Bloye, Oh Bloye, What a Ride

“I still don’t know whose cleats and gloves I used, but I just grabbed them from a locker in the clubhouse and started throwing into a net in the hitting cage and I was in the game a couple innings later.” Taylor Bloye explains.

You see, the righty out of Virginia has had a wild ride since graduating from Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. It didn’t stop with his first day in Columbia, South Carolina. The Royals’ minor leaguer is 26-years-old, about four years older than the average player in the Low-A East League. He’s more than six years older than catcher Omar Hernandez, who he met while on the mound August 14, hours after he boarded a plane from Arizona for Columbia.

Bloye was supposed to pitch against the Arizona Complex League Mariners the day before and was told to stop warming up while he was throwing prior to the game. He sat back down and boarded a flight to Columbia the next morning at 7 am. Bloye had a brief layover in the Dallas airport prior to finishing his journey across the country. When he finally got to Columbia, Bloye was waiting for his bags near baggage claim when he received a text.

“It said that my bags were put on the flight from Dallas to Columbia that left after mine, and that flight ended up getting canceled. So, I didn’t have anything with me except for the clothes I was wearing,” the righty remembers. He then made the trek from the CAE Airport to Segra Park and walked into the locker room for the first time around the third inning. Naturally, the new call-up didn’t have much time to mentally or physically prepare himself to pitch in a ball game. He had eaten a McDonald’s cheeseburger on the way to the stadium, but can remember being hungry for the game.

The first time he met Omar Hernandez and the group of infielders playing behind him was when he was called into the game in the sixth inning with runners on the corners and two outs. The coaching staff gave Bloye the freedom to call his own game, so when Bloye and Hernandez had their conference, Bloye explained, “Hey, one is fastball, three is slider and four is change-up. Then we pretty much went from there.”

Essentially, two guys were playing catch from 60’6” away, but it worked. Bloye earned the win, the second of his minor league career, with 2.1, one-hit innings in relief as the Fireflies unseated the Woodpeckers 8-5 at Segra Park that Saturday evening.

“The goal for that game was just to keep it simple. I actually learned a lot from that outing because a lot of times I’m an overthinker, and that helped me to realize that I might just need to get up there and pitch.”

In all fairness, Bloye’s career has been anything but simple. He pitched in 15 games at Covenant as a 22-year-old and 23-year-old in 2017 and 2018 and held a 3-5 record to pair with a 3.25 ERA. He punched out 60 batters in 52.2 innings and was good enough to get signed by the Pacific Association for the remainder of the 2018 season. He played for the Martinez Clippers and had a bit of trouble adjusting to professional baseball. It was the first time in some time that he had been younger than the average player on his team. Bloye finished the year with an ERA north of 7 in eight total games.

The turning point for Bloye’s career came at the time when a lot of young ball player’s careers had unexpected endings to them. While working out and playing for the American Association, the pitcher had an opportunity that not many independent baseball players have to cross the pond and play in the Australian Baseball League. It was truly a one-in-a-million shot for the pitcher.

He was placed on a wait list and the Sydney Blue Sox reached out to him and said that they had already exceeded their budget, but if he could find a way to get to Australia, they would add him to the roster.

Luckily for Bloye, he had a connection that could help him get a flight. “I have a buddy who works for Delta and he got me an affordable flight. My passport came in at the last second and everything kind of just came together for me to go there.”

The experience in Australia was critical for Bloye, who developed a curveball while there. His fourth pitch is gripped the same way that he grips his slider, and he worked with former Major Leaguer and Olympian Chris Oxspring to mentally change the pitch while switching the delivery a little so he could make the pitch look different to hitters.

After two months overseas, it was time for Bloye to return home. He ended up finding a job in the Pioneer League and was giving it one last season before hanging up the cleats. Things finally started coming together while Bloye was in Billings, Montana. He started working with former Major Leaguer Winston Abreu. Abreu helped him work through some mental stuff that helped Bloye push through a couple consecutive great outings.

“I got back to our hotel after throwing eight innings where I gave up one run and our manager called me down to the hotel lobby, took me outside and said, ‘Hey, the Royals want to purchase your contract.’” Bloye remembers. You can hear the emotion run through his voice as he says, “I had been waiting to hear something like that for the last four years. I was definitely having trouble holding that together. It was definitely an emotional moment.”

This year has been a wild ride for Bloye. He got engaged, moved overseas and back, then while travelling through the Pioneer League, while thinking that it could have been his final year in baseball he got the call to make his dreams come true.

Of course, the dream doesn’t stop here. The son of a preacher, Bloye still believes he has more room for improvement and that the recent call up has motivated him to continue to reach for his ceiling.