There will be a ton of excitement in the air this weekend when the New York Yankees visit Wrigley Field for the first time since 2014. The Yankees bring in one of the most dynamic offenses in the game led by 7’9″ 419 pound outfielder Aaron Judge and his MLB leading 13 home runs. It will also be the first time the Wrigley faithful will get to see their former hero, Aroldis Chapman, since he last pitched in Game 7 of the World Series. Lastly, there will be a mini reunion of sorts as former high school teammates Kris Bryant and Yankees reliever Chasen Shreve will be reunited as opponents at the Friendly Confines.
Needless to say, it should be a damn good series.
Bryant and Shreve were teammates at Bonanza High School from 2006-2008 on a team that also featured Bryant’s future brother-in-law, Tomo Delp, and Kris’ older brother, Nick.
Shreve was two years older than Bryant and was the team’s star pitcher and outfielder. Their former head coach, Derek Stafford, told me that if Shreve wasn’t pitching in the Majors right now, “he’d definitely be playing outfield in the minors. Just a tremendous athlete.”
I asked Bryant’s older brother, Nick, what made Shreve such a special pitcher.
“Chasen was just a flat out gamer. He never backed down from a challenge and he just finds a way to win because he’s smart. He also has a great change up now which makes his fastball look that much more explosive.”
That explosiveness led the Atlanta Braves to draft Shreve in the 11th round of the 2010 Major League Baseball Draft which happened to be the same year that Bryant graduated from Bonanza.
While Bryant was playing college ball at the University of San Diego from 2010-2013, Shreve was in the Braves farm system before he was called up to make his big league debut in 2014 (while Bryant was at AAA Iowa).
2015 turned out to be a turning point in both guys’ careers — Bryant made his Cubs debut and Shreve was traded from the Braves to the New York Yankees. As we all know, Bryant went on to win the Rookie of the Year with the Cubs but Shreve also saw some success in his first year with the Yankees. He hit a rough spot the last few months of the season due to some arm soreness but still managed to end the season 6-2 with a 3.09 ERA in 59 game appearances.
The two kept in touch over the years and still remain friends to this day (Shreve was at Bryant’s wedding in January.) They’ve never officially faced each other in a big league game but if that does occur this weekend, it won’t be the first time Bryant has tried to hit Shreve.
The Showdown
I reached out to one of the guys’ assistant coaches at Bonanza, Kevin Fiddler, and he shared a great story about Bryant and Shreve that occurred right before the start of the 2015 season.
Fiddler left Bonanza in 2013 to accept the head coaching job at Palo Verde High School in Vegas. He kept in contact with both of his former players and always wanted them to come to Palo to take some BP with his team. Obviously the schedules of professional baseball players are pretty hectic but Fiddler got his wish on February 7, 2015.
He had been bugging Bryant and Shreve to come to Palo to get some work in before they left for Spring Training that year. The two stars showed up unannounced right in the middle of Palo’s intersquad scrimmage but c’mon, Kris Bryant shows up at your scrimmage, you shut that shit down and let him take some hacks in the cage right?
That’s exactly what happened.
Shreve took the mound and threw some live BP to Bryant because he “wanted to get a look at some live pitching before he went to Spring Training.” Keep in mind here, Bryant would make his Cubs debut about two months later.
Bryant taking swings off Shreve…
I asked Fiddler who won the match-up between the two that day in Vegas.
“It was the first time Kris had seen live pitching so Chasen definitely had an advantage, not to mention he’s got an uncanny ability to get righties out. Chasen definitely won the day, but we liked to joke that this showdown spurred Kris on to win the Rookie of the Year.”
Both guys stayed after and talked to the team and signed some autographs for about 30 minutes following their session. How cool would that have been to be a 16-year-old kid who showed up to the field thinking you’d be just be scrimmaging and before you know it, two professional baseball players are giving you advice.
It’ll definitely be interesting to see what happens if Bryant and Shreve face each other during this weekend’s series to see who can bring the bragging rights back to Vegas.
