a year of recovery time and a new coaching staff taking over the Baylor program, Drew didn’t want to spend the fall of 2022 sidelined despite not being entirely ready health-wise.
“The competitive nature took over, and I wanted to be out there,” Drew said. “I didn’t want to be the guy who was hurt anymore – I was tired of it. I wanted to go out there and show the coaches what I could do. I probably rushed myself and pushed myself a little too hard too early.”
During Thompson’s first fall at the helm, over 60 players were fighting for 40 spots, and the competition was fierce. After bad outings began to pile on top of each other, Drew knew the writing was on the wall regarding his roster status.
“I saw it coming about two weeks out because I was throwing in intrasquad [scrimmages], and I was not where I needed to be,” he said. “I remember I walked out to center field and sat down after my last outing and thought to myself, ‘This is probably it.’
It was humbling. I’ve faced a lot of adversity, and I’ve gone through some injuries, but I never thought I’d be the guy that got cut. It was definitely hard. It was definitely tough to swallow.”
After he was cut from the team in October, Drew was all but ready to quit baseball altogether. He gave himself a week to think things through, and after a couple of days, he had an itch to keep playing the game he loved and decided to go practice with Baylor’s club baseball team.
“I went out with the club baseball team and played and practiced with them,” Drew said. “I threw some live at-bats. They’re good players, and I had a lot of fun with them. They kept me sharp, and I knew I couldn’t give [baseball] up.”
Drew ended up calling Raul Garcia-Rameau, his high school coach from Strake Jesuit, just outside of Houston, to ask if he could have the contact information of someone on the Alvin Community College baseball staff. Garcia-Rameau's son, Caleb, who played with Drew in high school happened also to be pitching for Alvin.
“On January 5, I called the coaching staff. On January 6, I was throwing a bullpen. And on January 15, I was closing a game,” Drew said laughing. “It was quick, but I’m really thankful for those guys down there for giving me an opportunity because they’d never seen me throw [before then] and just went on the word of my high school coach.”
About halfway through that season, Drew was finally starting to return to form on the mound and figured he might be able to make a comeback to the Division I level the following spring.
“I knew I could make a return somewhere,” Drew said. “It wasn’t necessarily Baylor; they had cut me, so I kind of figured the bridge had been burned. But I always kept up with the team, and I would cheer on my guys.”
That spring, Drew tossed over 50 innings and struck out 44 batters while maintaining a 4.83 earned run average for the Dolphins. Looking back, he believes the 2023 season at Alvin was transformative for him both on and off the field.
“[Drew] kind of gritted his teeth and did it, and he still had some outings where his arm didn't feel good,” Wells said. “He had days where his stuff was playing average that day. He kind of just got through that season at Alvin almost entirely on fumes. He had nothing left. But he had gone out and done it.”
“I think going to junior college and having that experience and getting cut made me a better player and a better person,” Drew said. “But the JUCO grind is definitely real. I took meteorology and a bunch of random classes to get my associate’s degree. We pulled the tarp at 3 a.m., we did some weird things and I think we ate more Whataburger than anybody at any time ever.”
When the season ended, and Drew was looking for his next landing spot, he couldn’t help but think about where it all started.
“After Alvin, I had a few schools show some interest, but I wasn’t dying to go to any of them,” he said. “And the ones I could see myself at didn’t really want me. So I always thought to myself that I wanted to finish my degree at Baylor.
My parents went to Baylor, and I grew up watching Baylor sports and going to football and baseball games. And when the time came when I had to decide what to do, I basically told myself I’m going back to Baylor, whether it’s to be a student or play on the team.”
Drew decided to return to Waco before the start of the fall semester, regardless of whether he’d be on the team because he loved the university and his life was at Baylor. After speaking with Thompson on the phone, Drew was given the opportunity to compete for a roster spot.
“Last July, I was thinking, ‘Man, I hope I make this team,’” he said. “I just hope I can be in a Baylor uniform. I hope my name says ‘Leach’ on the back again.”
When Drew survived the first round of cuts and made it into the spring, he began to stack good outings on top of each other in intrasquad scrimmages. For the first time since before his injury in the summer of 2021, he felt completely healthy. And in February after impressing the coaching staff enough, Drew officially made the 40-man active roster.
“It was definitely a relief [to make the team],” Drew said. “I've earned things in the past, but this was probably my biggest accomplishment. I've had awards and stuff in high school, but I felt like this was something that I really earned. Compared to everything else, I was the most proud of this.
I feel like nothing really, baseball-wise, has been handed to me. I've never been on scholarship. I've never been the best. I've never been invited to the best showcases, but I've had to go and earn everything I've gotten.”
“[Drew] believed in himself and wanted to come back,” Thompson said reflecting on his July phone call. “I’m glad [I gave him another chance]. It was a good decision on all of our parts. We’re glad he’s here. He’s getting the ball and getting opportunities, so I’m proud of him. It’s a good lesson in life for all of us.”
Not only did he make the roster, but Drew has also become one of Thompson’s most reliable arms out of Baylor’s bullpen.
“To finally be able to say that I helped with that win or even that the last loss was on me – it's amazing,” Drew said. “It feels like I've come full circle. As a freshman, I was like, ‘Man, this stuff's hard. I don't know, am I ever going to be that good?’ And finally, to be able to do this and contribute. It's pretty unbelievable.”
“It's just an awesome story,” Wells said. “Now Drew is a fourth-year guy that's kind of come out of the coal mine realizing what the real world looks like, and a lot of these other kids haven’t. It takes a village as the saying goes, and I'm just happy in the sense that he did the work, and he wasn't shuffled off under the rug.”
But when looking back on his baseball journey, Drew wouldn’t have it any other way because it has made him the man he is today.
“[My story] has taught me to enjoy the ride,” he said. “I knew there would be ups and downs in college baseball because I’ve never been the highly recruited guy. But at the end of the day, I’m glad I trusted the process. I’m glad I rode the waves.
I’m glad I had a good group of friends and family around me to really bounce ideas off of when I was going through my tough times but also to celebrate my wins. And that's kind of what I'm most appreciative of; I'd say that taught me a lot about patience.”
Drew and the Bears (16-18) will continue their quest to reach .500 with a contest against UT Arlington (15-21) at 6 p.m. Tuesday night at Clay Gould Ballpark.