DUNEDIN, Fla. — The first thing you should know about Hayden Juenger is, well, how to pronounce the guy’s last name. “Best I can describe it is basically Y-I-N-G, dash, E-R,” he said, spelling out each letter. “The J is silent. Its more of a Y.”
With a name like Juenger (YING-er), the 22-year-old pitcher is used to hearing it incorrectly. Any way you can think of pronouncing it, “I’ve probably heard it,” he said. Most commonly people will say something closely resembling the word ‘younger” and Juenger will politely respond to that and every other well-meaning, yet mangled attempt he hears.
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“I don’t really get offended when someone mispronounces it because it’s so common, at this point, I’m just kind of used to it,” said the soft-spoken Blue Jays prospect. But following a swift rise up their minor-league system, finishing last season in Triple A sooner than two years after he was drafted, the above pronunciation guide should come in handy.
This year, Juenger is a name to remember.
Throughout his career, Juenger has been what amounts to a pitching shapeshifter, able to slide between jobs — starting or relieving — with inconspicuous ease. As modern pitching staffs evolve away from the traditional thinking that used to typecast pitchers into rigid roles, being malleable has its benefits, and Juenger considers that one of his strengths. With bullpen injuries at the big-league level inevitable, Juenger could be on the short list to earn a call-up this season, especially since he has the swing-and-miss potential the Blue Jays will always seek.
“I’ll do whatever, it doesn’t really matter to me,” Juenger said. “I’m very flexible, my routine doesn’t really change in terms of if I’m closing the game or coming in in the seventh, sixth or starting a game.”
After pitching to a 3.76 ERA between Double A and Triple A last season, the right-hander was invited to his first big-league camp this spring. His climb up the organizational ladder has been nearly as rapid as that of fellow standout prospect Ricky Tiedemann, although Juenger is two years older.
“I try to take it day by day and it really keeps me calm and just at the end of the day, I’m doing what I love to do and I always wanted to do it,” said Juenger, who has since been re-assigned to minor-league camp. “I’m very thankful and blessed I can do this.”
Hayden Juenger started the season opening games to build up his arm. He’s now in the back of the bullpen, used in leverage situations. He moves the ball around, and gets plenty of whiffs on his mid 90s FB as a result.
— @[email protected] (@DMFox705) September 10, 2022
At Missouri State, Juenger was briefly a starter as a freshman, but after struggling, he moved to the bullpen where he eventually found he could pitch “based off emotion” and thrived. He worked in middle relief and then moved into the closer role in his sophomore and junior years.
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After the Blue Jays drafted him in the sixth round in 2021, they challenged the right-hander with an aggressive assignment in High-A Vancouver. Working in one- and two-inning stints, he racked up 34 strikeouts in his first 20 innings.
The plan all along, however, had been to stretch out Juenger as a starter, as is often the case with the organization’s most promising arms. With Juenger, it was also an opportunity to build up his workload. After three years in college and pro ball, he’d only pitched a little under 110 innings.
The Blue Jays challenged him, again, assigning him to start the 2022 season with Double-A New Hampshire. For Juenger, he knew his stuff played in A-ball, but against more experienced and highly regarded prospects, he was about to find out.
“I remember just making my first start in Portland,” Juenger said. “I was so calm and collected and then stepped on the mound and I couldn’t feel my legs.”
Juenger walked the first batter before coming back to retire the next nine he faced, seven via strikeout.
“I was like, ‘OK, you’re fine, you’re good, we got it,'” he remembered thinking.
Over fourth months in New Hampshire, Juenger largely thrived in a role best described as a bulk pitcher, with his starts typically lasting three or four innings. Over his 20 appearances, he averaged 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings compared to 3.4 walks.
By the end of July, Juenger had earned a promotion to Triple-A Buffalo, where he shifted to the bullpen. Still largely working multiple innings, Juenger was now tasked with facing batters that, on average, were about four years his senior. What Blue Jays bullpen coach Jeff Ware recalled about Juenger was his maturity.
“He looks like he’s been around for a while,” said Ware, who was Buffalo’s pitching coach before becoming the interim manager last July. “You can just tell by the way he talks about the game, about pitching, about hitters and reading swings, and things like that, he really has a good idea of what he’s doing out there. A lot of guys his age that come pretty much right out of college and come to Triple A, sometimes they have the tendency to have a deer-in-headlights look and that was definitely not him. He’s confident and he has a plan and he knows how to put together that plan and implement it in a Triple-A environment.”
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Still, Juenger was tested. He remembered one outing, about three weeks into his time in Buffalo when he entered a game in the fifth inning and basically everything that could go wrong did. The first two hitters he faced fell behind 0-2 but Juenger didn’t execute a put-away pitch and each wound up doubling. After issuing a walk, a ground ball snuck through a hole in the infield. Naturally, another double followed. All told he allowed four hits and four runs in a third of an inning.
The next day, veteran starter Casey Lawrence approached Juenger to ask him if he was OK. He reminded him that bad outings happen, but it’s how a pitcher responds that matters.
“Just having that conversation really put in perspective like, ‘OK, look this stuff’s going to happen, but it’s about how fast we can bounce back and not worry about it,” Juenger said.
Asked what prompted him to check in with Juenger, the 35-year-old Lawrence said he remembered how former Blue Jays pitchers like Jason Grilli and Mark Buehrle had done the same for him.
“My debut with Toronto, I walked in the winning run, so I’ve had the lowest of lows, too,” Lawrence said, recalling his MLB beginnings in 2017. “These guys now, most of them have stuff that’s way better than what I’ve ever had. It’s just reminding them how good they are.”
Juenger’s approach is to attack the zone. He throws his 92-97 mph fastball up and pairs it with a plus-changeup and a slider — that plays more like a sweeper after a grip tweak in September — that, in Juenger’s words, “has come a long way.” All three pitches can miss bats, as evidenced by the 100 strikeouts in 88 2/3 innings. But mistakes also led to 18 home runs allowed. As noted by The Athletic’s Keith Law, who ranked Juenger as the team’s No. 7 prospect, he was at least less homer-prone in relief.
Reflecting on his season, beyond reaching Triple A, Juenger was most pleased with how his stuff played against more experienced hitters. A goal moving forward is to eliminate mistake pitches.
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“A lot of them, it might have been a 2-0 (count) and not wanting to walk a guy, so you’re saying I’ll put one in the middle of the plate and at the end of the day, they’re professional hitters, they’re not going to miss mistakes, they’re not going to miss fastballs in fastball counts,” he said. “It just comes down to essentially getting ahead and when you get a chance to put guys away, putting guys away with the next one or two pitches.”
Juenger will begin the season in Triple A and is again poised for a flexible role. Whether it involves one-inning or multi-inning appearances or even short starts, he’ll be ready for whatever is asked. As for what he can work on, Ware said it’s all about finding more consistency with his pitches.
“Just executing his slider more consistently — consistently have the same shape of a slider or a very similar slider from pitch to pitch, and just executing his fastball at the top of the zone even better,” Ware said. “We saw a lot of good things from him, he did these things a lot already last year. It’s just getting a little bit more consistent with it.”
Juenger isn’t worried about setting a timetable for reaching the majors this year, but it’s fair to say he’s a name to watch.
“I’d love to debut this year coming up,” Juenger said. “But at the same time, I still got to play, I still got to perform well and time’s got to be right, as well.”
(Top photo of Hayden Juenger: Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA Today)
