Cedar Falls grad, former Hawkeyes pitcher Connor Schultz gets his shot at affiliated professional baseball

CEDAR RAPIDS — Baseball’s something, man. It’s the only way to explain Tuesday night.

The Cedar Rapids Kernels played the South Bend Cubs in a Midwest League game at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

The starting pitcher for the Kernels was Ty Langenberg. He’s an Iowa kid from Urbandale who played for the University of Iowa before being drafted by the Minnesota Twins in 2023.

Connor Schultz came on in relief for South Bend to begin the second inning, going head to head against Langenberg on the mound. He’s an Iowa kid from Cedar Falls who was Langenberg’s teammate with the Hawkeyes during the 2022 season.

Schultz began his college career at Butler University, where Brian Meyer was one of his coaches. Meyer just happened to be in the home team dugout Tuesday night as the Kernels manager.

“I recruited him at Butler,” Meyer said. “Great kid. Great family.”

“Pretty cool,” Schultz said. “Just being back in Iowa, too. Being from Cedar Falls, an hour away from here, it’s really cool. Played a lot here in high school. Then getting to see Ty was nice. Go up against him. Then their manager being my coach at Butler ... Baseball’s a small world.”

Teeny, tiny.

If you want to extend things more, Butler’s head coach when Schultz was there was Dave Schrage, who coached at the University of Northern Iowa from 1991 to 1999. His successor at the school was Rick Heller, who obviously was Schultz’s head coach his one year at Iowa.

Once Meyer left Butler for a job in the Twins organization in 2020, he was replaced as volunteer assistant coach by Jake Ratz. He’s a Cedar Rapids Xavier graduate.

But this story is more about Schultz, a 26-year-old right hander who took the difficult route to affiliated professional baseball. After his graduate season at Iowa concluded in 2022, he signed with the Missoula PaddleHeads of the independent Pioneer League.

He spent the summer of 2022 in Montana, then returned for the 2023 season, where he was a regular member of the starting pitching rotation and a league all-star. He once again was a PaddleHead to begin last season when the Chicago Cubs offered him a minor league contract in early June.

“This was always the goal,” Schultz said. “The league I was playing in, the Pioneer League, it was a lot of younger guys. We had an experience limit (on rosters). The goal there for everybody is to get signed by a MLB club and play affiliated ball, so this was always something I was working towards.

“I had a really good year my full season, started thinking that maybe something would happen. But I went through the whole offseason with nothing. Then about a month into the next season I got the call.”

Schultz threw in five games for the Rookie-level Arizona Complex League Cubs and eight for low-Class A Myrtle Beach, posting a combined earned run average of 1.91, with 50 strikeouts in 47 innings.

He broke spring training with high-A South Bend and is 0-2 with a 4.50 ERA in six games, one start. He threw well against the Kernels, striking out five in 3 1/3 innings but took an unlucky loss after the pitcher who relieved him allowed a hit that scored the only run charged against him.

“It has been awesome,” Schultz said. “I’ve made a lot of good friends, a lot of good connections ... Everybody I’ve met, honestly, has been great. It has been so much fun. Thanks to the Cubs for taking a chance on me, an older guy playing indy ball. I think I’ve made the most of it so far.”

Schultz said the adjustment to professional baseball hasn’t been as big as it was for him going from Butler to Iowa. He credited former Hawkeyes pitching coach Robin Lund, now an assistant pitching coach with MLB’s Detroit Tigers, for helping him develop his stuff, saying a lot of what Iowa does technology wise and training wise is what professional organizations are doing.

Schultz said he doesn’t have any numbers-related goals the rest of this season. He just wants to be able to take the ball whenever it is given to him and do the best he can.

“The big one is obviously stay healthy. I’ve got to take care of my body,” he said. “Last year, I kind of had a problem where I’d lose velo, lose stuff as the season went on. So I’ve started to kind of get into a better plan so I can last a whole season. This is my first full year of pro ball, so it’s going to be a challenge. But I’ll be ready.”

Comments: jeff.johnson@thegazette.com