Hunter Bigge was playing chess with a teammate in the locker room when he was summoned to Iowa Cubs Manager Marty Pevey’s office on July 6.
Uh-oh.
“The last time I was told to go to the manager’s office, I was being sent down to Double-A (early in the 2023 season),” said Bigge, a 2016 Los Gatos High and 2021 Harvard University graduate.
However, Bigge’s initial trepidation quickly turned into calm assurance.
“I knew I was pitching well, and in the back of my mind I sensed I might get called up to the big leagues,” Bigge said. “I walked into his office and my heart was racing. He said, ‘Pack your bags, you’re going to play for the Chicago Cubs tomorrow.’ I had a big smile on my face for five minutes. Then I started crying. It was an emotional rush. I’ve been playing baseball my whole life and it’s been a dream of mine to play in the big leagues. I’ve been thinking about that moment since I was 10 years old, so it was kind of cool to have it happen. It didn’t feel real.”
Reality was better than a dream for the 26-year-old Bigge, a burly 6-foot-1, 205-pound right-hander whose path to Major League Baseball has involved enough twists and turns to fill a Stephen King novel.
This season alone, Bigge has been injured, promoted, recalled, traded and optioned on three separate occasions, the most recent on Aug. 8 to the Durham-North Carolina Bulls, the Triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays.
Bigge made his MLB debut with the Cubs on July 9 at Baltimore, pitching a scoreless inning of relief. Five days later, Bigge was optioned to Iowa in a roster-numbers decision only to be recalled by the Cubs on July 20.
Two days later, Bigge’s unpredictable roller coaster of a season continued, as he was optioned back to Iowa. On July 28, Bigge was traded to the Rays and two days later made his American League debut, pitching a scoreless inning of relief against the Miami Marlins.
After making three more appearances, the Rays optioned Bigge to Durham. All told, Bigge has pitched 7 ⅓ innings in the MLB this season and given up just one run while striking out eight. Numbers like that usually are good enough to keep a relief pitcher up in the big leagues, but roster decisions involve more than just performance on the field, a fact Bigge knows all too well.
“Everyone wants to make it to the big leagues,” he said. “But what I learned this year is, a lot of whether or not you get called up to the big leagues is out of your control. So, I want to focus on pitching as well as I can, being a good teammate—helping the team win—and be ready for that opportunity if the Rays decide to call me up.”
Bigge’s pitching arsenal includes a mid-90 mph fastball, a 12-6 curveball and two different sliders. Bigge toiled in the minor leagues for five seasons before experiencing a breakthrough this year.
He chalks up his improvement to a simple, yet powerful, change he made in 2023: have fun and throw as hard as he can. The improved approach–along with a couple of mechanical tweaks–has produced dramatically different results on the mound.
“Mentally, I’ve been able to let things go a bit,” Bigge said. “I’ve given up a few home runs since I’ve been in Durham, which has been annoying. But I’ve been able to bounce back and stay level-headed. I feel good. I feel pretty confident. And I’m getting better.”
Bigge began the year on the injured list with a torn oblique. He spent a couple of months in Arizona rehabbing and came back stronger than ever.
“It was a rough start to the year, but when I came back from the injury, I pitched the best of my life,” he said. “It’s been really fun seeing the fruits of my labor pay off in the past couple of months.”
Despite having a standout high school baseball career, Bigge’s path to the pros didn’t start to materialize until 2018, when he hit 95 mph on the radar gun while pitching in the Northwoods League, a collegiate summer baseball league.
“That’s when I started getting interest from professional teams,” he said. “That’s when that dream became concrete to me because I could tell it was a possibility to get drafted. But I was still hedging my bets, still working hard in school and talking to older players and kind of figuring out what kind of job I would get once I got out (and graduated from Harvard).”
The Cubs selected Bigge in the 12th round–the 372nd overall selection–in the 2019 First Year Player Draft. Bigge’s pro career was off, but it would be many years later until he experienced his breakthrough.
For as many success stories that are told, the minors are mostly a place where dreams die. At certain points, Bigge wondered if he would ever get the call up to the big show.
“Coming up through the minor leagues is tough, and you question whether you’re good enough to pitch in the big leagues,” he said.
In those moments, Bigge relied on the work ethic and relentless determination that was instilled in him by his parents to keep pursuing his goal. Bigge’s dad, Matt, taught him simple yet profound life truths during their time throwing the football around together.
“I remember one time I said to my dad that I hate football because I wasn’t good at it,” Hunter said. “He said something like, ‘You’re bad at everything until you’re good at it.’ He would always say stuff to me like that to have a growth mindset and believe in the power of hard work over the long run. If you’re working hard, you’re working smart.”
In addition to his upbringing in Los Gatos–Bigge was born in Orlando but started attending Van Meter Elementary School in the first grade–his time at Harvard was formative.
“I went to Harvard to continue playing baseball and get a first-class education,” said Bigge, who majored in physics and computer science at the prestigious Ivy League university. “I’ve always been interested in a lot of different things and saw Harvard as a playground for the mind and body to explore the world and find out what I want to do.”
Bigge says being a student-athlete at Harvard was the best preparation for the real world.
“The classes aren’t very easy, so you’re working very hard at school and baseball,” he said. “There are only 24 hours a day, so we’re all running around like chickens with their heads cut off. But it was super fun, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Harvard was the best time of my life for sure. I met a lot of my best friends there, and the baseball team was a great team to be on, because you had a lot of people who cared about winning—the school, academics and relationships.”
Bigge is enjoying his time in Durham, but he’s itching to get recalled to Tampa Bay. Whatever happens, Bigge, who also got married earlier in the year, is enjoying the ride.
“This has been the craziest year of my life for sure, and certainly a memorable one,” he said.
