Bies Takes Nontraditional Route to Pro Ball

It was an overcast, dreary afternoon in Arizona. With a starting temperature at just 55 degrees for the 1:30 p.m. first pitch at Surprise Stadium, the conditions weren't exactly what the Gonzaga Bulldogs had signed up for as part of an Opening Weekend tournament, but a better alternative to the cooler confines of the Pacific Northwest. While it was far from a perfect afternoon for baseball, redshirt sophomore right-hander Daniel Bies wouldn't have chosen to be anywhere else, even given the state of the current mess he was in.
On what felt like the loneliest place on Earth at the time, the mound of the Spring Training home of the Rangers and Royals, Bies' thoughts raced as he toiled through his first ever collegiate start. Just to get to that point, a member of the Gonzaga starting rotation, was a massive accomplishment for the former walk-on. Not recruited by any major program to play college baseball, Bies had grown to love the Gonzaga community on campus visits to his older sister's university and showed up two weeks prior to class starting in the fall of 2014 to convince the staff to give him a fall roster spot. Now a shot to pitch in the rotation two years later, Bies tried to keep his eyes focused on the signs from his catcher, Jake Roberts, but couldn't help but glance into the seats behind home plate and see a legion of professional scouts, some of them there to see the 6-foot, 8-inch breakout prospect out of Redmond, Washington.
"I remember my first outing and there were probably 10-15 [radar] guns in the background and it just scared the crap out of me. I had never seen radar guns in my life. I was a guy who was just somebody that showed up at a Gonzaga baseball camp two weeks before school started, wasn't recruited at all, and went from that to seeing radar guns from professional scouts and thinking 'holy crap, I could actually go pro' and that completely just threw my mental game in the basement," said Bies of the rocky first outing.
The former Redmond High School standout was shaken by the sudden extra eyes on his game and was wild out of the gates, walking the first three batters he faced to load the bases. After bouncing back to strike out the next two, he walked Indiana's Scotty Bradley to force in a run before two more scored on a base hit. Bies was bailed out by his defense as left fielder Sam Brown fired in a strong throw home to cut down Logan Sowers, preventing the Hoosiers from clearing the bases on the play. Bies would go on from there to finish five innings, allowing four runs, as the Zags finished off a 2-2 weekend to open the season. It was another big step in the 1,000-mile journey for Bies, who had refocused his efforts after being cut from the baseball program his freshman year to take a grayshirt year.
"It didn't feel good at the time and I honestly think it's one of the best things that's ever happened to me," said Bies of the early wake-up call in his career. "It completely transformed my work ethic. I would say that I worked hard before, but after that I didn't think anyone worked harder than me and that was always my goal was to be the hardest worker after that. And honestly, that was the best thing to ever happen to me because after that, I was out of baseball for a full season and I was able to tear myself down completely and build myself up and I came back throwing completely different than I ever had before. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I was expected to compete every week as if I had made the team. So it ended up being really good for me and I think I made the most out of it."
After breaking the team in the spring the following year, Bies appeared in just seven games, logging only 7 1/3 innings in his academic sophomore season. As a member of the rotation the next year, he struggled with the mental side of the game and the presence of scouts now that he was a draft-eligible prospect.
"I was just terrible for the first half of my true academic junior year. That was a great learning experience for me just because it got to the point where I just kind of went, 'well I've been so bad, there's no way I get drafted this year,' so I went out and just tried to start having fun again with pitching and I took off for the second half of that year and ended up turning down going to the draft that year and went out to the Cape [Cod League] and got more experience with professional scouts and then this last year [at Gonzaga] just felt way, way more comfortable in pretty much every situation, just because I'd been through that."
Getting back to what drew him to the game of baseball, Bies finished the year strong, including garnering the win with 5 1/3 innings of two-run ball on May 20 against BYU to claim a share of the 2017 West Coast Conference regular-season title for the Zags. Just to pitch in a Bulldogs uniform in whatever role he could was a dream come true for Bies.
"My sister went to Gonzaga, so I got an experience of the community and what the school was all about and I loved it. I committed to go to Gonzaga academically and I was going to go there basically baseball or bust and I showed up two weeks before school started and I said 'I want to walk on to this team.' Thankfully, they took a chance on me. They told me that I could potentially get a fall roster spot. I remember that day that they told me I could get a fall roster spot, which really means not a whole lot, I remember my mom was crying and it was a huge, huge deal for us. I ending up playing with them for that fall and basically getting cut before that spring season and having to improve some more to try and make the team that next year, but I was always going to be going to Gonzaga because I loved everything they do at that school and I loved everything about the community. It was some of the best four years of my life."

Going from a walk-on with no college offers, Bies turned in a strong redshirt junior campaign as an All-Conference pick after finishing second in the WCC in ERA (2.49), good enough to go in the seventh round of the draft to the New York Yankees. Now in his second professional season, he's flourishing in whatever role he has in the RiverDogs staff, recording a 3.17 ERA through his first 14 appearances split between the rotation and in relief. Moving in and out of the bullpen is nothing new for Bies, who tries to keep the same mentality in whatever role he's thrust into.
"In the past four or five years, I have done everything you can imagine from being a mop-up guy to a starter to closer to middle-relief, literally everything so I've had experience with that and I just try to treat everything the same."
Coming from a family of athletes, Bies has a competitive edge in his blood, particularly from his grandfather, Don Bies, a former PGA Tour winner who captured the Greater Hartford Open title in 1975 and finished as high as tied-5^th at the U.S. Open in 1968. After turning 50, he went on to join the Senior PGA Tour, where he won several tournament events. Bies says he picks the brain of his grandfather all the time, drawing parallels between the mental challenges of both golf and baseball.
"He's been a huge influence on me just in my baseball career because he's really good with the mental game, obviously being a professional golfer and that's just such a mental game. He's helped me out as far as the one-on-one battle between the pitcher and the hitter. You know, you're alone on the mound and you're alone on the golf course; you're the only guy walking down the fairway and hitting your shots, so he definitely has an appreciation for what I'm going through on the mound and I definitely have an appreciation for what he was doing."
One of the most intense sports fans in the RiverDogs clubhouse, Bies is also proud of his hometown's baseball history, with several notable names to have come out of his alma mater of Redmond High, none bigger than the Mets' former All-Star outfielder Michel Conforto.
"So my sister actually went to school with him, basically K-12, all the way up with Michael Conforto. We actually had three really, really good baseball players Michael Conforto's senior year and it was Michael Conforto, who was going to Oregon State, Dylan Davis, who was going to Oregon State and ended up being a third-rounder, and Zach Abbruza, who was going to Gonzaga and he ended up being the Player of the Year in the conference, so he won it over those other two guys. All three of those guys were just absolute studs and they went to the same hitting coach that I did. I remember all three of those guys were major baseball prospects and were taking batting practice one day and they invited me in to hit off the tee with them and I was so nervous, the first swing I took was just straight tee and I was making a fool of myself. Those guys were baseball royalty and Redmond is a baseball city so it was really cool just having that experience with those guys."
From a former walk-on just hoping to dress in the uniform of the Gonzaga Bulldogs, Bies is now chasing his dream in the pros with Yankees organization and still trying to make sure he can't find anyone else in the clubhouse working harder than him to get there.