Padres’ first-rounder Ryan Weathers set to follow father’s path

Hear from left-handed pitcher Ryan Weathers, who was signed by the Padres after being drafted as the No. 7 overall pick.

By Jeff Sanders

July 2, 2018 3:15 PM PT

Last fall, as a busy offseason tournament circuit eased up and the Astros and Dodgers met in the World Series, two pitchers watched from their couch at their home in Loretto, Tenn. The oldest had forged a 19-year career in the majors. The younger hurler was stalking his own future in baseball — likely as a first-round pick — after popping on the Padres’ radar that summer.

Naturally, they talked through each at-bat

What would you throw here? What did you think of that pitch? How would you finish off this hitter?

A pivotal moment arrived in Game 4.

Sitting on a no-hitter in the sixth inning, left-hander Alex Wood had fallen behind, 3-1, to the right-handed George Springer.

The father called for a slider. The up-and-coming son countered: Fastball, either away or up and in.

“In my mind,” David Weathers recalled after watching the Padres unveil his son, Ryan Weathers, as their latest first-round pick on Monday at Petco Park, “as soon as he throws that slider, I was going to look at Ryan and say, ‘See there,’ and as soon as he threw it (Springer) crushed it.

“Ryan goes, ‘See there, Dad, he was looking for it.’ ”

Eight months later, the elder Weathers alternated intermittently between watching his son, a Padres jersey pulled over his button-down shirt, address the San Diego media for the first time, and looking down at the floor as he focused on Ryan’s answers.

The 18-year-old Weathers thanked the Vanderbilt coaching staff for the offer to play college baseball. He relished the opportunity to begin a professional career. He couldn’t wait to board a plane bound for the Padres’ complex in Peoria, Ariz., later Monday.

It all sounded … right.

A pitcher with 1,376 innings on his resume would know.

“It’s been 18 years in the making,” David Weathers said. “ … I’m so proud of him. This is his day. He’s his own man, but I know the work starts today.”

Thing is, Ryan Weathers knows it, too.

Before signing his $5.23 million deal as the seventh overall pick in this draft, before earning Gatorade National Baseball High School Player of the Year honors, before striking out 148 batters in 76 innings his senior year, a boy watched his father’s example.

“Nothing is given in this game,” Ryan Weathers said. “There’s a lot of ups and downs. There’s a lot of adversity that comes in this game. He showed me how to get through that.”

His mother’s teaching certificate afforded the opportunity for that education in baseball to coincide with home-schooling as David Weathers’ career shifted from the New York Mets to the Cincinnati Reds.

From as young as 4 and 5 years old, a son was on his father’s heels as he moved through a major league clubhouse and through the early work that fills up the hours before the first pitch.

He’d watch Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips in the batting cages. He’d sidle up next to the hitting coach. He’d chat up pitchers like Aaron Harang and Kent Mercker, the latter later becoming Ryan Weathers’ adviser.

He soaked it all in. Every last bit of it.

“He was a non-typical kid,” David Weathers said. “He would sit and watch the whole ballgame. He wasn’t bouncing all over the place. All those things led him to seeing this is how you go about your business if you want to be the type of player he wants to be.”

The Padres have an idea of what that player is.

Ryan Weathers combines a fastball that sits 93-94 mph with a hard, downward-biting slider and a low-80s change-up. The mettle he showed in his high school state championship in May in particular — when the left-hander was holding his velocity in the ninth inning of a 12-inning, 1-0 loss — was reason enough to line him up behind the likes of MacKenzie Gore, Adrian Morejon and Logan Allen in a southpaw-rich farm system.

“What really intrigued us, what made us think he was as good as anybody in the country,” Padres General Manager A.J. Preller said, “was the competitive aspect and the intangibles he brings to the table. You see it on the mound and you see it when you sit down to talk to him.”

The two Weathers, as it happens, were talking the other day about the state championship game that wowed the Padres so much.

David Weathers, Loretto High’s pitching coach, called for a squeeze play that ended up costing the team the game.

To this day, it eats at him. His son, dispensing the kind of wisdom that wouldn’t arrive in Weathers’ career until he was in his mid-to-late 20s, implored his father to let it go.

The elder Weathers smiled as he recounted the exchange.

“At this level,” David Weathers said, “the separator is above the shoulders. … I’ve always preached to him that you’ve got to absolutely let your mind for the game and your confidence and your convictions be above your physical talent.

“That will be the separator. He’s sold out for that.”

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