Health and clarity at last, Seth Corry has simply found himself

EUGENE, Ore. — Seth Corry has come to the right place. Or so the universe insists on this picture-perfect Wednesday afternoon. He’s enjoyed a solid start to his year, a 1.99 ERA with an 11.12 k/9. But as he sat with the sunny background silhouetting his Ems’ cap, the questions surrounding his once-burgeoning career were almost impossible to ignore.

Was he right to have signed out of high school? What is he — a 26-year-old — doing in High-A? Did Corry earn that spot earlier in his career as the Giants’ consensus top pitching prospect?

And on this particular Wednesday, every time a question encroached on those topics, Corry answered simply.

Most things in his life are that way now.

Time has passed since he was the 96th pick off the board in 2017. Scars have been cut and healed, he’s married with a son. The southpaw has missed nearly two full years due to injury.

But before all of that is divulged, before his analytics and mechanics are thoughtfully discussed, the first words he said on that particular day set the stage for what was to come.

“I’m older,” the 6-foot-2, 195-pound Corry said as he sat down at the right-field picnic tables at PK Park.

“What do you mean, just in general?”

“Just everything, I feel older.”

No, Seth Corry isn’t the man he was in 2017.

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The messaging, if nothing else, is consistent.

The Giants wanted him — a projectable lefty out of Lone Park High School in Highland, Utah. They were careful with him, moving him slowly up the ranks of the minor leagues. And now, they've stuck with him, after nearly two years of health issues — when he says it was possible no one else would.

“I knew it was going to be hard, I knew there wasn’t going to be a ton of opportunities,” Corry said. “I really just wanted a chance to go out and be healthy, there was a point late in the offseason where I didn’t think I was going to be playing this year… thankfully the Giants offered me.”

The organization’s goal for Corry to throw more hard sliders has been effective. That coupled with some mental work in the offseason and of course, his raw skill have finally stuck, giving him a successful start to his seventh professional season. Is the success unexpected? No, but it's certainly welcomed.

“I want to fall in love with the competition,” Corry said. “I think guys, especially in pro ball, we get caught up in throwing the right pitch at the right time or throwing a perfect pitch, or throwing what the organization wants. Really I want to fall in love with competing and fall in love with me versus the batter…. that’s where I’m at right now.”

Still, the stats are too much to avoid. Corry — No. 99 on the MLB’s top prospect list in 2020, one spot before Mariners’ star George Kirby— is yet to appear above high-A.

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Off the field, he’s calm, even-keeled and smiley. On the field, his stuff catches everyone’s eye.

“What’s going on with Corry,” the general managers, scouts and personnel types want to know.

Corry, who has played at five different levels over his career, has filled his fourth stint in Eugene full of the ohhs and ahhs and oh yeahs of Ems’ fans.

Ohh, His slider jumps out of his hand before nose-diving off the plate.

“I definitely have some stuff that will help me get away with a lot of things.” Corry said.

Ahh, he struck out another player? 28 to be exact over 22.2 innings this year.

Oh yeah, he’s 26.

“I simply go out and do the very best I can do,” Corry repeated multiple times, the words ingrained in him as much as calluses on his left hand. “Nothing else matters, I can’t control what other people say. I simply go out and do the very best I can do.”

There are things he can control — his faith, his family and his mentality towards the game.

But the narrative? The outside talk? Those are things he doesn’t let dominate his life. Not anymore.

“Before I lived and died with every single day, every single pitch, every single game, I cared about what writers thought about me,” he said. “I cared too much about what the organization thought about me, what my coaches thought about me.”

For his on-field performance, he credits some off-season mental coaching done with mental-skills performance coach Brian Cain as part of his success.

“There’s a few different things,” Corry said of his mental approach. “There’s a reset in there and words I say to myself before each pitch, there’s a routine where if I think I’m getting out of wack I can step off the mound and reset.”

Then, of course, there are times when his raw stuff just takes over.

“There’s days where it's going so well I don’t even think of the mental approach… I just enter a zone where I’m moving almost unconsciously,” Corry said with a laugh.

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About five hours after this interview, he steps out of the bullpen onto the PK Park – the sunny silhouette from earlier turning into a cold shadow of a Eugene night – as the chorus to Lynyrd Skynyrds’s Simple Man kicks in.

And be a simple kind of man, oh by something you love and understand. Baby, be a simple kind of man.

As he toes the rubber to begin his warmup pitches, one note sticks out.

All you need is in your soul.

“I love that song and think it's fitting for me in many ways,” Corry said. “I am a simple man, I love God, my family and baseball.”

Finally, simply himself, Seth Corry has all he needs to crystalize his dreams into reality.