Baseball: Reaching out to the fans

Chris Hayes, Northwestern-educated computer science major, admits he had to do some studying to get up to speed with his nickname.

“Disco” had been demolished before the Omaha Royals' submarining right-handed relief pitcher was born.

“I had some on my iPod,” Hayes said. “I'm a fan of classic rock, so I'm not completely blind to older stuff. But would I go disco dancing? No, never.”

So how did the 26-year-old come upon the nickname?

Because he pitches in the 70s — that's in miles per hour, not the decade.

“It started in college a little bit,” Hayes said. “People kind of kicked it around. But it really started in the fall league.”

The Arizona Fall League is also the starting point of Hayes' emergence as an online and on-the-mound sensation.

His blog, discohayes.mlblogs.com, ranked No. 5 among major league baseball blogs — the top four are blogs of major league players in major markets.

Hayes' connection with MLB started because of a make-believe interview with Matt Wieters, his Arizona Fall League teammate who is considered a top rookie of the year contender for Baltimore.

“I was happy to write a blog, but how could Chris Hayes write anything that a baseball fan would be interested in? Nobody has ever heard of me,” Hayes said. “Every time we got off the bus in Scottsdale, there were 100 people lined up to get Wieters' autograph. So I wrote about him.”

Hayes has continued writing, and he doesn't just recite a paragraph or two about what happened in that night's game, either. He leaves his readers laughing with his unique perspectives.

“I was an engineer at Northwestern, a computer science major,” Hayes said. “I wrote hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code, but I didn't write a single word of English my entire four years at Northwestern.

“It's fun to write witty stuff. My sister was a creative writing and poetry major ... of the two kids who would have expected that I'm the one with the blog that people read?”

Since he was promoted to Class AAA Omaha in June, finding time to write has been more difficult because of the travel schedule. Also, it didn't help that when he was promoted from Class AA Northwest Arkansas, he was in the middle of a long road trip and that he joined Omaha during its College World Series road trip. He didn't play a home game from June 1 to June 27.

You could write a book about his experiences, which he and wife Tracy are, coincidentally. Proposals have just gone out. Tracy is the Wednesday contributor to Hayes' blog.

“Our stories converge and I think it's going to be a pretty interesting book ... and mostly funny,” Hayes said.

And then there's the nickname. In an introductory interview with his fall league coaches (who come from other organizations), when asked what people called him, Hayes said it. Disco.

“I kind of surprised myself, because nobody really called me Disco,” Hayes said.

They do now.

But there's more to Hayes than just the blog and the quirky throwing motion. The guy can get hitters out, too.

Each organization sends several of its top prospects to the Arizona Fall League each year, so obviously Hayes carries expectations, too.

That in itself sometimes surprises Hayes, who had to walk on to play at Northwestern, then had to try out for the team all four years he was there — he was a shortstop before becoming a pitcher as a senior. He said he originally made the team because he was a good bunter and that his primary contribution his first three years was deciphering the other teams' signs and relaying the information to hitters in the batter's box.

“I make light of it, but I wasn't good in college,” Hayes said. “There were plenty of guys on our team in college who were good. I could have been the manager for all anybody knew.”

Hayes asked if he could work on submarine-style pitching during the summer before his senior year. That's the style of pitching where the pitcher throws underhanded, practically scraping his knuckles on the mound while releasing the pitch.

He found something that worked, but at that point it was too late to generate much interest among professional-baseball types. He played in independent ball in the summer of 2005, then in winter ball in Colombia — where travel for U.S. citizens isn't recommended by the way.

The following spring, staying at a friend's house in Arizona after being asked to come to tryout camps on successive Saturdays by the Padres and White Sox, he heard that the Royals had a tryout camp on the Tuesday in between. The Royals liked what they saw and three years later, Hayes is one step away from the ultimate destination in Kansas City.

While pitchers with the proper physical attributes and 95 mph fastballs can work their way up the system quickly, those who don't have to prove themselves over and over to keep on moving up. Hayes, 6-foot-1 and 195 pounds, has done that to get here.

“It's not about velocity,” Omaha pitching coach Tom Burgmeier said. “It's about how many times you throw it over the plate and how many times they make outs.”

Hayes has gotten plenty of outs with his fastball, change-up, slider and more recently a rise ball — similar to what fast-pitch softball pitchers use.

Since being promoted to Omaha, Hayes is 1-4 with a 3.21 ERA. His promotion came after spending 1½ seasons in Class AA and going a combined 8-2 with a 1.41 ERA — including 3-0, 0.98 this season. He doesn't strike out many, but he walks even fewer — 63 in 308.2 professional innings, including a career-best average of 1.1 per nine innings this season. He's walked two in 28 innings with Omaha.

“All the scouts don't turn around and start talking to each other when I get out on the mound,” Hayes said.

The key for Hayes isn't strikeouts, it's keeping hitters off balance and getting them to make soft contact. Because of his arm angle, his pitches don't react the way the same pitches from conventional pitchers do.

“Throwing from down there, instead of having backspin, you're going to have topspin,” Hayes said. “You get the effect of gravity, the seams hit (the air), physics ... even a sinkerball pitcher can't get true topspin on the ball. I can.”

Hayes takes heart in following the career of other submariners, particularly Chad Bradford, a 12-year major leaguer with whom he has been in contact about different grips and different approaches to hitters.

“Every pitching coach I've had has helped out as much as he can,” Hayes said. “But there's no book on this. So it's kind of nice to be able to talk to a guy who has kind of been there before.”

And now all he needs is some intro music for when he takes the mound. The preference has been for Men At Work's “Down Under,” bringing to mind Hayes' throwing motion. Unfortunately, that song was released in 1981.

“Why couldn't it have come out two years earlier?” Hayes said. “The Disco name seems to have taken off and people identify with it. So I'm thinking something cheesy like ‘Car Wash.'”

Hayes, an accomplished chess player growing up in Chicago, may sound like he's just dabbling in baseball, that it's all fun and games and more material for his blog. But don't be fooled.

“I'm not playing in the minor leagues just to play in the minor leagues,” Hayes said. “I was always confident in my stuff and my abilities, and I was confident that I was going to be able to get big-league hitters out at some point.”

Contact the writer:

444-1027, rob.white@owh.com