How A New Pitch, Slot Change & One Fateful Bullpen Session Launched Joey Danielson’s Rangers Career
Image credit: Joey Danielson (Photo by Bill Mitchell)
Sometimes opportunities present themselves in the strangest of circumstances. Such was the case for Rangers righthander Joey Danielson’s pitching career.
After two seasons with North Dakota State as a catcher, Danielson found himself on the outside looking in when it came to playing time behind the dish. So he decided to give pitching a shot, something he hadn’t done since youth baseball.
The NDSU pitching coach agreed to let Danielson throw a bullpen. However, he would only sign off on a second session on one condition.
“I had to throw at least 70% strikes during that bullpen,” Danielson said. “I sort of babied it to make sure I met the number. I did it and he agreed to another bullpen.”
The early pens were rough around the edges, but Danielson began to figure things out as he went along.
“I spent a few years as a bullpen catcher who was working on pitching,” he said. “I was catching but focusing mainly on pitching. I got a few innings the second year and then my last two years I was a full-time pitcher.”
Danielson saw 12 relief appearances in 2022 after making the jump to pitching while handling bullpen catching duties. He then spent the 2023 campaign making 21 appearances out of the pen. Unfortunately, the results were not what Danielson wanted, and with an 8.58 ERA and eight home runs allowed, he went back to the drawing board.
Danielson wondered why his fastball sitting 92-94 mph wasn’t playing better against mid-major competition for whom his velocity should have been considered above-average.
“My stuff was good I thought but it wasn’t playing like it,” he said. “So that’s where I went back to the drawing board before my last season.”
Danielson had skipped out on summer ball each of his previous summers to train, but knew he needed to kick it up a notch. Enter Tread Athletics, a well-known pitching development program out of Charlotte, NC. Tread offers a variety of opportunities to train both in-person and remotely. Danielson knew the organization could provide a higher level of training than he had done previously, but the cost was prohibitive.
So Danielson decided to get his hands dirty—literally.
“My friend’s father owned a landscaping and snow removal company in my hometown in Minnesota,” he said. “So I worked shifts with him when I could and scrapped up enough money to do Tread.”
Over the course of his Tread sessions, Danielson learned more about how his body moved while also adding a new sinker, which led him to drop his arm slot.
“I was trying to throw sinkers from a higher slot at first, but I couldn’t really tell if it was moving,” Danielson said. “From a higher slot, you’re going to gets less horizontal movement. So I kept going lower and lower until it started to look like it was moving a lot.”
The new look created deception as Danielson began to setup on the third base side of the rubber, leading to what he described as the ball “coming around the mountain to righthanded hitters.”
The new pitch and slot change led to the best season of Danielson’s career, as he locked down 11 saves in 2024. The Rangers, who liked his sinker traits and saw potential for improved breaking ball shape, ended up drafting Danielson in the 17th round that summer, signing him for $25,000.
So far in 2025, Danielson has worked to improve his slider by moving to more of a sweeper shape. He’s now throwing from two different arm slots and work to improve his lead leg block this offseason has resulted in improved velocity.
Now, Danielson presents a unique challenge for hitters in any given appearance, as he can appear like two different pitchers. There’s nearly a foot in release height difference between his low-slot sinker, sweeper and splitter coimpared to his over-the-top four-seam fastball and high-80s-to-low-90s cutter. He presents two different looks with his fastballs sitting 93-96 mph from both slots and nearly six and a half feet of extension.
Over 8.1 innings spanning five relief appearances for High-A Hub City this season, Danielson has yet to allow an earned run. He’s let up seven hits while walking three and striking out seven. He’s generating high rates of contact into the ground from his sinker, as he currently has a 47.8% groundball rate.
At 24, Danielson is old for High-A, but his unusual path and recent conversion to pitching make him much younger in baseball development years. So far, that unique track record is proof that hard work, grit and determination can help a player to beat the odds.
