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DETROIT— Try as it might, baseball has not defeated Logan Shore or killed his dream. Not even close. You could rightly argue that all the potholes, hurdles and trap doors the game has put in his path have emboldened and strengthened him. '

"I feel like the last couple of years have been just crappy situation after crappy situation with the timing of everything," Shore said Wednesday from his home outside of Phoenix.

There was the pandemic, of course, which effectively shut down his 2020 season and delayed the start of the minor league calendar last season. Then, as he was making strides at Triple-A Toledo last season and the Tigers' starting rotation was reeling from a series of injures, a forearm strain cost him essentially six weeks and his best chance to date of making his big-league debut.

"It seems like right when things are getting going and I'm making adjustments and I'm on the right track, something happens that's completely out of my control," he said. "That's just part of baseball. It's part of life."

Shore, a right-handed starting pitcher acquired by the Tigers before the 2019 season from Oakland for Mike Fiers, is 27 years old. Beyond his prospect years. And though he has been knocking hard on the big-league door the last two years and coming off arguably the best season of his professional career, he is not on the Tigers' 40-man roster. While he was posting a 7-3 record with a 3.95 ERA, going 5-1 after Aug. 1 holding hitters to a .219 average in his last 10 starts, the Tigers called up older pitchers like Drew Hutchison and Erasmo Ramirez. They called up prospect Matt Manning, whom Shore was outperforming at Triple A. Back in November, the Tigers placed right-handed pitching prospects Elvin Rodriguez and Angel De Jesus on the 40-man roster.

Not Shore, who will thus head to Lakeland in two weeks to participate in the Tigers' minor-league mini-camp hoping to earn a ticket to big-league camp, which likely will be delayed by the current lockout.

"You can sit here all day and look at depth charts and you're going to drive yourself wild," Shore said. "I know what I need to do. I did it last year. I know I can go to the big leagues, pitch well and help the team win. I know I can. At this point it's just about being in the right place at the right time. "I am off the roster, but look at Drew Hutchison last year (a non-roster player who got called up). There is a need for guys not on the 40-man roster. There's always going to be turnover. There's going to be opportunity. For me, it's being ready when that opportunity arises."

A lesser man could not persevere through these setbacks with the grace Shore has shown these last couple of years. A lesser man would not be as quick to see them not as setbacks but as challenges and opportunities for growth — to see them merely as part of his path. Find more sports news, plus coverage from Sports Illustrated.

"It's just using crummy situations to your advantage," Shore said. "That's really the name of the game when it comes to baseball because so much of baseball is just unknowns. You have to be able to adjust and change on the fly and accept things that are outside your comfort zone."

Fish out of water accepting things outside his comfort zone? That's been a way of life for Logan Shore. He showed up on the campus of the University of Florida in 2014 trekking southeast from Coon Rapids, Minnesota. Fish out of water, much? The Gators back then didn't recruit many players from the Midwest, especially kids who spent their winters playing hockey and dabbling in Nordic skiing. He and current Oakland Athletics pitcher A.J. Puk (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) were the only outsiders with scholarships; they roomed together for three years. Before every season, the Gators coaching staff asked the players to anonymously rank every player on the team from best to worst. Shore, before his freshman season, wasn't even ranked among the top 10 pitchers on the team. They had no clue. But by the end of the season, he was the Gators' starter in the opening game of the NCAA regional and was the team's Friday night starter his sophomore and junior seasons.

He was drafted in the second round by the Athletics in 2016 and paid a $1.5 million signing bonus. But after climbing to Double A in two years, pitching in the Arizona Fall League in 2017, he was traded to the Tigers in the fall of 2018. Which was, initially, another pothole for him, another trip outside his comfort zone. That pitching staff he joined at Double-A Erie in 2019 featured the Tigers' top prospects — Manning, Alex Faedo, Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal and, at the end of the year, Joey Wentz. No room at the inn for Shore, who was relegated to the bullpen and spot starts.

"I'd been a starter my whole career," he said. "I'd made one relief appearance, my freshman year at Florida. But looking back, as much as I hated it and wanted to be in the rotation and was just not happy with where I was at, that was one of the best things that could've ever happened to me. "Because now I understand what it's like to be in the bullpen." Lemons to lemonade. Who knows what will happen in 2022?

Did Michael Fulmer ever expect he'd end up a late-inning reliever? Did Alex Lange? Who can day Shore's opportunity won't come as a bullpen arm?

"I don't know what they're going to need, but I just want to be an option for whatever they do need," he said.

Crafting a new identity That experience at Erie changed the course of Shore's career. It forced him to change his identity as a pitcher.

"I figured out what I needed to do," he said. "I realized I needed to completely change who I was as a pitcher if I wanted to make it to the big leagues."

First off, he scrapped his two-seam sinker, which with his change-up had been effective weapons for him. He realized he has above average spin on his four-seam fastball and saw how effective it could be at the top of the strike zone. Second, he changed the grip on his money pitch — the change-up. He went from a four-seam grip to a two-seam grip. Just like that, what had been a pitch that floated horizontally away from left-handed hitters was now staying in the zone with plummeting sinking action. Lastly, he modified his slider, throwing it harder (from low-80s to mid-80s) and getting more of a cutter-action on it.

"That offseason I got involved with Driveline (renowned baseball facility near Seattle) trying to develop a better routine," he said. "If I started throwing harder, that would be a great by-product of what I was doing. But that wasn't really the focus. "It was more of what I was doing with the baseball that needed to change."

The velocity on the four-seam did, in fact, tick up. In his first live batting practice in spring training of 2020, he was pumping 94-mph heaters. But of course, just as he was opening some eyes at the big-league level, the pandemic hit. Another trap door, another test of Shore's unshakeable faith.

"I was pitching on the major-league side, throwing well, feeling good and then everything got shut down," he said. "But I was like, this is great from the standpoint of, how many times in your career do you get to feel good, be throwing well, your arm built up to full capacity, and then you get to go home and just train?

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/sports/mlb/article258031608.html#storylink=cpy