Amherst grad one of five Rangers in AL lineup
(By Mike Harrington – The Buffalo News) The Pride of Amherst High has a tattoo of the Buffalo skyline on his arm and has carried it deep in the heart of Texas to a regular role in the major leagues.
But the 2023 season has turned into much more than that for Rangers catcher Jonah Heim.
Texas is the surprise leader of the American League West Division, by two games over the defending World Series champion Houston Astros, and Heim has been voted as a starter in his first All-Star Game on Tuesday in Seattle.
He’s the first player from a Western New York high school to make the game since Philadelphia’s Dave Hollins (Orchard Park) doubled in his lone at-bat of the 1993 game in Baltimore.
“It’s exciting, I don’t think it’s truly set in yet,” Heim told Texas reporters last week.
The lineups revealed Monday show that Heim will bat ninth and catch AL starter Gerrit Cole of the Yankees in the midsummer classic at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park.
The 28-year-old trailed Baltimore star Adley Rutschman by more than 300,000 votes in the first phase of voting but finished second to be named a finalist. Votes then reset to zero and Heim won Phase Two, 52% to 48%.
“I was pleasantly surprised, because usually guys that are relatively new to the league don’t get that much recognition,” said longtime Bisons radio/TV analyst Duke McGuire, who saw Heim’s entire high school career at Amherst while working as an attendance officer at the school. “But this year was totally different. There’s young guys on his team and a lot got voted in. You think about it and I wasn’t shocked because he’s having that kind of year.”
It was a long flight from Washington, D.C., to Washington State on Sunday night for the game, and Heim has traveled a long road in his career to get there.
Heim was a former Western New York Player of the Year who spurned a collegiate career at Michigan State after the Orioles made him a fourth round pick in 2013, the year he graduated from Amherst. He spent seven years in the minors – five in Class A ball – and was traded to Tampa Bay and Oakland before finally breaking through with the Athletics thanks to solid performances at Double-A Midland and Triple-A Las Vegas.
Heim made his major league debut for the Oakland A’s during the pandemic season of 2020, batting .211 in 13 games, before he was traded to Texas in the offseason. He played in 82 games with the Rangers in 2021, batting .196 with 10 homers and 32 RBIs.
One of the highlights of Heim’s season was a three-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays in Sahlen Field, where he had watched many Bisons games as a child. With dozens of family and friends in the crowd, Heim got lots of applause that weekend and even delighted a big Friday night house with a base hit in the first major-league game by a Western New York native in Buffalo since 1915.
Heim played 127 games last year, batting .227 with 16 homers and 48 RBIs, but the weight of the long season came through as he batted just .147 over August and September. He has been a full-marks All-Star this year, batting .282 with 12 homers and already blasting past his career high with 59 RBIs.
The 6-foot-4 Heim leads all MLB catchers in batting, home runs, RBIs and doubles (20), and is second in hits (82), slugging (.474) and OPS (.812). He’s fourth overall in the AL with a .408 average with runners in scoring position.
You want consistency? Heim batted .303 in March/April, .265 in May, .272 in June and is at .320 in July.
“Learning from experience was the biggest thing for me,” Heim said last week in a reference to his slump at the end of last season. “To know what a full 162 (-game season) takes on your body and mental stability, I’ve learned from that.”
The Rangers have a franchise-record five starters in the game, with Heim joined by infielders Marcus Semien, Corey Seager and Josh Jung and outfielder Adolis Garcia. They got off to a 40-20 start and although they have tailed off recently, they still lead MLB in runs and remain solidly in a playoff spot under new manager Bruce Bochy.
“I think the numbers speak for themselves,” Bochy said of Heim heading into the second phase of voting. “That’s pretty strong evidence that this man should be considered to start the All-Star Game. He’s leading a staff and doing a very good job. I think you look at the defensive metrics and where he’s hitting in the order (No. 6), with the damage he’s done … That’s not being biased, it’s just looking at the numbers.”
Behind the plate, the numbers are also impressive. Heim’s catching strike rate of 50.4% is fifth among MLB catchers, according to MLB Statcast. The team ERA of 3.78 with Heim catching is more than a run better than the 21 games when he has not been behind the plate, and he has thrown out 31% of runners trying to steal. That’s third in the AL with at least 10 outs made.
“An old catcher, so you know he appreciates what Heim can do behind the plate,” McGuire said of Bochy, who led the San Francisco Giants to World Series titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014. “Jonah is just so soft with his hands and just massages balls into the strike zone. That’s why I hope they don’t go to ABS (Automatic Balls and Strikes) because it will lose a good piece of his value right there in framing pitches.”
From his earliest days in the minor leagues, organizations always valued Heim’s defensive ability. He had a big body and a big arm and it was just a matter of his bat catching up.
“He was a lot of at-bats behind because a lot of those guys play year round in other parts of the country,” McGuire said. “He was a switch-hitter and people knew he was a real athlete. Played pretty decent basketball too. As a catcher, his receiving is off the charts and he’s got a cannon for an arm.
“I usually follow his at-bats every day, and slid a little bit but now he’s back up over .280 again. He’s been so consistent all year long and he’s driving in a ton of runs.”
The Rangers have 12 tough games to open the second half, with threegame series against Cleveland, Tampa Bay, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston. But after losing 94 and 102 games, respectively, the last two seasons, they’re quickly back in the hunt for the franchise’s first playoff berth since 2016.
“It all started in spring training when ‘Boch’ came in and gave that speech about all of us playing as one,” Heim said last week. “I think we all took it to heart and now we’ve shown we’re a team to be reckoned with.”
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