Baseball season is a taxing time of year for those who play the game, manage the game, cover the game and even for those who watch the game.
For junior Pitt pitcher T.J. Zeuch, though, it’s the best time of the year. 
During the daily grind of the baseball season, the tall righthander often makes his way from Pitt’s campus in Oakland to the North Shore, where the lights from PNC Park shine brightly and the fans roar from their seats.
And when the three-day MLB Draft begins on June 9, Zeuch could find himself hoisting a Pirate jersey as a first-round draft pick. And he’d be OK with that.
“Whoever decides to take me, I’ll be overjoyed," Zeuch said of his professional outlook. "I’ll absolutely work my butt off to get to the major-league level. I can’t say I have any preferences, but I’d love to play in Pittsburgh. It would be a lot of fun."
Zeuch would fit in well with the Pirates, too. His pitching style, his love for the city and his character line up with everything Pittsburgh wants in a professional athlete.
“When I first came on a visit here in July going into my senior year of high school, I fell in love with the place,” he said. “I fell in love with the city, the feel of the city is awesome. I just love being here.”
Zeuch has been projected to go in the latter half of the first round in this year’s amateur draft, and he very well could fall to the Pirates at No. 22 overall. Either way, his journey from Mason, Ohio to the cusp of professional baseball has been fun for the 20-year-old.
JUST THEIR STYLE
Zeuch already does something the Pirates like to develop within their pitchers: He pitches with ground balls in mind.
“I definitely consider myself a ground-ball guy,” Zeuch said. “In recent years, though, I’ve become more of a strikeout pitcher than in the past. For the most part, early in high school I’d get a lot of ground balls. With the run that I have on my fastball, it’s hard for guys to get underneath it so it produces a lot of ground balls.”
During a recent media availability at PNC Park, Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said the Pirates are aware of Zeuch and Plum High School outfielder Alex Kirilloff, both of whom are projected to be drafted in the first round next week.
Zeuch said being the Pirates' type of pitcher allows him to go longer in games. It also keeps his infield fresh behind him, helping both in the field and at the plate.
Zeuch’s style of pitching, though, is one he developed from his father Tim, a hard thrower who made it to Triple-A with the Royals organization before tearing his rotator cuff. Zeuch took his dad’s fastball/slider approach and tweaked it a bit, developing his own style along the way.
“I started out with his style of throwing," said Zeuch, who noted his fastball hits the high-90s now, too. “As I got older, I tweaked it a little. He was a fastball-slider guy. I’m more of a fastball-curveball guy. And I throw a two-seam fastball, which runs a little bit more than his did.”
Zeuch developed his curve during his sophomore year at Pitt, and he likes to lean on it for putaway pitches, too.
This year, Zeuch led the Pitt staff with a 3.10 ERA, going 6-1 in 10 starts, fanning 74 batters in 69.2 innings pitched en route to all-ACC second-team honors. He surrendered just 61 hits and 19 walks, holding his opponents to an average of just .229.
FINDING HIS PLACE
For collegiate starting pitchers, you live for Fridays.
Friday starters are the team’s ace, the go-to guy, the guy who can be trusted with the ball in the worst situations. So, if Friday starters are the top dog, Sunday starters are kind of what’s left over in the starting rotation to pitch the games that sometimes aren’t even taken seriously.
Zeuch was a Sunday starter his first few weekends at Pitt. But he lost even that role.
“Deservedly so,” Zeuch admitted. “I wasn’t pitching well, so they put me in the bullpen.”
So, Zeuch took his role in the bullpen seriously and never gave up on a chance at the starting rotation.
“At the end of the year, I had a few strong outings out of the bullpen. Then the last series of the year, I started the Friday game,” he said. “It was actually a Thursday, but it was a Thursday-Friday-Saturday series, so it was like the Friday game.”
Zeuch tossed a complete game in that final series opener against Notre Dame, pitching eight innings while allowing seven hits, three runs (one earned), striking out five and issuing one walk.
The next year, the Friday role was his, and he ran with it. But it was those bullpen sessions freshman year that developed him into a hopeful pro ballplayer.
“I started throwing more strikes and getting ahead of guys. Pitching from behind is difficult for anyone to do. But I also started throwing harder,” he said. “My fastball my freshman year was up to 96 consistently out of the bullpen. I think throwing that fastball for strikes more often, throwing my off-speed for strikes more often, having my slider as an out pitch, that gave the coaches confidence to put me into that Friday role.”
It was during his sophomore year, too, that pro scouts really started to take notice.
Against No. 1 and eventual College World Series champion Virginia, Zeuch matched up against 2015 first-round draft choice Nathan Kirby and won, 1-0, in front of a slew of pro scouts. Zeuch went eight innings with eight strikeouts, allowing just four hits and no walks.
“Going to Virginia, no one really knew who I was," Zeuch said. "Then, I got on the mound and faced Nathan Kirby. There were countless scouts there to watch him pitch, and I think I really put my name on the map there. They saw me throw eight innings of shutout baseball. The talk started with the first five rounds, then the first three rounds, now it’s the first round.”
EARLY START
Growing up in southwest Ohio, on the northern outskirts of Cincinnati, baseball was king for a young Zeuch. Not to mention that he had a pro baseball player as a father, too. So, it’s safe to say the game came naturally to him.
“I’ve wanted to play ever since I could hold a baseball,” Zeuch said. “My dad’s been my coach my whole life. He never really pushed me into baseball, though. He kind of let me figure things out for myself. When I started playing, I fell in love with it immediately.”
Zeuch grew up with a baseball in his hand. When others were dreaming of hitting the walk-off home run, he was on the mound getting the game-ending strikeout instead.
Zeuch has since grown into a first-round talent but he says his love for the game stays the same. For some, dealing with interviews or extra visits from scouts or team psychologists during the season can be even more taxing. For Zeuch? That’s just something he takes with a smile.
“They say that, too, when they meet me, especially at the end of the year,” Zeuch said of the scouts. “But I tell them that I’d rather have the attention than not have it. I’d rather be the guy getting all the phone calls than getting no phone calls and being the guy no one’s paying attention to at all.
“It makes for a long season, but it’s been a ton of fun.”
COMPETITIVE SPIRIT
Zeuch was actually drafted in the 31st round of the MLB Draft back in high school, but he turned down the offer from the Royals, his dad’s old team, to take the college route and went to play for the Panthers.
That process, he said, has actually helped him.
“I definitely wanted to be one of those top-three round guys," he said. "But I knew I wasn’t ready for the real world yet. I was 17. As a pitcher, I definitely wasn’t ready for professional baseball, either. I had a good fastball, but my off-speed pitches were average. I was good enough to throw fastballs by guys. So, I knew going to college would allow me to develop those other pitches and be able to pitch them against anyone in a lineup.”
College helped in other ways, too.
“Mentally, college was a halfway point between the real world and high school,” he said. “I’m independent and on my own here, but my parents were just a phone call away. It’s helped me develop and be on my own as a man, too.”
Turning down a contract to play professional sports is never easy for a high school athlete. For Zeuch, his parents played what he called a “huge role” in the decision-making process.
“My dad has been a mentor to me my whole life and he’s always been very realistic with me," Zeuch said. "He said, ‘Look, if you get life-altering money then I’ll say sign the contract and go play.' That contract out of high school wasn’t life-changing so the decision to go to college was, on both parts, a good choice.”
Zeuch said his competitive mentality has helped him balance both school and baseball in college and that, he added, should prepare him for the grind that is Minor League Baseball and, eventually, the big leagues.
But here’s his take on whichever team drafts him, wherever he goes:
“They’re getting a kid that’s never going to give up. A quiet guy who’s going to work hard, no matter the circumstance, who earns everything he’s got. They’re going to get a kid who’s going to make it to the major leagues, no matter what it takes.”
Zeuch said that he’s mostly let the draft talk from outside sources go in one ear and out the other, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t trying to prove some doubters wrong. That’ll make it that much sweeter when he accomplishes his goal, he said.
Oh, that goal?
“I want a few of those big World Series rings," he said. “It would mean the world to me. Every kid growing up playing baseball has imagined themselves in the backyard in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and a 3-2 count hitting the game-winning home run. For me, it was throwing the final strikeout pitch. Winning a few of those World Series rings would bring the lifelong dream together.”
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