BELLVILLE — A.J. Blubaugh realized a dream Wednesday, but it wasn’t his alone.
The newest edition to the Houston Astros’ pitching rotation brought the entire Clear Fork Valley along for the ride.
The 24-year-old Blubaugh made his major league debut Wednesday afternoon when the Astros hosted the Detroit Tigers in the final game of a three-game series at Daikin Park. He was promoted from Triple-A Sugar Land (Texas) late Monday and joined the Astros’ taxi-squad Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s start.
“He’s not only fulfilling his dream. There have been plenty of other kids who have come through these hallways who wanted to be a Major League player,” said Joe Staab, Blubaugh’s former coach at Clear Fork.
“You hear about the tiny percentile who actually get to make that a reality.
“For A.J. to get to do that, it couldn’t have happened to a better kid.”
Defense lets Blubaugh down
HOUSTON – A.J. Blubaugh was let down by his defense on Wednesday during his Major League Baseball debut.
The 6-3, 190-pound Clear Fork High School graduate started and pitched four innings for the Houston Astros against the Detroit Tigers, allowing seven runs.
But only two of the runs were earned. Detroit’s Javier Baez hit a grand slam off Blubaugh in the third inning after Houston shortstop Jeremy Pena mishandled a potential double-play grounder that would have stifled the Tigers offense in the frame.
Blubaugh was lifted after four innings with the Astros trailing 7-1.
He threw 84 pitches, including 51 for strikes. Blubaugh surrendered five hits, striking out six and walking just one.
News of Blubaugh’s promotion spread quickly through the tightly-woven Clear Fork community. The 2019 graduate was the toast of Bellville and Butler.
“I knew it wouldn’t take long,” Blubaugh’s mother, Erin, said from her hotel room in Houston early Wednesday morning. “A.J. messaged me and he asked who I told because he was getting so many messages from people back home.
“Everybody has been super-supportive.”
A middle school math teacher, Erin got the news from her son late Monday night.
“He called us right after he called his girlfriend. It was a really freak thing that I was awake,” Erin said. “I had fallen asleep and I just happened to wake up at 11:30 at night, which I don’t ever do, and I was checking my phone because I fell asleep early.
“So I’m checking my phone and that is when he called. Then I was up until 3:30 making travel arrangements.”
As to be expected, the conversation was an emotional one.
“We were all emotional,” Erin said, her voice cracking. “It’s one of those things where my emotions were kind of muted because I was trying to process everything.”
A hard-throwing right-hander, Blubaugh has accelerated through Houston’s minor league system. He was drafted out of Milwaukee-Wisconsin in the seventh round of the 2022 MLB draft and split his first professional season between Houston’s rookie league affiliate in the Florida Complex League and Single-A Fayetteville (N.C.).
He began the 2023 season with High-A Asheville (N.C.) before being promoted to Double-A Corpus Christi (Texas). He was on Corpus Christi’s opening-day roster in 2024, but was promoted to Triple-A Sugar Land in early-April after just one Double-A appearance.
Blubaugh was 12-4 with a 3.83 earned run average and 1238 strikeouts in 124.2 innings pitching with Sugar Land last summer. He was 2-2 with the Space Cowboys this year before his promotion.
“How can you not love A.J.? Other than my son, I don’t know if I’ve ever met a nicer kid than that kid,” said Madison High School athletic director Doug Rickert, who coached Blubaugh when he was a member of the highly-successful Mansfield Mudhens in the 2010s. “I’m just so happy for him and his family.”
The undersized Blubaugh — he was 5-foot-3 and weighed 95 pounds as a Clear Fork freshman — was a year younger than most of the players on the Mudhens roster. That team included Rickert’s son, Cal, who played collegiately at Slippery Rock, and Lexington’s Ben Vore, who finished his career at Wright State last spring.
“When A.J. first started with us, he couldn’t hit the ball out of the infield,” Rickert said. “He did everything right, but he couldn’t hit the ball out of the infield because he just wasn’t strong enough yet. He would get so angry.”
That didn’t stop Blubaugh, Rickert said. The little kid from Bellville was the pitcher of record in one of the Mudhens’ signature victories.
“We won nine games in three days with nine guys at the Cincinnati Flames Tournament, one of the most prestigious tournaments in the country, and who pitched our championship game? A.J.,” Rickert said.
“That little son-of-a-gun went out there with his 57-mile-an-hour fastball and that little knuckleball of his and he won it for us.”
By the time Blubaugh got to Milwaukee-Wisconsin, he was 6-foot-3 and weighed 190 pounds. His four-pitch repertoire included a mid-90s fastball. He was twice selected the Horizon League’s reliever of the year.
“I got a call from my old coach, Marc Harris, whose son, Zane, was playing for Wright State at the time,” Rickert said. “He told me A.J. Blubaugh just came into the game and struck out Wright State’s three, four and five hitters and he’s throwing 94 miles an hour.
“Then one day A.J. sends me a picture of a ball with 100 mph written on it. I asked, ‘Did you throw a hundred miles an hour?’ A.J. said, ‘Yeah, but it was a ball.’ I said, ‘You threw a hundred, it doesn’t matter if it went over the fence.’ ”
Like everyone else across the region, Rickert can’t wait to see Blubaugh’s debut.
“I just hope he has a nice outing, but who cares? He’s going to pitch for the Houston Astros,” Rickert said. “We all want to see him succeed, but it’s not a one-game audition. They know what they got there.
“I sent A.J. a text Tuesday and said, ‘Just show them you belong.’ He’s always been up for the challenge and I have no doubt he’ll be up for it again.”