Inside Emmet Sheehan's rise from unheralded prospect to Dodgers pitcher

As an overlooked high school prospect and lightly-touted college recruit, Emmet Sheehan usually tried to ignore player rankings and scouting prognostications when thinking about his baseball future.

“I didn’t like looking at that stuff,” Sheehan said. “Because growing up, I was never on those lists.”

After his sophomore season at Boston College, however, the right-handed pitcher made an exception.

One day, shortly after the 2020 college season was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic, Sheehan pulled up a top-500 prospects list for his 2021 draft class. He was curious to see where his name landed among other pro hopefuls.

He knew it wouldn’t be near the top, not after posting a 6.35 earned-run average in his first two collegiate campaigns. But as he kept scrolling … and scrolling … and scrolling … and scrolling down the list, his heart began to sink.

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“I forget,” he said, “but I was either not on it, or I was in the 400s or 500s.”

Reliving that moment three years later — while sitting in a big league dugout this week ahead of his second career start for the Dodgers on Friday night — the blond-haired 23-year-old proudly recalled what happened next.

“I knew I had it in me," he said of making it to the major leagues. "But I knew I wasn’t really putting in the work that I had to be. I knew a lot of guys were working harder than me at that time. So I looked at it like, do I want to be sitting here next year saying, ‘What could have been?’ Or do I want to be the guy that’s getting picked up next year?”

“That,” he continued, “was a huge turning point for me.”

In the months that followed, the pitcher staged a self-made transformation during the COVID lockdown, adopting an at-home training program while teaching himself how to refine his mechanics.

He then blossomed during a breakout junior season at Boston College, leading to a sixth-round draft pick by the Dodgers and a quick rise up their minor league farm system.

And for now, he is occupying a spot in the club’s major league rotation, following up his dazzling, hitless debut last week against the San Francisco Giants by limiting the Houston Astros to two runs in six innings in the Dodgers' 3-2 win Friday night.

“Everything I’ve been trying to do since I got drafted, all the work that the Dodgers have given me, and all the work I’ve put in on my own,” Sheehan said, “it’s just paying off.”

The seeds of Sheehan’s success were first sown during the COVID shutdown, back when his hopes of ever reaching the majors looked like a long shot.

After his college season was canceled, the pitcher moved back in with his mother Maureen, sleeping on an air mattress in the basement of their Stamford, Conn., home so they could social distance from each another.

That’s when he had his draft-board epiphany, recognizing the seriousness with which he needed to treat his craft.

That’s where he began his meticulous process, learning without any professional coaching or regimented private instruction on how to revamp his game.

“He was full steam ahead like I’d never seen before,” Maureen said, adding: “He was figuring it out as he goes.”

To keep his arm fresh, Sheehan would regularly throw with a group of childhood friends, or make late-night treks to a nearby baseball facility where he could use pitching nets (Maureen said Sheehan tried building a mound in their backyard, but gave up on that plan after he kept firing pitches through a makeshift chicken-wire fence).

To keep his mind sharp, Sheehan read self-help and motivational books, most notably one from marathon runner and former Navy Seal David Goggins (also a favorite author of Dodgers star Mookie Betts).

To hone his athleticism, the 6-foot-5 hurler overhauled his diet, developed a routine of sprints and jumps at a public field nearby, and even erected a pop-up tent in his mother's backyard to install a bench press.

“That eight months, nine months kind of showed me how to work on my own, how to use my time valuably, rather than just going through the motions,” Sheehan said.

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But to take the strides he really wanted — hoping to clean up his delivery and add velocity to his lively but inconsistent fastball — Sheehan began a months-long exploration into pitching fundamentals, seeking ways to improve his stuff and refine his mechanics.

First, Sheehan studied videos from renowned pitching training centers like Tread Athletics, picking up techniques on how to throw harder and dial in his command.

Then, he scoured YouTube for pitching breakdowns on such big league stars as Jacob deGrom and Gerrit Cole, looking for facets of their game he could emulate himself.

“I was really just going deep into research and taking the time to think it out,” Sheehan said, noting that with all of today’s online resources, ”now is probably the easiest it’s ever been to make yourself a self-made pitcher.”

He learned how to drive down the mound with more force and build momentum through his delivery, leading to an uptick in his fastball from the low 90s to the mid 90s.

Watching deGrom, Sheehan noticed the need to keep his motion smooth and connected, eliminating any “herky jerky” movements while trying to ramp up his velocity.

He got a confidence boost from a brief stint in a summer league, realizing he could overpower hitters with an improved fastball he started releasing from a lower arm angle.

And when he returned to campus for his junior year, he had his best career season, posting a 4.23 ERA in 13 starts as the ace of the Boston College staff.

“When he got back, immediately you could see the change,” Boston College coach Mike Gambino said. “He thought he was working hard [before]. But there was a whole 'nother gear.”

It all culminated in the 2021 draft, when the Dodgers selected Sheehan — the pitcher who a year earlier could barely find himself on any draft list — at No. 192 overall.

His continued evolution hasn’t ceased since, with Sheehan now throwing his deceptive, seemingly rising fastball in the upper 90s and adding a firm, late-breaking slider to his changeup-curveball mix.

“The great part is, when you want to work with him on something, he’s all-in, fully attentive,” said Rob Hill, the Dodgers' minor league pitching director. “There’s other guys who maybe haven’t done that sort of self-analyzing, or tried to work on new things, and it’s harder for them to bridge that gap. It definitely helped with Emmet.”

After some brief struggles in the minors early last year, Sheehan has been almost unhittable in the season and a half since.

He had a 2.83 ERA in high A last season, and a 1.86 mark with the Dodgers' talent-rich double-A team in Tulsa, Okla., this year.

Days after being called up to triple A earlier this month and moving into an apartment complex in Oklahoma City, Sheehan learned he’d be skipping straight up to the big leagues instead, needed to fill a hole in the Dodgers' banged-up rotation.

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“A lot of my stuff is still there [in Oklahoma City],” Sheehan said with a laugh. “I really couldn’t believe it. There were a lot of emotions.”

Yet, when he took the Dodger Stadium mound for the first time on June 16, he threw six no-hit innings in his major league debut, becoming only the third pitcher to do that in history.

Given the short-handed state of the team’s pitching staff, Sheehan might have the chance to stick around for a while, his maturation having stayed ahead of the curve ever since that summer he looked in the mirror, found renewed self-motivation and went about the process of reinventing his game.

“A lot of that stuff definitely set me up for success now,” Sheehan said. “I think that’s the main reason I’m here. I changed the way I went about things.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.