Wingnuts’ Joash Brodin hits the ground running

The Wingnuts had to wait a few days to acquire Joash Brodin (pronounced joe-ash bro-deen) this season while Brodin attended his brother’s wedding.

That’s nothing compared to how long the Wingnuts have been waiting on Brodin overall.

The Wingnuts nearly had Brodin, a switch-hitting outfielder, in 2012 before he decided to take an offer from the independent Atlantic League while he waited in the airport on a flight for Wichita.

Brodin has proven, so far, to be worth the wait. He’s batting .371 through 15 games, giving a once-uncertain Wichita offense a boost from the middle of the order. Brodin hadn’t played this season before the Wingnuts signed him on June 9.

“It wasn’t unexpected,” Brodin said. “I was thinking about coming here in 2012, and things kind of changed and I went a different direction. But I always knew that if I was going to play in this league that I would play for Wichita.”

Brodin, 28, has played in three independent leagues since going undrafted out of the College of Charleston and beginning his professional career in 2009. His statistics have been virtually the same in each of his seven seasons — he bats around .300 with 10-14 homers, around 20 doubles, and with low strikeout totals.

Those numbers have made Brodin a coveted commodity in independent baseball, but they haven’t permanently caught the attention of major-league organizations.

His only experience in affiliated baseball is eight games in advanced Class-A Visalia for the Arizona Diamondbacks, who signed Brodin away from the Atlantic League in 2013.

Brodin went to Arizona’s minor-league camp the following spring, but he was released before returning to the Atlantic League.

“Honestly, it was one of the worst experiences I’ve had in my baseball career,” Brodin said. “But the goal is to make it to the big leagues, so you kind of have to work through all of that nonsense. If your goal, your dream, is to become a major-league baseball player, you have to grind it out in the lower levels of affiliated ball.”

Brodin was negatively struck by the business of baseball, which favors high draft picks and younger prospects. Brodin saw, though, how a player can rise from the independent ranks – a teammate with Visalia was David Peralta, whom Arizona purchased from the American Association and who now plays for the Diamondbacks.

Brodin appreciates his limited time in affiliated baseball but might not trade it for his years in the Frontier League, the Atlantic League and the American Association, where he is valued for the player he is.

In independent ball, he is not called upon to be a greater power threat and he can use his speed – the 6-foot-4, 225-pound Brodin stole 28 bases last season and 29 in 2010.

“I love it,” Brodin said. “It’s completely different than affiliated ball. We’re out here grinding, trying to get wins every day, and (affiliated teams) are trying to move guys up to the big leagues. I understand both scenarios, but baseball is more fun when you’re out there with a group of guys who are trying to get a (win) every night.”

And it’s more fun for the Wingnuts to have Brodin around, even if it took three years.

“He hasn’t faced live pitching in quite some time,” Wichita manager Kevin Hooper said. “I knew it was going to take him some time to get going, and to do what he’s done so far, so early on, is pretty special.”

This story was originally published June 24, 2015 at 4:14 PM with the headline "Wingnuts’ Joash Brodin hits the ground running."