He Got Cut Three Times

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A huge thanks to new subscriber and MLB Pipeline senior writer Jim Callis for the tip on this one!

In today's edition...

He got cut 3 out of 4 years in high school.

But that didn’t stop him.

Armed with borderline irrational self-confidence, he pushed his way to the doorstep of the majors.

Buckle up for perhaps the craziest story in today's game of baseball.

Let’s dive in 👇

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Meet The Most Confident Pitcher in Baseball

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“Who on earth is this guy?!?”

If you’ve ever been cut from a team, you know how bad it feels.

Even the great ones experienced it.

When Michael Jordan found out he didn’t make the varsity team, he locked himself in his room and cried.

Former MLB pitcher Mark Buehrle reacted similarly, saying, “I pretty much decided I was done.”

For most players, it takes time to rebuild the confidence to get back out there and give it another shot.

But for Ryan Gusto, it was the opposite. 

His confidence never wavered. It only got stronger.

Growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, Gusto didn’t follow the path of a traditional baseball player.

“I played some travel ball when I turned 12,” he said in an interview.

“But [my travel coach] told us not to mess with middle school baseball because, you know, it’s politics…it’ll probably do more damage [than good].”

Not knowing any better, Ryan listened to the coach’s advice and never tried out for his middle school team.

That turned out to hurt him by the time he was a high school freshman.

“They just threw us all right in there.  I’m just this little freshman…I didn’t worry about anything. I was just playing baseball.”

It was a total culture shock.  Suddenly, he was surrounded by high school seniors who were lifting heavy weights and running through drills he’d never seen before.

“It’s a little intimidating.”

Ryan got cut from the team in his freshman year.

But he didn’t react the way most kids would.

“It never was overly discouraging.  It was just kinda like, alright, well that stings, but I’m not gonna stop playing baseball.”

So he waited out the spring until summer ball came.  Then, he played all summer and fall until it was time to try out for the high school team again.

Luckily, he made the JV team as a sophomore, which turned out to be an outlier year.

“I’d always play summer and fall ball…then I’d turn back and start high school workouts again, and the coach would not like me again.”

When it came time to try out for the varsity squad as a junior, Ryan got cut.

Despite being 6’4” at that point and growing into his body, the coach didn’t see enough to warrant a roster spot.

That’s when a friend from summer ball reached out to tell Ryan about a “spring travel team” called the Carolina Royals.

“That was when I started to learn about my body, my mechanics,” Ryan said.

“It was the first time I had even thought about my mechanics.”

Despite his growth and development with the travel team, it still wasn’t enough.

He tried out for the high school’s varsity team one last time as a senior, but they cut him again.

For most kids, that would be a sign to hang up the cleats.  After all, graduation was approaching fast.

But Ryan refused to accept that it was the end.

“I don’t throw hard,” he said. “Nobody would assume that I’d be a pitcher except for me.”

A few months earlier, he’d started researching junior college programs in Florida and emailing coaches.

Most didn’t respond. And those who did told him he didn’t throw hard enough to play for them.

One day, Ryan came across a particular coach whose bio struck a chord: then-Broward College head coach Ben Bizier.

“I emailed this coach way too many times,” he said. “Bugged him, as he would later tell me…[I] just pushed my way in.”

Finally, Bizier caved and told Ryan he could fly down for a showcase.

Before showing up, he sent the coach one more email: “If you like what you see, I can come back the following day.”

Bizier noted that “his [high school] was listed ominously as Charlotte, NC,” and that out of about 60 kids, “Ryan did not stick out all that much; he blended in talent and skill-wise.”

The coach saw enough athletic ability to invite Ryan back the next day to throw live.  While he struck out a few hitters, he also got hit hard a few times.

After speaking with the pitching coach, Bizier offered Ryan an opportunity to walk on at Broward.

Ryan accepted on the spot.

Alarm bells started ringing in the coach’s head.

“Whoa! OK, no talking to his family, just instant ‘yes.’ This was actually concerning,” Bizier wrote.

“So I began to ask him a bunch of questions. ‘What [high school] do you go to? How was your year last year? Who is your coach? Tell me about your grades. Why did you just say yes immediately to a walk on and you’re from North Carolina!?!’”

Ryan came clean and told Bizier he’d gotten cut from his varsity team and, in the same breath, said he wanted to come to Florida to help Broward win a championship.

“No lie he said that,” Bizier recalled.

After Ryan got cut for the last time in the spring of his senior year, he reached out again.

“He texted me and told me he didn’t make his [high school] team again, but not to worry because he was going to be ready for when he came to me!”

“Who on earth is this guy?!?”

Ryan texted the coach all season long.  Broward had a down year and watched as rival Chipola College won the national title.

After the championship game, Bizier checked his phone to find another message from the enthusiastic right-hander:

“[He] told me that he would be ready to help me beat Chipola when he showed up.”

That fall, Ryan stepped on campus throwing 84 miles per hour as a college freshman.

While the physical reality was average, Gusto carried himself with an almost irrational confidence.

“This kid Gusto throws 80-poo but swears no one can touch his shit,” Broward’s team captain said at the time.

“Let him be,” Bizier responded.

Two weeks into fall classes, tragedy struck back home.

Ryan’s sister, Marissa, passed away from a natural cause labeled “sudden death syndrome.”

“In that moment, the world lost a beautiful, kind hearted, talented woman of God,” Bizier wrote.

After returning home to be with his family, Ryan realized he needed baseball more than ever.  

Marissa was always his biggest supporter, coming to all of his games and making friends with his teammates and their families.

“Marissa was the best big sister I could have ever asked for,” Ryan wrote on Instagram. “From her thoughtful gifts to her unlimited support, I am going to miss her forever.”

When he got back to campus, his coaches and teammates routinely checked in to make sure he was doing okay.

On the field, his mechanics kept improving and his velocity kept climbing.

“I got up to 91 [at the end of the fall]...that was my one-pitch max.”

But it wasn’t a Cinderella story.  Ryan was still on the outside looking in.

Coach Bizier always kept 12 pitchers on his final roster.  At the end of the fall, Ryan was #13.

On top of that, the Gusto family had just relocated from North Carolina to Broward County, Florida – a few minutes from their son’s new college.

“Normally, I let the kids know where they stand,” Bizier wrote, “but with Ryan under the circumstances, I hid it from him that he wasn’t going to be on the team. I did this because something told me not to let this player go.”

As fate would have it, one of the starting pitchers tore his labrum in January.  That bumped Ryan up into the 12th spot.

“Next thing I know, I’m just in the first team meeting,” Ryan said. “I’m like, ‘Ooh, I guess I made the team.’”

Broward College won their conference that season, and Gusto got a lot of work out of the bullpen.  In total, he threw 46 1/3 innings and struck out 54 hitters with a 5.05 ERA.

“I just kept having to prove myself every time, otherwise I wouldn’t get in,” he said.

Over the summer, Coach Bizier accepted the head coaching job at Florida SouthWestern.

Ryan’s response?

“Okay, I’m coming with you.”

Without hesitation, Gusto transferred to follow his coach two hours west to a new college.

He kept working hard, and saw an uptick in velocity every few months.  By the end of the fall at FSW, he topped out at 93 miles per hour.

That spring, the team hosted the first annual Marissa Gusto Memorial Tournament, honoring Ryan’s late sister.

“Dozens of professional ballplayers and multiple current major leaguers pitched in this tournament,” Bizier said.

When the team played Chipola a few weeks later, Ryan got what he’d asked his coach for two seasons prior – right after he’d been cut from his varsity team for the final time.

“I made sure to pitch Ryan,” Bizier said, “and of course he dealt in victory and then came and told me about it.”

By now, the young righty was throwing gas.  His fastball was up to 96, and he’d developed an arsenal of offspeed pitches to go with it.

With 110 strikeouts through 75 innings and a 2.88 ERA, he led FSW to a conference championship.

He earned Suncoast Conference Pitcher of the Year and Florida Pitcher of the Year honors.

Reality crashed over him like a tidal wave.

“I went from finishing my freshman year, I was like, ‘Cool, I can play baseball now,’ to, like, holy…I might get drafted.”

In June of 2019 – two years after getting cut from the high school team for the third time – Ryan Gusto was drafted in the 11th round of the MLB Draft by the Houston Astros.

Senior scouting advisor Charlie Gonzalez reportedly “loved” Ryan and was willing to do whatever he could to sign him.

“Charlie called me and asked me what it would take [to sign Ryan],” Bizier wrote.

“I said, ‘Probably everything you have left.’ Charlie listened and they gave Ryan all of their leftover pool money. He signed for $421,699. Ryan took pride in that, the fact that he didn’t sign for a round number and that they gave him what they had left.”

His signing bonus was more than the $325K that 5th-round pick and current MLB starter Hunter Brown received the same year.

But after posting a 1.84 ERA with 19 strikeouts in 14 2/3 innings in his first pro season, Gusto hit yet another bump in the road.

He completely tore his UCL and needed Tommy John surgery.  It kept him sidelined for the next two seasons.

He missed all of 2020 and 2021 – two turbulent years where many pro baseball careers ended amid the pandemic.

As SB Nation’s Spencer Morris noted: “It’s hard to stay in the front of people’s minds when you haven’t thrown live innings in two years.”

But there was no doubt in Ryan’s mind that he’d be back.

“I have self-confidence, I know how I can play the game,” he said. “I’m just gonna do that.”

Like every other time he hit a roadblock, Ryan tuned out the noise and stayed focused on finding a way to push forward.

In 2022, he returned to the mound to chew up 90 innings with 96 strikeouts across Low-A Fayetteville and then High-A Asheville.

He reached Double-A in 2023, going 7-4 with 115 K’s before putting it all together in 2024.

Fully recovered from his injury, he made the leap to Triple-A look easy, rolling through 148 1/3 innings (second-most in the league) while striking out a PCL-leading 141 batters.

He was named the Pacific Coast League Pitcher of the Month in July.  Then, two months later, he got the call he spent his entire life working for.

The Houston Astros promoted Ryan Gusto to the majors to start their final game of the 2024 regular season against the Guardians.

Coach Bizier joined the whole Gusto family in Cleveland to cheer Ryan on.  But Mother Nature had other plans.

After a 3-hour and 5-minute rain delay, the game was canceled.

For now, Ryan Gusto stands alongside Moonlight Graham as a “phantom ballplayer” – a guy who spent time on an MLB active roster without ever appearing in an MLB game.

He’ll have to wait a little bit longer for his big league opportunity.  But what’s it to him?

Just another tiny bump in a long and winding road.  A bright future, full of possibilities.  To him, the glass is always half full.

Today, Ryan is the godfather of Coach Bizier’s youngest daughter, Margot.

“Ryan is a great ballplayer, but his fierce loyalty and unwavering confidence are by far his greatest qualities,” Bizier said.

“If you’re still reading this, you should be rooting for Ryan Gusto just like I am and always have since I met him.”

🐶 

I owe a big thank you to two people who helped me pull the pieces of this story together. First, thank you to new Underdog Newsletter subscriber and MLB Pipeline senior writer Jim Callis for the tip on this story. Second, a big thank you to Coach Ben Bizier for permission to pull quotes from his original tweet about Ryan.

If you enjoyed this one, please consider sharing it with a friend!

Here are two more stories you might also like:

• How a Trip to Death Row Kept a Major League Dream Alive

• Adam Oates’ Path from High School Dropout to the Hockey Hall of Fame

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Til next time,
Tyler

Extra Innings…

📕 We are less than two weeks away from the launch of my book, The Underdog Mentality: Sports Stories That Will Change How You See The Game (And Yourself) – mark your calendar for March 14th!

💈 This haircut will make you smile.

🍋 Watch this old commercial of Arnold Palmer getting himself an Arnold Palmer.

🌟 Trivia Answer: A) Mark Buehrle. You can read more about his story here.