McCade Brown stands tall these days. He toes the pitching rubber at 6-foot-6, 225 pounds, and his recent call-up to the Major Leagues with the Colorado Rockies was a dream realized.
Yet, for Brown, the dream was slow to take shape. Before he could visualize pitching at baseball’s highest level, he had to fully embrace the game. That’s not easy when in junior high and early high school, you’re not getting hitters out consistently.
“Around eighth grade, freshman year time, I wasn’t a very good pitcher at all,” said Brown, a Normal West High School graduate. “I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing on the mound and I wasn’t necessarily the greatest hitter.
“I could play a little defense here and there, but I wasn’t too great and soccer was going pretty strong for me as a goalie. I thought about stepping away from baseball.”
Sensing that, Brown’s mother, Kim Nelson-Brown, arranged for her son to take pitching lessons from Josh Kauten, owner and operator of K’s Training Academy in Bloomington. A former Illinois State pitcher who spent five years in professional baseball, Kauten saw potential in Brown,
But …
“He was probably 6-2 and like 145 pounds when he started with me,” Kauten said. “Everything worked. It was free, it was easy, it was smooth. But he didn’t know how to use his body. He probably grew a bunch in a short amount of time.
“When they told me it was the big leagues, it was a pretty big shock. It was a pretty exciting moment."McCade Brown
“Our test with him in the fall of his sophomore year he was 78 miles an hour. I usually don’t see a guy who’s throwing 78 miles an hour as a sophomore and think he has a chance to play Division I baseball.”
The good news? Brown was seeing enough progress for thoughts of stepping away to … well, go away.
“Some things really cleaned up and kind of clicked on the mound a little bit,” he said. “So I stuck with it. Sophomore year I had an uptick in velo (velocity). Pitching started to take off. Josh was a huge help in keeping me playing baseball and learning how to pitch.”
Kauten and Brown agreed that to achieve Brown’s newly established goal of pitching at a Division I university, he would need to be throwing 90-plus miles an hour. Picking up 12 miles an hour in two years would be a challenge on the mound, in the weight room and at the dinner table.
“This is not a magic equation, but for me, every 10 pounds that a skinny guy gains is about three miles an hour,” Kauten said. “It’s not an exact equation, but a general benchmark. We were like, ‘How many pounds do you need to gain to add 12 miles an hour?’ He said, ‘I need to gain 40.’”
A three-sport athlete at the time, Brown decided to not play basketball as a junior and senior so he could, in Kauten’s words, “focus on weightlifting and calorie consumption and getting stronger in baseball.”
“I know that was a really tough decision for him,” Kauten added.
The commitment paid off. Brown was throwing 88 to 92 miles an hour by his senior year of 2018 for Normal West coach Chris Hawkins, occasionally touching 93 mph. An All-State selection, he earned an opportunity to pitch at Indiana University and, as a junior in 2021, was a third-round draft pick of the Rockies.
He was on a path that would lead to his MLB debut Aug. 24 in Pittsburgh, but there were roadblocks and potholes along the way.
Surgery and recovery
Brown suffered an elbow injury in 2022 that required Tommy John surgery, a procedure to reconstruct the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow. He missed all of the 2023 season and was limited to 23 innings in 2024.
“It was a really scary time,” Brown said. “I was very scared going into the process. But there were a lot of guys in the organization who had it before and kind of calmed my nerves. My process took a little longer than most since I had a couple of setbacks. I ended up missing almost two years.”
Brown found strength in numbers. He was among a group of “eight to 10 guys” who were in Arizona rehabbing injuries. Five were rehabbing from Tommy John surgery.
“I think all of us hit days where we were like, ‘This is getting repetitive, we’re grinding through this and kind of getting tired of it.’ But having that group of guys around with the same goal of getting back on the mound helped,” he said. “Maybe one day if I wasn’t feeling it, those guys would push me. If one of the other guys wasn’t feeling it another day, we would push him.”
Finally healthy, Brown spent this past winter training and working out at K’s Academy. His fastball hit 98 mph and, in spring training, was clocked at a career-best 99 mph. He said now, in September of his first full year back, it averages 93-95 mph, occasionally “touching 96 and 97.”
“It (the surgery) changes the way I’m throwing,” Brown said. “I’m a little bit less of a vertical fastball ride guy. I’m a little more crossfire and lower release now. This year has been kind of a learning process of who I am now as opposed to who I was pre-surgery. It’s been fun to go through that process.”
Breakthrough season
A healthy Brown zoomed up the Rockies’ minor-league system this season. Pitching in high Class A Spokane and then at Double-A Hartford, he had a 4-2 record with a 2.47 earned run average, 105 strikeouts and 30 walks in 76 and 2/3 innings.
The innings limit he was on early in the year was gone by the time he was called into the Hartford manager’s office in August.
“I just figured maybe I’d get the opportunity to go to Triple-A,” Brown said. “When they told me it was the big leagues, it was a pretty big shock. It was a pretty exciting moment, but the heart was racing a little bit and I don’t remember too much of it.”
Brown, 25, got to place phone calls every player dreams of making. He called his wife, Muriel, whom he married in November and “has been a huge supporter of me and my career the whole way.”
He called his father, retired Bloomington police officer Brian Brown, thinking his parents would be at home together. Kim Nelson-Brown, Illinois Wesleyan’s longtime volleyball coach, was attending a fundraiser for her team. So he called her there.
“She was crying in the middle of the fundraiser, so that was something she had to explain to everybody I’m sure,” he said. “I also got to call my grandpa Bob [Nelson] and tell him because he’s a big supporter of my career and a big reason I got into baseball.”
Welcome to the big leagues
Brown’s MLB debut in Pittsburgh saw him matched up against All-Star Paul Skeenes. Normal West grad Jordan Comadena was in uniform as the Pirates’ catching coach. Former IWU pitcher Alex Tosi was among the umpires. And in the stands were a lot of familiar faces.
“I was blessed to have so much support from everybody and the whole Bloomington-Normal community,” Brown said. “I ended up having 70 or so people who made the trip to Pittsburgh. That was a really good feeling knowing there were that many people in my life who were willing to drop what they had that weekend and go to Pittsburgh.”
Brown held the Pirates scoreless through three innings, but gave up a two-out, three-run home run to Jared Triolo in the fourth.
“Unfortunately, the next two hitters didn't go my way and my day was done there,” he said. “I wish the result would have been different, but it was an exciting day for sure.”
Brown’s next outing was his home debut in Denver against the Cubs. The Nelson side of the family roots for the White Sox, but Brian Brown, a Cubs fan, raised his son to cheer for the North Siders.
Brown pitched into the fifth inning and left trailing 2-1. Another run scored later in the fifth that was charged to Brown, who was pitching for the first time in the mile-high altitude of Denver.
“That was pretty cool getting to go up against them [the Cubs],” he said. “At the moment, I didn’t really get to think about it too much because I was so focused on just trying to do my job.”
Brown’s most recent start was a rough one. Pitching at home against the San Diego Padres, he pitched a scoreless first inning on 10 pitches, but allowed six runs in the second, including a three-run homer to Fernando Tatis Jr.
Another start could come this week against the Padres in San Diego.
“The command (of his pitches) has been bad … not up to the standards I have set for myself and I know that the organization has for me,” Brown said. “My emphasis the rest of this year is really honing in on the command and to start getting ahead in counts, that sort of thing.
“The experience thing is huge. I’m just trying to take it day by day and stay where my feet are and not think too far ahead or get too stuck on how my last outings have been. I’m trying every day to get a little bit better and develop to where we can do something special here.”
