Jun 29, 2026 6 min read

One of the between-innings games at EQT Park this summer involves two teams of kids who are tasked with building a tower of six over-sized blocks. The difficulty is with the final block because, when they reach this point, the tower is taller than the kids.

Sometimes they attempt to throw the final block on the top of their tower, causing it to collapse. Sometimes it falls into the other team’s tower, causing it to crumble.

Those kids who have had their well-crafted work crumble because of another team’s maneuver must feel a lot like Wild Things manager Tom Vaeth does today.

Vaeth had built the best pitching staff in the Frontier League — by a considerable margin. It wasn’t even debatable.

Entering last week, the Wild Things had a team ERA almost 1 1/2 runs per game fewer than the second-best team in the league. They had given up the fewest walks and led the league in quality starts (at least six innings and no more than three earned runs allowed), nearly doubling the second-place pitching staff in the latter category.

Then the phone calls started. Actually, they started back in May. They were from major league organizations. Each call brought good news for a Washington pitcher and bad news for the Wild Things: Those major league farm directors wanted to purchase the contract of a Washington pitcher.

First it was starter Andrew Herbert in May. He went to Baltimore.

Then it was closer Tyler Davis. He went to Boston.

Next was starter Hector Garcia, purchased by Toronto.

Then, last Wednesday, Vaeth received a call from the Los Angeles Angels, who were purchasing the contract of starter Zach Kirby, who had a 5-0 record and had just thrown seven shutout innings against Windy City the previous day.

At about 1 a.m. that night, Vaeth received another phone call. It was from the Detroit Tigers. They were picking up starter Maddox Long (4-1).

In the span of a little more than a month, the Wild Things had lost four starting pitchers and their closer.

All those moves have left Vaeth to piece together a pitching staff with holdover starters Kobe Foster, Zander Sechrist and some setup relievers. Foster is a good starting point because he’s the winningest pitcher in Wild Things history and threw a no-hitter this season. The remainder of the rotation is going to be a patchwork job for the foreseeable future. Vaeth has signed two former NCAA Division III pitchers and two who were released by other independent teams.

“There’s nothing to fix it with,” Vaeth said last Saturday night following a doubleheader against Joliet.

“There are no starters out there right now. There are no Zach Kirbys, no Kobe Fosters, no Andrew Herberts sitting out there with a 12-0 record in college and looking for a place to play.”

Joliet manager Mike Pinto confirmed as much.

“There are no pitchers out there,” he said.

Part of the problem is Major League Baseball has moved its amateur draft back to mid-July from its old spot on the calendar of early June. Any college pitcher who has had even one day of success on the mound is holding out hope that he will be selected in the draft and won’t consider the independent baseball route until learning if his name is called during the draft.

Another problem is one that every independent manager I’ve talked to in the last two years has mentioned. Too many pitchers today, whether they are out of college eligibility or have been released by major league organizations, prefer to play it safe by working out at baseball facilities, making videos of their mechanics, and sending emails to major league scouts with the videos and analytics numbers.

They do this, in large part, because they don’t give up hits in the videos. There are no batters to face. They can be edited to make a pitcher look good. Delete the pitches that miss the strike zone by six feet. It’s a no-risk but little-reward approach.

“Nobody has been signed off the couch,” Vaeth says.

“Part of my responsibility is that I have to find better. It’s not like the old days when guys are knocking down the door and agents are calling you. The agents I’ve talked to say they have no arms that are available. I’ve been told by college kids that they want to wait until after the draft.”

Until then, the Wild Things are in a unique situation.

“I told the guys that in my 26 years in independent baseball I’ve never seen a team in the situation we are going through,” Vaeth said. “I’ve never seen a team lose 80 percent of its rotation at one time. Teams might lose one starter, maybe two, during a season. We’ve lost four starters.”

Adding to the pitching problem is that Ethan Brown, who began the season in the rotation, suffered a knee injury in his second start and had to undergo season-ending surgery.

“I’m trying to figure out my rotation at the end of June, with no exhibitions. That’s where we’re at,” Vaeth said. “A lot has happened the last 10 days.”

The Wild Things had built a record that was 15 games above .500 and they did it with pitching, defense and the three-run homer. Washington entered Saturday with the lowest team batting average in the 18-team league but was near the top in home runs.

“We’re playing old-school baseball, like the 1971 Baltimore Orioles,” Vaeth said earlier this month. “That team had four 20-game winners in its rotation.”

Now, the Wild Things will have to win by outslugging opponents.

“We talked about that,” Vaeth said. “We told our hitters that our pitchers had covered up a lot of things. We must score more runs. And when we do that, we have to go back to the mound and get a zero. That’s what we were doing. That’s why Kirby is irreplaceable. I knew he wanted to pitch. Herbert was the same way. How can you bring in a college kid who doesn’t know how we do things and doesn’t know the league and expect to get the same results?”

Sports editor Chris Dugan can be reached at dugan@observer-reporter.com