Thanks to YouTube, Hunter Hoopes has a professional baseball career

CEDAR RAPIDS - Hunter Hoopes was the last guy off the Veterans Memorial Stadium field late Sunday afternoon.

Cedar Rapids Kernels players sign autographs for fans in the outfield following each Sunday home game. There is an allotted time frame for them to do so, but even at its conclusion, Hoopes stayed as kid after kid (and a few adults) approached him for his signature.

He wasn’t going to leave until everyone left satisfied.

The relief pitcher is living his best baseball life right now, one that no one could have seen coming, including himself. He is a professional player in the Minnesota Twins organization thanks to a video uploaded to YouTube.

True story.

  Buy Photo

“I mean, it blows my mind,” said Hoopes, who threw a scoreless relief inning in C.R.’s 6-1 win over South Bend. “I was talking to my parents, my girlfriend, my friends about the fact that a year ago today, I wasn’t (pitching). A year ago today, I was working, not actually a normal 9-to-5 job, but I was doing regular work ... Now I’m in Iowa, Cedar Rapids.

“It’s been amazing just to sit back and think about what has happened.”

Let’s start from the start. Hoopes, 25, pitched a year of college baseball at Division I North Carolina-Asheville, a year at John A. Logan Community College in Illinois, then two years at the University of Alabama.

He hooked up with Schaumburg of the independent Frontier League after his senior season but his arm didn’t feel the greatest and he prepared for a post-playing career. Hoopes helped coach youths near his hometown of Fairfax, Va., then got a job as an instructor with Tread Athletics, a company in Charlotte, N.C., that teaches and trains pitchers of all levels.

Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher and Cedar Rapids resident Mitch Keller was a Tread client a handful of years ago or so and credits it with helping him increase his velocity.

“I hadn’t thrown too much,” Hoopes said. “I’d been ramping up to throw that January through March (2024), but my arm started bugging me, I wasn’t throwing too hard. I took a lot of time off, about three months off from fully throwing. I just hammered upper-body lifts, lower-body lifts, was having fun. No stress at all, just having a blast.

“I got to North Carolina and threw into a net. One of the coaches there at Tread said ‘Hey, why don’t you get (on) the mound?’ At that point, I didn’t have a care in the world, so I was like ‘Yessir. Let me get (on) the mound.’”

Hoopes threw a fastball 94 miles per hour, a personal best. The following week, he hit 100.

So Tread decided to make a video of him and put it online.

“I had no intention at all at getting picked up by someone because of that video,” Hoopes said. “That is just how it worked. I knew if they filmed it, there was a possibility it could happen, but there was no thought in my mind that it actually would. They posted that video, and five days later, I heard from the Cubs.”

Hoopes threw in front of a Chicago Cubs scout, then scouts of the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees and Twins. This was in mid-July, right before the 2024 Major League Baseball Draft.

The Cubs, Yankees and Phillies told them they’d probably offer him a contract following the draft, but the Twins pulled the trigger a couple of days before it, and Hoopes jumped. He was assigned to Minnesota’s Rookie-level Florida Complex League team but didn’t pitch in any games.

He began this season with low-A Fort Myers and was promoted to the Kernels earlier this month. The right-hander has a 3-4 record and a save in 23 relief outings overall, with a 2.12 earned run average.

He has given up just 15 hits in 29 2/3 innings, with 39 strikeouts. His fastball general sits around 92-94 MPH, and he also throws a slider and splitter.

“I’m just trying to put together as many good outings as possible,” Hoopes said. “This has been nothing but a blessing.”

The Kernels (4-3-32, 3-6 second half) scored a pair of go-ahead runs in the fifth inning to win for just the second time in this six-game series. The club has Monday off per usual, then plays three games at Quad Cities beginning Tuesday.

The teams come to Cedar Rapids for games on the Fourth of July, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

Comments: (319)-398-8258, jeff.johnson@thegazette.com