Friday Night Lights to Frawley Stadium Strikes

Seth Shuman, one of many talented starting pitchers that worked their way from the Wilmington Blue Rocks to the Harrisburg Senators this season, grew up in Valdosta, Georgia. The southern Georgia town is known for its rich sports culture, specifically when it comes to football, so it’s no surprise that Shuman went into college with the “football first” mentality.

He divided his time pretty evenly between baseball and football in high school as the football team’s varsity quarterback and baseball team’s pitcher and infielder. Shuman excelled in both, garnering collegiate interest for football and a draft selection from the Baltimore Orioles in the 2016 MLB June Amateur Draft. Ultimately, he knew that he wanted to further his education, and Georgia Southern University was the best fit.

“It's a cool accomplishment,” Shuman says of being drafted right out of high school. “I knew I wanted to go to college. I wanted to get that whole experience.”

Having earned a football scholarship from Georgia Southern and only one conversation with the school’s baseball coach, Shuman went into his freshman year with football as his top priority.

“It was football first, and then once the fall season was over, we could discuss playing baseball.”

Shuman reconnected with Georgia Southern’s baseball coach that spring and earned a spot on the team during preseason, and his focus shifted shortly after.

The two offensive coordinators that enticed Shuman to play Georgia Southern football were fired after his first year, leaving him to either transfer to another school or stick to baseball.

“I knew at one point I had to pick one or the other,” Shuman says, adding that there is a distinct difference in training for both sports, which was another reason he made his decision earlier in his collegiate career rather than later.

“Football training is more about getting you as tough and as strong as possible,” he explains. “As quarterbacks we did a little bit of shoulder care, but it’s not quite as important as it is with baseball pitchers.”

Shuman was fully focused on baseball heading into his sophomore year, playing both pitcher and infielder. By his junior year, the right hander was solely a pitcher. He recorded a 3.83 ERA and 22-10 record through 40 starts, which was enough to get noticed by yet another MLB team.

Surrounded by family at his parents’ home in Valdosta, Shuman was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the sixth round of the 2019 MLB Draft.

He spent his inaugural season in the minor leagues as a member of the Athletics’ rookie ball Vermont Lake Monsters, and his second year, 2020, was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Shuman’s first full season, he recorded a 2.25 ERA through 56 innings of High-A before being traded to the Washington Nationals organization.

The young pitcher and two other minor league players were traded in exchange for major-leaguers Yan Gomes and Josh Harrison.

“At the moment I didn't think it was real,” Shuman says, recalling where he was when he found out he was headed to Washington.

“We were just getting ready for batting practice, and the manager called us aside, and he told us that we had just been traded. I was kind of speechless.”

“I thought he was joking with us for a second, but no, he said, ‘You guys have earned it, they [the Nationals] also think a lot of you, and you should take pride in being traded for big leaguers.'"

From there, Shuman joined the Blue Rocks and spent the rest of the 2021 season in Wilmington. He continued in High-A the following year up to his 14th start in an early July road game against the Winston Salem Dash.

“Honestly, leading up to that game, my elbow didn’t really feel too good,” Shuman admits. He shrugged it off as “extra soreness” and played less than two innings before realizing that something was off, and was later diagnosed with a slight UCL tear.

Shuman and his medical team opted for a PRP injection instead of Ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, more commonly known as Tommy John surgery, because of the insignificance of the tear. He rehabbed all offseason and threw in 2023 Spring training only to find that it was even worse. The pitcher had the Tommy John procedure and missed the entirety of the 2023 season for more rehab, a process that is as grueling mentally as it is physically.

“There are definitely points during the rehab process when you see guys playing and think ‘I wish I could be out there.’ But, you kind of take yourself back and like, ‘All right, I’m here doing my thing, rehabbing, trying to get back to where I want to be,’” Shuman says. “You just have that mindset every day. I gotta go and get my stuff done, because I know it's gonna make me one day better, one week better, one month better.”

Now, the 26-year-old is back on the mound and has already surpassed what he’d accomplished in the years prior. In just five months, he rehabbed in Florida, worked up to Low-A, and had eight starts with the Blue Rocks before being promoted to Double-A.

Through it all, Shuman relates his role as a pitcher to all his years as a quarterback.

“As the starting quarterback, you hold yourself to a higher standard. You want to be perfect in everything you do. You want to show leadership to your teammates, and it’s the same thing as a pitcher, you have the ball every single play, you set the tone.”