The world of minor league baseball is full of unexpected twists and turns. Just ask Chase Estep. Before graduating from Corbin High School in 2019, he helped lead the Redhounds to a pair of regional championships on the baseball diamond and back-to-back appearances in the Class 3A football state championship game.
Estep moved on to Lexington after graduation, where he played baseball for the University of Kentucky. After his first season as a Wildcat got cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he returned for what he described as a “down year” for him personally in 2021. It was at this point that things really began to turn around.
“I switched my mindset in the offseason,” Estep said. “I knew that I had a chance, but I needed to get better.”
Estep began lifting weights and adhering to a strict diet to get himself in peak physical condition. In 2022, the hard work paid off as he had a productive year for the Cats before getting drafted by the New York Mets in the ninth round of the Major League Baseball Draft. Soon after, he found himself in Florida, suiting up for the Mets’ Single-A affiliate team in St. Lucie. While there, he said he got the chance to show what he could do with around 120 at-bats.
The next stop for Estep was a stint playing for the Brooklyn Cyclones, a High-A affiliated team in the Mets organization. He described this experience as a bit of a “culture shock,” with the team’s ballpark being located right next to the amusement park at Coney Island. While he said he enjoyed his time in New York, he admitted that he struggled to fully adapt to the new environment. One highlight of this particular time period was seeing a large crowd of hometown supporters from Corbin making the trip to cheer him on at a game played in North Carolina.
After the Mets made the decision to release Estep, he continued to chase his dream last year with the Milwaukee Milkmen, an independently owned team playing in the American Association of Professional Baseball. As it turns out, this was a perfect fit for him.
“I loved it there,” Estep said of his time with the Milkmen. “I played great, and I enjoyed the change of scenery. I got a fresh start, was able to prove myself all over again, and I made some great friends.”
While Estep said the door is likely still open for him to return to Milwaukee in the upcoming season, he said that he is currently weighing all of his options in order to make the best possible decision for both himself and his family. Recently married, he said that he wants to make sure that he is doing the right thing from a financial standpoint, admitting that the chances of him making back onto an MLB-affiliated roster continues to dwindle with each passing year.
The minor leagues… a whole different ballgame
When asked what the experience has been like playing in the minor leagues for the past three years, Estep said it has been a lot different compared to playing back home in Corbin, or even at UK.
“One thing that stands out is how culturally diverse these teams are,” Estep pointed out. “Your high school and college teammates all speak English most of the time, but many of your teammates don’t speak English once you get to pro ball. You get a mix of players from all different walks of life. Even the players who are from other parts of the country have different accents and use different verbiage, so the cultural part was probably the most difficult adjustment to make. You can’t always communicate effectively. Oftentimes you have to learn to communicate through hand signals and baseball terms that will allow you to play together.”
Estep also commented on the business side of things at the next level, saying, “At the end of the day, it is a business. It can be a cutthroat business, and there is a point where you can’t play anymore just because you love it. If there is a guy that is doing it better than you, well, that’s just how it goes.”
Considering all of the variables, Estep said that the path to success in professional baseball is anything but linear. “You just have to figure out where you fit in,” he said. “If you would have asked me when I got drafted, obviously, the easiest route would have been a straight line where each year I move up another level, but that is not the case for 99 percent of people.”
“I am so thankful that I got drafted, and I do still want to make it,” Estep continued. “But with so many different avenues that you can take, you never truly know which one yours is going to be.”
Estep said that, no matter where he ends up from here, he knows that the Lord has blessed him “immensely” with the opportunities that he has been presented with in baseball. Still, he said that, as a competitor, the ultimate desire is to make it to the big leagues.
Giving back
The next chapter in Estep’s journey in baseball is yet to be written, but while he’s figuring that out, he continues to look for ways to give back to the community that helped make him such a success in the first place. Just this past weekend, he was on his old home field at CHS, assisting middle school Head Coach Ryan Clouse and his staff with a two-day youth camp that helped players aged 7-12 learn the basic fundamentals of hitting, pitching, fielding and strength training/conditioning.
“I try to tell young kids when I do lessons that everyone wants to play professional baseball, but there is going to come a time when everything has to line up perfectly,” Estep said. “You can’t go home and not make your bed or put your laundry away and just expect to hit home runs only. You also have to eat correctly, and make sure that you have done all that you can each day to have the peace of mind to be able to focus on baseball.”
Estep described participating in youth camps as an “awesome opportunity” to give back to the community, saying he still remembers interactions that he had as a youngster with people who were doing the things that he himself wanted to do one day.
“I want to be a role model,” Estep said. “I believe that my ultimate purpose wasn’t just to make it to the big leagues and then disappear. I think that the Lord sent me to do all of these really cool things, and I feel like all of that information that I’ve learned is just wasted if I don’t share it. I don’t think that information was just for me.”
In addition to deciding what his next steps in baseball will look like, Estep is also set to finish up his college degree this spring. With just a few more courses to complete, he said that he will graduate from UK with a communications degree. In addition to majoring in communications, he is also minoring in criminology.
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