Matt Gorski takes failure, adjustments in stride
By Anna Kayser
Matt Gorski is a phenom. A standout in high school and college, his professional career was budding long before it officially began, years prior to pen hitting paper on his contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates in June 2019.
When he was selected by the Buccos as the 57th overall pick of that summer’s First-Year Player Draft, it wasn’t just a chance to live out a dream he had been working toward since his senior year at Hamilton Southeastern High School, only 15 miles north of downtown Indianapolis. It was a chance to maybe one day appear as an offensive force at the stadium he dreamt of playing in, where he grew up watching ballplayers in the same career arc he’s now riding.
After all, his first few appearances at Victory Field as an Indiana Hoosier didn’t end up too poorly for the young outfielder, who made his debut at the Triple-A stadium as a freshman in his first of three collegiate contests.
That didn’t make it any less exciting when he returned in late 2022 for his Indians debut, but that day comes last in a line of mental battles and adjustments he endured through his first four years in professional baseball.
April 25, 2017. The Hoosiers’ annual neutral-site battle, Gorski’s first taste of the Vic which came against Ball State, was tied 3-3 in the bottom of the 10th inning. He had already penciled an infield single on his scorecard in the second, which led to the first run of the game.
“We were tied, and there was a runner on second with two outs,” Gorski said. “One of our best hitters was up, and they intentionally walked him to get to me. I ended up hitting a walk-off single through the right side.
“That was one of the coolest things. I had never hit a walk-off before.”
Not even in high school, where he compiled a .330 average and successfully swiped 22 bases in 23 attempts as a three-year letterwinner and the No. 6 prospect in Indiana according to Prep Baseball Report? Where a big bat began to develop into one that would soon eat fastballs for breakfast against high-level professional pitching? Nope, not that he can remember – and those wins aren’t the type you tend to forget.
For him, baseball was a game of success, not failure. Not yet, anyway.
The scales began to tip toward a potential professional career during his senior year of high school when he was invited to participate in the Super 60 workout in Chicago. A conglomerate of some of the best high school ballplayers from the Midwest, the feedback all pointed in the right direction.
“In talking to a lot of scouts there, they said they liked a lot of things that they saw and told me what I needed to work on,” Gorski said. “Once I got to college, I really didn’t know a lot about the process of becoming professional, [and I was] learning from a bunch of the juniors and seniors at that time that were wanting to play [at the next level].”
When he reached the baseball facilities in Bloomington, the focus wasn’t all on how he could improve on the field. His high school stature was tall and lanky, and it took time in the weight room to bulk up, which ultimately added to his power.
The other side of his development was his mental game and learning to deal with an increasing percentage of failure, exponentially rising as he advanced through levels of competitive baseball.
“In high school you never really think about failure when it comes to baseball because you go to all these camps [and] travel tournaments and you do well,” Gorski said. “You just feel like you always have success. And then once you get to college, you start to figure out that baseball is a game of failure instead of success.
“That was a big thing for me, just early on figuring out that it’s not always going to be sunshine and rainbows, it’s going to be really hard to have success. When you do have success, you just try to ride that wave and when you don’t, you just try to get it back to where you were before.”
April 17, 2018. Ranked as the No. 8 team in the country, Indiana took to Victory Field again to face off against Notre Dame. Gorski, the Hoosiers’ starting left fielder, grounded an infield single for IU’s first hit of the game to open the second inning. Indiana plated two in the sixth and one in the seventh for the 3-0 win.
The single was Gorski’s lone hit of the day and was paired with a stolen base. Baseball is a game of adjustments – something that wasn’t lacking when he first made the transition from college ball to the lower minor league ranks.
“Once you get drafted [by the Pirates] you get to go to PNC [Park] and see all the facilities, meet all these people and sign your major league contracts,” Gorski said. “[In the minors], you’re on the road six days out of the week and never really at home, living out of a suitcase and staying in all of these different hotels.
“It was definitely a grind compared to playing three or four games a week in college, then playing six or seven even in minor league baseball. That was probably the biggest difference, just the workload and keeping the body healthy enough to be able to play all the time.”
The adjustments had to keep coming, and in bigger ways than just how he thought he would be spending every summer throughout the duration of his playing career. In March 2020 during his first spring camp at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla., the COVID-19 pandemic forced the postponement and eventual cancellation of the minor league season.
He returned to Bloomington, the place where he developed into the player who would one day be named the best hitter in the Pirates farm system with their Willie Stargell Slugger of the Year Award.
During his college days he lived in a house with five roommates, all of whom remained for the 2019-20 school year. One air mattress and some space made in the living room later, Gorski had a place to crash and wait for word to come from the Pirates.
While living arrangements were relatively easy to find, space and equipment to practice and stay in shape weren’t as readily available. As many minor leaguers across the country did that summer, he made do to keep his body in the best physical condition he could.
“The weight room was not available, the baseball facilities were not available, so we would go to the baseball field and do what we would call jail workouts,” Gorski said. “We had a small set of weights; we had a couple bands and a jump rope. We would run up and down the stairs [leading to the ticket area], we would do a little bit of weightlifting… we would try to do pullups on anything that we could.”
Bloomington was just missing a place to hit, something he had to go without until later that year when players gathered back in Florida for an instructional period.
“That instruct period was the first time that I had played in a long time,” Gorski said.
The combination of a summer off from baseball and the constant adjusting to a growing level of failure vs. success led Gorski to a year not statistically unlike his first in professional baseball.
In 95 games with High-A Greensboro in 2021, he hit .223 (80-for-358) with a career-high 18 doubles and 17 home runs – a staggering 14 more than in 2019 in just under twice as many plate appearances. It was another adjustment period, one that he looks back on as having the same mental turmoil that came with his inaugural pro campaign.
“I didn’t play as well as I wanted to that year and I went through a lot of struggles,” Gorski said. “You don’t realize how much you really can struggle when you face people of the caliber of minor league baseball.”
In the offseason, Gorski made a slight change in his swing that clicked gears into place, and entering his second minor league spring training camp, he felt confident in the upcoming season.
“I had the idea that I was going to Double-A, I was hanging out with everybody on the Double-A team,” Gorski said. “Then one day I got called into the office and was told that I was going back to Greensboro.”
The confidence he found from the swing change wasn’t enough for him to ride through the beginning of the season and being assigned to High-A turned out to be incredibly important for what was to come later that season.
He met with Pittsburgh’s sports psychology staff to talk through his struggles over the previous year and started working on the mental side of his game consistently. Along with a cohort of teammates – Nick Gonzales and Jared Triolo, among others – Gorski began reading books on mental strength, something he had never done before.
“[The Pirates mental team] obviously knew I was not happy about going back to High-A because you never really want to repeat in the minor leagues,” Gorski said. “They talked me through it, they said you’ve always got to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I learned a lot from [the books], too.
“It’s just having the confidence in myself to be able to do what I know I can do.”
April 23, 2019. Down 3-0 through three innings, Indiana turned on the jets and defeated Ball State 9-3 to cap Gorski’s collegiate career at Victory Field. The starting center fielder batted second and went 2-for-5 with a double in the fourth inning that sparked IU’s comeback and RBI single during a five-run top of the ninth.
Sometimes, adjustments pay off.
In Greensboro in 2022, Gorski launched a three-run home run in his season debut on April 8 and scattered five long balls in 19 April games. He kicked off May with homers in three consecutive games, the last contributing to a career-high four RBI on May 4 vs. Asheville.
He homered 10 times in an eight-game span from May 15-24, with three contests serving as the only multi-homer performances of his career. On May 22 vs. Bowling Green, he went 3-for-4 with a trio of dingers – the last as the first and only walk-off home run of his professional career to date – to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning. He launched 12 home runs in just 18 May games with Greensboro to be named the South Atlantic League Player of the Month.
“Looking back on [being assigned to Greensboro] now, it was bittersweet because I met a lot of those guys on the High-A team, hung out with and made really good friends with them, and then had a lot of success that I really hadn’t had yet at the minor league level,” Gorski said. “It was definitely good that I had that little bit of success and confidence kind of come back and just hopefully ride that out throughout my career.”
His success in the minors continued with Altoona after he was promoted on May 24. He homered in his Double-A debut that night at Harrisburg to give him 18 total home runs heading into June, tied with Yankees slugger Aaron Judge for the most in professional baseball. He launched five more in June until injuring his quad racing around the bases on a two-run triple on June 29, derailing him to the 7-day injured list the following day. At the time of the injury, he was among minor league leaders in home runs (T-1st, 23), slugging percentage (2nd, .664), total bases (T-5th, 156) and OPS (7th, 1.039).
On July 6, he was transferred to the 60-day IL.
“They were telling me my season was over,” Gorski said. “They were telling me that this was going to be a long rehab process and obviously it made [me] super upset because of the season I was having, the success I was finally having.”
Gorski went back to Florida to begin his rehab process. As he progressed with different sets of coaches and instructors from rehab to weightlifting, the outlook took a turn for the better.
He returned to game action on a rehab assignment with Single-A Bradenton on Aug. 30 and launched a solo home run. Nine days later, he was back in Altoona’s lineup.
And then, the next step up. After hitting .284 (76-for-287) with an OPS well over .900 for the season between Altoona and Greensboro, Gorski was told he’d be returning home to the stadium he was no stranger to.
“Once I got drafted by the Pirates, I was super excited to know that their Triple-A stadium was one that I grew up going to a lot and that friends and family could come watch me play once I got there,” Gorski said. “Once I was told I was [being promoted], I immediately texted all my group chats with my friends and my parents, so they were all able to make it out for the game I was there. It was a really cool experience.”
Sept. 20, 2022. It was Indianapolis’ first game with a new batch of Pittsburgh’s top prospects promoted from Altoona earlier that day. Endy Rodriguez – who also had a meteoric rise to Triple-A after beginning the season in Greensboro – was in the five-hole, with Gorski filling in two spots below.
The starting right fielder led off the fifth inning with a single, his first Triple-A hit and sixth lifetime knock at the corner of West and Maryland. With two outs in the frame, he swiped second base with ease. There was one more week of games on the Triple-A schedule, then the Arizona Fall League.
The quad was good. Until it wasn’t.
In the seventh inning, Gorski slid feet-first near the warning track on a sinking fly ball in the right-field corner and was unable to get up as two St. Paul runners circled the bases to take a brief lead in the game. He had reinjured his quad, his season was over.
“That was pretty deflating for me,” Gorski said. “The only thing I could think of when I was on the ground was: How long is this rehab going to be? Am I going to have to do the same thing over again? I just spent two and a half, three months trying to get better.
“Will I ever be back to what I used to be?”
Ever since he was drafted, he’s been drawn to warmer climates in the offseason. Where he would have spent part of the offseason at the Arizona Fall League, he instead spent at Pirate City rehabbing his reaggravated quad injury.
His final test came the week prior to Pittsburgh’s first full-squad workout in Bradenton, where Gorski received his first non-roster invite to big-league Spring Training. He practiced sliding into bases and deemed himself back to 100 percent.
With the year he just endured, having come out the other side, the mental work once again takes over.
“I think it’s basically just the mental side for me right now, getting over the hurdle of [it being] in the back of my head since it has happened twice,” Gorski said. “It’s definitely difficult to do, but I think I’m at a point where it’s kind of go time. It’s not something I can worry about.”
Gorski, currently rated as Pittsburgh’s No. 23 prospect by MLB Pipeline after spending the first five months of the season with Altoona, is back at Victory Field, a place near and dear to him, and more importantly, home.
Originally posted on milb.com