How All-Star Kyle Stowers caught up to fastballs and became one of baseball's best stories

New York Times

08-07-2025

As the days inched closer to baseball's July 30 trade deadline last summer, it was no secret that the Baltimore Orioles were making outfielder Kyle Stowers available. Stowers knew it. Opposing teams knew it. Scouts from several interested rebuilding clubs frequented Triple-A Norfolk, like lions circling, knowing Baltimore — which was firmly in the buyer category — was thinking about parting with several of its position player prospects who were blocked by a backlog of young bats.
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The Orioles needed starting pitching in a year in which very few impact arms were available midseason. The Miami Marlins, fielding interest from dozens of teams during a trade deadline in which they would make six trades on July 30 alone, didn't have time to go back and forth on every potential deal. President of baseball operations Peter Bendix, handling his first trade deadline, was one of only a few true sellers and used it to his advantage. Bendix set his asking prices high and let interested teams know: this is what it would take to make a deal with the Marlins. The first team to accept his terms would get the player. In the case of left-handed pitcher Trevor Rogers, who had a 4.53 ERA in 21 starts at the time, the price was steep for Baltimore: infielder Connor Norby, who at the time was the fifth-best prospect in a loaded Orioles system, and Stowers.
The day after pulling the trigger on numerous deals, Orioles general manager Mike Elias acknowledged he would be haunted by some of the players he had traded away. At the time, people assumed he meant Norby or hard-throwing prospects like pitcher Seth Johnson, who was dealt to the Philadelphia Phillies. But the 27-year-old Stowers is now atop that list after being named a National League All-Star on Sunday.
While Rogers has pitched well in an underwhelming first half for Baltimore, Stowers has been one of baseball's best stories. He was a guy who had always been looking over his shoulder, wondering when the Triple-A shuttle would come. But Miami gave him a long runway, and he has rewarded that trust with 16 home runs and 46 RBIs — both team highs — to go with an .866 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage). Entering Monday, Stowers is in baseball's top 10 percent in five Statcast hitting categories, including the 98th percentile in barrel percentage (19.4) and 94th in expected slugging (.552), which evaluates a player's power-hitting skill independent of defensive and ballpark factors.
Not bad for a guy who was so worried he wouldn't make the Marlins this spring that he held off on finding a place to live in Miami.
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Who could blame him? Stowers had been brutal in 50 games after the trade, hitting .186/.262/.295 with 61 strikeouts to close the 2024 season. There was a huge hole in his swing. He couldn't hit velocity in the top of the zone. Big-league pitchers exposed it night after night. It was excruciating, failing so often on baseball's biggest stage, going up to the plate with his stats on the JumboTron, knowing he didn't stand a chance against four-seam fastballs.
It was also exactly what Stowers needed.
'It became on me,' Stowers said. 'There was no crunch or excuse of, 'Oh, you're not getting enough at-bats' or going up and down. I was getting overpowered by the competition and it forced me to look in the mirror. And I can live with that. I wanted the opportunity to reach my full potential and I knew last year making the change was on me.'
The Marlins gave Stowers support and a plan. Stowers spent the offseason and spring training trying to do what he couldn't on the fly last year. He opened his stance and got out of the launch position he was in, closing off his front side more. Stowers says he naturally wants to counter-rotate, and his new setup keeps him from overdoing that. His left-handed power swing has been simplified and tightened. Stowers thinks of it as if he's taken 'the slack out of his swing,' a phrase the Marlins' two hitting coaches have repeated over and over. The initial payoff was slow. Stowers hit below .200, and if you just watched the box scores, slogged through spring.
'Ironically, it felt like he was getting at-bats versus lefties every day, which at the time helped him (keep his swing changes),' first-year manager Clayton McCullough said of Stowers' spring. 'We believed in his ability the entire time and were encouraged with the at-bats independent of the results.'
Still, Stowers, a Stanford graduate who has always been incredibly cerebral, started to worry. Why wasn't any of his good work in the cages showing up in games?
It was late March on the Marlins' last real spring off day. Stowers and his wife, Emma, had just gotten back from walking their golden retriever, Paxton, on the beach when Stowers saw he had a missed call from assistant hitting coach Derek Shohom. Stowers had assured Shohom after yet another hitless game the day before that he wasn't panicking despite a sub-.150 batting average. Shohom was calling to see if Stowers wanted to come in early and get some extra work in the cage before everyone else. Stowers did.
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'Alright,' Stowers conceded early that next morning to his coaches, 'I am panicking.'
Shohom grinned. He had been waiting for this. 'Good,' he told Stowers, 'if you can name it, you can tame it.' Shohom and hitting coach Pedro Guerrero reiterated to Stowers that he wasn't the first guy to worry about a bad spring. They assured him over a half-hour chat that no one else in the organization was worried about Stowers. Quite the opposite: He was making the team, they said. It was in the bag. Stowers should find a place in Miami.
'It was the biggest pivot point of the year,' Stowers said. 'They just really believed in who I was as a person and a player. This is not to say that the Orioles didn't, but I wasn't playing every day (there). What I realized was that the only person in my life that was telling me that it wouldn't be OK if I didn't have success in baseball was me. It wasn't the people I love or the coaches or anyone else. I was putting too much pressure on myself.'
A week after the early cage session, Stowers was down in a 0-2 count on two four-seam fastballs from Pittsburgh closer David Bednar on Opening Day. With the game on the line, Bednar threw a four-seamer up, the exact pitch that had flummoxed Stowers most of his career. This time, he drove it into right field for a walk-off single. A week after that, Stowers won NL Player of the Week, becoming the first Marlins position player to do so since Starling Marte in 2021.
On May 3, Stowers — who had already homered earlier in the game — turned around Oakland closer Mason Miller's 101.7 mph fastball up and away for a two-out walk-off grand slam.
'It validated a lot of the work he had put in to get to a fastball like that,' McCullough said of the Miller homer, which was the fastest pitch a Marlin had homered off of in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008). 'That was the hit that opened up so much for him and his belief in himself.'
Stowers, in 117 plate appearances against fastballs last year, hit .187 with a .280 slugging percentage. In 184 plate appearances against fastballs this year, he's batting .299 with a .554 slugging percentage. Stowers' fastball whiff rate has gone from 36.1 percent to 31.5 percent entering Monday. Baseball Savant lists run values for players based on a pitch type. Last year, Stowers equated to minus-8 runs against the four-seamer. This year he's plus-6. His greatest weakness has become his greatest strength.
'It's not that I don't care, because I care a lot, but what (clearing expectations) allows me to do is really trust the process when the hits aren't there,' Stowers said, 'I want to be the healthiest person I can be so that I can play the game in a very genuine and authentic way.'
When his mind gets overwhelmed, Stowers journals. He has a complex pregame mental routine that includes listening to worship music on the way to the stadium, 10 minutes of meditation and two minutes in the cold tub. He can't control results, but Stowers can control how he prepares and thinks.
And when he needs to remind himself that this is just baseball, that this is all he ever wanted — since Stowers rightly deduced he wasn't going to be a pro point guard — he looks at his right wrist, at the black rubber bracelet that says #LyonHearted on one side and Jehovah-Rapha — which translates to 'the Lord who heals' in Hebrew — on the other.
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It's an ode to Jason Lyon, one of Stowers' best friends who died from a rare inoperable brain tumor when the pair were seniors at Christian High School in El Cajon, Calif. Lyon, who was diagnosed with DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma), started showing symptoms in March of 2015 and died Oct. 15. Stowers still gets emotional talking about it.
'It brings you back a little bit to look down (at the bracelet),' Stowers said. 'You learn just to be grateful every day, grateful for health. And what's most important is what impact are you having on the people around you? How are you using what you have to make an impact on people? That's what Jason did. The way he handled it was unbelievable.'
Stowers wore Lyons' No. 37 his junior year at Stanford as a tribute. He is still close to Jason's parents, Kevin and Alison. They were in Chicago to cheer on Stowers at a Marlins game in May. Stowers used to think he had to develop into a great player before giving back. Now, Stowers — who cites the Bible's Parable of Talents — wants to use what he has to do whatever he can right now.
He speaks up in hitters' meetings and has become a leader in the clubhouse. He talks at length about how much he enjoys hanging out with teammates off the field and the peace it brings him, knowing everyone on the field has each other's backs. Ask people who know Stowers well, and the descriptors aren't typically the first things that come to mind for a pro athlete: considerate, thoughtful, kind, loyal. In his All-Star speech in the Marlins clubhouse on Sunday, Stowers — wearing a 'Jesus over Baseball' T-shirt — thanked the media and clubhouse attendants. Stowers has known his agent, Lonnie Murray, since he was 12 and played on a travel team with her son, Tarik, which was coached by her husband, Dave Stewart.
Stowers, who isn't arbitration-eligible until 2027 and isn't a free agent until 2030, hopes he can be part of something special in Miami. He saw in Baltimore how a group of young players could come up and revitalize a fan base. He wants to be part of that for the Marlins, a team that has played well in spurts but is expected again to be a seller at the deadline. Stowers should be safe, but he isn't worried either way.
A year ago, he was toiling at Triple A, unsure if he would ever get a big-league chance every day. Now Stowers is an All-Star and the poster child for what the Marlins must do if they are going to be successful: develop at the big-league level.
'He realizes the way he's performing is no accident,' McCullough said. 'You have a guy who is very driven to get better, cares about the right things, and so you bet on the person. The upside is there is more there. We're just scratching the surface of his potential. He's a very special person all around.'