Australian Baseball League

You might remember him from such appearances as his two starts last season with the Brisbane Bandits. Or, from his multiple-year tenure in the Greater Brisbane League as a key piece of the Windsor Royals roster. Or perhaps from his first season down under with the Redlands Rays.

He's just your average 6-foot-7 (201-centimetre), hard-throwing American right-hander playing in Australia.

Okay, well maybe he's not so average. But the man who provided Brisbane with two stellar starts during the last Australian Baseball League season on loan from the Royals is back, and this time he will be donning the black-and-gold uniform all year long.

In his two appearances last season, Staatz threw 13 1/3 innings and posted a 0.68 ERA for Brisbane. He was the recipient of two no-decisions, for lack of run support, but was named a runner-up for ABL Player of the Week honours with his eight-inning shutout performance in Round 8.

The 28-year-old not only offers his talent to the Brisbane ball club, but he adds experience and familiarity to a young Bandits roster. While the California-born pitcher can only be classified as an imported player, he has spent several summers in Queensland and it is as much his home as any of the other stops he's made throughout his professional career.

Those stops include the Gulf Coast League and the Appalachian League with the Minnesota Twins organisation, the Frontier League and the United League in the States, the Baseball Challenge League in Japan, and a brief stint in the Division Elite in France, not counting out his playing time in Australia of course.

Staatz started his pro career as a 22-year-old rookie, fresh from Mount Olive College. He spent one successful season with the Twins before being released after a solid spring training.

That might sound strange, but because Staatz was a free agent signing, he didn't have the same kind of leverage with the organisation that a 'bonus baby', a player with more money invested in him through a signing bonus, might have had.

"It's one of those things that's devastating," he said of his release. "Especially knowing that you're having a decent spring. When I signed out of it, I knew I would have had to have been pitching at a level that would make them [want] to get rid of a guy that got a lot more in a signing bonus.

"So it puts it in perspective. You try to play as hard as you can but you know at the end of the day that unless you're pretty much perfect, it's not going to work out and you've just got to move on."

The righty's time with the Twins was just one learning experience that he had to endure throughout his career. While he's encountered numerous different leagues and levels of baseball along the way, his aspirations and goals have pretty much remained the same.

"When you're in college, you want to win a championship," Staatz said. "When people start talking to you, you'd like to get drafted but you still have that championship in mind. But you know you want to do your best and hopefully sign with a team.

"Then once you're in the system you're just trying to do everything to move up. Then once I got released, it's a struggle. You try to do everything; it doesn't matter if you're playing in front of 50 people, or I think one time in Japan we played in front of 25,000, but you try to play your best to get back to someone's system, someone's organisation, and just keep trying to move up."

Now that he's with the Bandits, Staatz's sights are ultimately set on the same prize, with a Claxton Shield victory in there too, of course.

"I think every unsigned free agent would love to be able to sign with a minor league affiliate," he said. "But being 29 this season I have a very slim chance of that happening. I personally would love to go back to Japan or South Korea; any of the Asian countries I think would be great. That's really what I'm hoping for if I can put together a solid season."

Staatz is looking to put together a comeback year after not playing at all during the North American summer months. When the hurler left Australia after last season, he was shutdown with an undetermined throwing-arm injury.

"It never got clearly defined," he said. "Originally the people who did the MRI test thought it was a partial thickness tear of the UCL. When I went and saw the doctor for the [Colorado] Rockies he said it was just wear and tear from being a minor league pitcher and that it wasn't anything to worry about.

"It wasn't really defined as tendonitis. They just said, 'If you were in an affiliate program you would have been shut down and put on a limited-throwing program.' But I guess the easiest thing to compare it to would have been a severe case of tendonitis."

The Bandits starter began his rehab at the beginning of April and has found success without any setbacks thus far. He's happy to be back in Australia, playing again, and getting an opportunity with the Brisbane club.

"I'm happy to get back into it because [the ABL] has the minor-league feel [without the] pressures of professional ball around it," Staatz said. "Guys really aren't worried about their job or this or that, or only getting to play on the weekends. It's just baseball, baseball, baseball, and it's fun to be back into."

As one of Brisbane's newest additions, and yet a familiar face around the ballpark, Staatz is excited for what the upcoming season holds, and believes much enjoyment is in store for fans.

"Every year the Bandits are pretty much the same guys, minus a few guys and the imports coming in and out," he said. "And I think they can just rely on the guys that they've known, especially if they've come out the past few years, and just really get behind them.

"A lot of our guys are just homegrown guys. They're from the Brisbane area. It's really easy to get to know them and to cheer for them because they basically are just fun people."