Mike Clevinger is in Florida looking for work.
Eight years of MLB service time, including participating in a World Series, doesn’t guarantee a spot on a club’s 26-man roster. What you have done for the franchise lately is what could persuade one of 30 clubs’ general managers to offer a contract.
Good health and even better performances consistently is what will get a ball club interested in a player. Just ask Clevinger, the Jacksonville, Florida native, who is nearly 250 miles south, on the Gulf Coast in Bradenton, trying to win a spot in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitching rotation. Suiting up for 14 teams over the past 14 seasons since 2011 after being a top draft selection by the Los Angeles Angels, Clevinger and the Pirates are hoping for a bounce back in his skills that once made him among the most observed arms in the game.
Although he has a corner locker deep inside on the veterans’ side of the Pirates’ clubhouse at the team’s spring training complex in Pirate City, Clevinger is the new guy. It’s Saturday morning, and Clevinger quietly dresses into team-issued shorts and a t-shirt, then makes his way to one of the four fields to participate in drills. Only a year ago, when splitting time between the White Sox facing American League hitters and pitching to Triple-A players for Charlotte in the International League, where bus rides trump charter flights in transit to road games, Clevinger is no longer on the open market.
“Waiting in the off-season looking for a job was definitely different. There was some angst to it for sure,” Clevinger told The Epoch Times on Feb. 14. “The game humbles people. I’m fighting my way back, and I feel like I’m on the right track. The last two seasons I signed [with Chicago] after training camp started. Getting a deal done with Pittsburgh early alleviates anxiety.”
Coming into Pirates camp, Clevinger, 35, has an uphill battle in looking to crack either a starting role or being among the bullpen brigade. Physically, the right-handed pitcher who has won 60 games and appeared in 164 games for the Cleveland Indians, San Diego Padres, and the White Sox, Clevinger doesn’t look any different than a decade ago when appearing in three games during the 2016 World Series for Cleveland as a 25-year-old. His voice is confident, and his body language is relaxed. Baseball is what Clevinger knows. The business side of the game is something players rarely become friendly to. For teams, it is all about numbers; who is selected for rosters and who fits into an overall budget.
The 2025 numbers for Clevinger is tough to review. Appearing in eight games, no victories, two losses, in less than six innings of work, while racking up a lofty 7.94 ERA, Chicago dispatched Clevinger to the minors for most of the season. While with the Charlotte Knights, patching together a 7–3 record with a much more controlled 4.20 ERA in 22 pitching performances restored confidence in Clevinger, and evidently impressed Pittsburgh’s general manager Ben Cherington enough to make the minor league contract offer, with an invitation to the Pirates’ spring training.
“I’ve learned over the past couple of years, you choose happiness. I choose not to wallow in sorrow,” said Clevinger, who began his minor league years as a rookie in the Pioneer League, where team bus rides routinely were approximately 10 hours—one way.
During the best of times for Clevinger, with Cleveland between 2017 and 2019, the Floridian racked up a 38–18 record and produced a stingy 2.91 ERA. Discipline is an important ingredient of success. This Clevinger learned at a young age in his pursuit of athletics. In 2010, as a teenager, Clevinger was recruited by a Division-l college for their baseball program. Attending The Citadel in South Carolina as a freshman, a public military college, caused Clevinger to pause and wonder if this was the right path for him to allow MLB scouts to keep tabs on him.
“When talking with West Point boys, I think we [freshman students] had it worse than them. On the first day, your head is shaved bald,” Clevinger said. “Every morning at 6 a.m. you had to be standing on line for breakfast. You couldn’t be late. Your uniform had to be pleated. You needed three pleats in your shirt, and there was one cadet that would measure them. Your class had to do push-ups each morning.”
Years later, as a veteran pitcher who experienced regular winning seasons with Cleveland, and after a brief season and a half with the San Diego Padres, coming to the White Sox in 2023 was a change that Clevinger originally thought was going to be positive. Although posting a 9–9 record, the wheels fell off in Chicago as a team. The club lost 101 games. Baseball on Chicago’s South Side in 2024 went from bad to extremely unpleasant. The White Sox lost 121 ball games, ending the season with only 41 victories.
“That was not a good experience,” Clevinger said. “Before being in Chicago, I was in the playoffs almost every year of my career. My first year in Chicago we looked like we had a lot of promise. That roster we built in 2023 was supposed to dominate, but things didn’t fall our way. A lot of bad things happened in the beginning of the 2024 season, and then they began trading away our assets.”
With baseball blinders on, Clevinger says he has mentally wiped away any negative thoughts of past individual mistakes or collective misfortunes on the field, and is focused on doing his best to impress the Pirates’ pitching coaches. He understands only so many spots could be had on the major league roster, and perhaps even less opportunities at the Pirates’ Triple-A Indianapolis affiliate.
Prospects are stacked on the pitching staff with the Indiana club waiting for their chance to shine with the Pirates. One day at a time, Clevinger needs to get his work in, and prepare for the Grapefruit League games to begin in less than one week.
With lady luck sharing the mound with him during exhibition games, and with a few more strikeouts delivered and less hits allowed, Clevinger could find himself in Pittsburgh for a ninth MLB season next month.
