By Pete Cava

PBR Indiana Correspondent. 

At Indianapolis on Saturday, September 9, Justin O’Conner hunkered behind home plate, bedecked in catcher’s gear and the orange-and-blue road uniform of the Durham Bulls.  Game Four of the International League’s first round of playoffs was underway, with Durham leading the host Indians two games to one in the best-of-five series.  

O’Conner was back in the city of his birth, playing at Victory Field for the first time in nine years.  For the 25-year-old Tampa Bay Rays prospect, it would be a memorable homecoming.   

When he was five years old, O’Conner’s family left Indianapolis for Cowan, Indiana, just outside Muncie.  Justin said he began playing baseball “at an early age, probably about four.”  A Boston Red Sox fan whose favorite player was New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter, he started out playing the infield and pitching.  

As a Cowan High School sophomore, Justin formed a battery with his brother Jake, a junior.  The Blackhawks won nine consecutive games, including an 11-0 triumph over Whiting in the Kokomo Semi-State, en route to the IHSAA Class A championship game. 

Justin compiled a 6-2 record that year, along with a 2.03 earned run average and 100 strikeouts in 51 and two-third innings.  A shortstop when he wasn’t pitching, he batted .470 with nine home runs.  Jake, Cowan’s catcher, was a .404 hitter.  

The Blackhawks, with a 24-5 record, met the Shakamak Lakers (24-8) for the state Class A title at Victory Field on June 14, 2008.  Justin took the mound and batted cleanup, blanking Shakamak through the first four frames.  The Lakers scored six times in the bottom of the fifth, however, and went on to win 6-2. 

O’Conner began the transition to catcher in 2009.  “Scouts came to me and said they thought I’d be a good fit behind the plate,” he explained.  “So I started doing it a little bit.”  In 2010, he replaced his brother Jake as Cowan’s main catcher.  

The University of Arkansas offered O’Conner a baseball scholarship during his senior year.  “I was going to play infield there, I think, and then close,” he said.  “I don’t think I would have been a catcher.” 

College recruiters and big-league scouts liked Justin’s raw power (51 career homers at Cowan) and his mid-90s fastball. “Teams were split on whether they liked O’Conner better as a right-hander or third baseman,” observed Baseball America, “but he settled that argument when he moved behind the plate as a high school senior.” 

O’Conner was considered the top prep backstop in the 2010 draft.  ESPN analyst Peter Gammons described him as a “very athletic catcher,” and called him “one of the fastest-rising players heading into the draft.” 

Tampa Bay selected O’Conner in the first round.  “Going into the draft, there were a couple of other teams that I thought I had a shot at getting picked by,” he said.  “When the 31^st pick of the first round came around, my agent called and said the Rays wanted to take me.  I had my family with me.  Everybody was excited.  It was a fun night.”  

O’Conner signed for a reported $1.025 million and reported to Tampa Bay’s team in the rookie Gulf Coast League.  He struggled, hitting .211 in 48 contests.  Nevertheless, Baseball America ranked him the No. 8 prospect in the Rays system, citing “tremendous bat speed” and “plus-plus arm strength.” 

At Princeton (rookie Appalachian) in 2011, O’Conner batted .157 while still trying to master the nuances of catching.  He managed to top the league by throwing out 36 percent of opposing base stealers, but struck out in 40 percent of his plate appearances.  “It was definitely different,” he said of his first professional campaign.  “I mean, a little bit of a struggle.  But it’s baseball.  The game doesn’t change, it just gets a little faster.  So learning how to slow the game down and how to control myself, it got better from there.”    

Over the next two seasons the 6-foot, 205-pound O’Conner continued to learn and adjust.  He batted .223 for Hudson Valley (short season New York-Penn) in 2012 and .233 in 2013 at Bowling Green (low-A Midwest).  Scouting reports cited O’Conner’s power (31 of his 91 base hits in 2013 went for extra bases), claiming “he has the defensive tools to be a starting receiver in the big leagues.”  

Starting out the 2014 season in Charlotte (high-A Florida State) and finishing with Montgomery (AA Southern), O’Conner turned in what he called “my best statistical year so far, on both sides of the ball.”  In 108 total games he batted .278 with 12 home runs, rocketing to No. 3 among Tampa Bay’s farmhands.  

“Much of Justin O’Conner’s first four years in the Rays organization was marked by injuries and inconsistent play,” wrote Marc Topkin of the Tampa  Bay Times.  “And then this past season was a blur of progress.” 

In November 2014 the Rays added O’Connor to their 40-man roster.  They returned him to Montgomery for 2015, hoping for more progress.  In a year marked by inconsistency, his average dipped to .231 with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 69-to-6.  Tampa Bay still had high hopes for him, and as Baseball America put it:  “he could still be a regular.” 

While driving from Indiana to Tampa Bay’s spring camp in 2016, O’Conner began to experience back problems.  The diagnosis was a herniated disc, which limited him to a dozen rookie Gulf Coast League contests and eight more at Montgomery.  He batted a combined .262.  “I tried to rehab it all year,” said Justin.  “It just never got better.  I ended up trying to play through it.  I figured out that I couldn’t play through it, so then I had to get it fixed.” 

The injury required two surgeries after the 2016 campaign, one in mid-October and another in early November.  In December the Rays removed O’Conner from the 40-man roster and assigned him outright to the minor leagues.   There was speculation he might not be able to play in 2017.  

“With any kind of major surgery, you never know how your body’s going to respond,” said Justin.  “I knew for a fact I was going to play this year.  I knew I was going to do everything I could to get back on the field, and that’s what I did.”   

O’Conner turned out to be one of the success stories of Tampa Bay’s 2017 spring camp, and he opened the season with Montgomery.  “I was excited to be back on the field after sitting out all last year,” he said.  “I struggled a little bit in the beginning.  But I just kept thinking in the back of my mind, ‘I’m on the field,’ and that’s where I wanted to be.  I got better toward the end of the year, and the Rays gave me an opportunity to come here and play for the Bulls.” 

On August 3, O’Conner joined Durham.  The Bulls finished first in the IL South Division, setting up the playoff tilt with Indianapolis.  Playing at home with O’Conner behind the plate, Durham won the first two contests.  

With the series shifting to Indianapolis, O’Conner’s family and friends made plans to come to Victory Field for the games. Justin had lunch with his parents before Game Three.  “They’ll be here,” he said.  “My brother’s coming, my sister’s coming, my grandparents are coming.    I’ve heard there’s going to be quite a few people here.” 

Indianapolis staved off elimination that night with a 5-0 victory.  With Michael McKenry behind the plate for Durham, O’Conner sat out the contest. 

Justin was back in the lineup for the fourth game.  The Indians took a 3-2 lead into the top of the eighth, when he came to the plate with two out and the bases loaded.  O’Conner lined a single to center that scored two runs.  Durham went on to win 4-3, earning a berth in the Governor’s Cup final.  “Indianapolis was done in by one of its own,” wrote MiLB.com’s Michael Leboff. 

“Justin's hit was huge,” Durham skipper Jared Sandberg told reporters.  “For him to provide that hit in the eighth in front of his friends and family was a pretty special moment.” 

With the Bulls moving on to play Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for the International League championships, O’Conner had no time to rest on his laurels.  “Where I’m at now, I just gotta keep going,” he said.  “There’s always a lot to learn.  I’m still learning. This game, it changes all the time.  It’s a game of adjustments.” 

Pete Cava is the author of “Tales From the Cubs Dugout” and “Indiana-Born Major League Baseball Players:  A Biographical Dictionary, 1871-2014.”