NORTH PORT, Fla. — On a sunny afternoon near the backfields at CoolToday Park, Ryan Cusick and Jared Shuster stand side by side as they address the media. Reporters usually speak with players one at a time, but this scene feels right because, well, Cusick and Shuster have pretty much taken the same path to this spot.
Both were born in Massachusetts (Cusick in Sudbury, Shuster in New Bedford).
Both played high school travel ball with North East Baseball.
Both played college baseball at Wake Forest – and committed on the same day without knowing the other would do the same.
The Braves drafted Shuster, a left-handed pitcher, with the 25th overall pick in the 2020 MLB draft, then selected Cusick, a righty, with the 24th overall pick in 2021.
Now Cusick and Shuster, who can both be found on lists of the organization’s top prospects, are in minor league camp together, looking to take their next leaps toward achieving their goals and dreams. Whereas they lived across the hall from one another at Wake Forest, they’re now rooming together in the dorms at the Braves’ spring training complex.
“Working together all day and hanging out at night,” said Cusick, who mentioned this felt like college all over again. “We get some good work in, that’s for sure.”
“It’s awesome,” Shuster said. “We work really well together, so it’s been good having him here.”
Back home, New England’s baseball community views Cusick and Shuster as the next two paving the way for the area’s future ballplayers. Others came before, more will follow.
All share one goal: putting the region on the map. New England is not a baseball hotbed like California, Florida and Texas, but the area and its kids have chips on their shoulders because of it.
“Those two, I think, they’re not satisfied with just being first-round picks,” Scott Patterson, the founder of North East Baseball, said over the phone about Cusick and Shuster. “They’ve been an inspiration to any kid up here in New England to say: Just because we have snowball fights in the winter doesn’t mean I can’t play professional baseball.”
As Patterson ponders the two pitchers’ impact, he begins rattling off other success stories from his travel ball program. Many went to Wake Forest.
Grant Lavigne had committed to Wake Forest before the Rockies selected him with the No. 42 pick in the 2018 draft. Brendan Tinsman currently plays for Wake Forest, while Chris Lanzilli used to play there before transferring to Arkansas. Matt Tabor, the Diamondbacks’ third-round pick in 2017, played for North East. Most recently, the Brewers selected Sal Frelick with the 15th overall pick last summer, while Cody Morissette went to the Marlins in the second round.
Now two Massachusetts kids are with the Braves. They are a year apart – which means they never played on the same travel ball team – but they’ve grown closer since high school because they’ve taken nearly identical paths here.
“Never thought it would end up like this,” Cusick said. “What are the chances?”
Shuster said he first believed the pair could one day be drafted during the fall of his junior year (Cusick’s sophomore year). Their pitching coach, John Hendricks, worked them hard at Wake Forest, which is known for its pitching lab that boasts cutting-edge technology to develop arms. They began to learn their deliveries. They worked on every aspect of their games. They took a big jump.
Meanwhile, the two pitchers grew closer. They worked together and enjoyed one another’s company. They pushed each other.
They say Hendricks is ecstatic at seeing their journey unfold, as are their parents. So is Patterson, who knew them before their college coaches or anyone in the Braves’ organization.
Patterson said Cusick, now listed at 6-foot-6, projected as a future draft pick because he threw 94 mph in high school. Shuster, according to Patterson, was the superior athlete and played center field in high school.
“They were always special,” Patterson said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
MLB Pipeline listed Cusick as the Braves’ sixth-ranked prospect, while Shuster is at No. 9. Both could be part of Atlanta’s future. In High A in 2021, Shuster pitched to a 3.70 ERA in 15 games – 14 starts – before three starts in Double A. Though Cusick had just been drafted last summer, he pleaded with the Braves to allow him to pitch and eventually posted a 2.76 ERA over six starts (16 ⅓ innings) in Low A.
Cusick throws a tight slider that he wanted to develop as a second breaking ball, but he said the Braves have urged him to primarily use the slider to improve it before working the curveball back into the mix. Shuster is working with a four-seam fastball, slider and change-up, and recently felt good about a live batting practice session.
The two pitchers, who now know so much about one another, have favorite memories of the other.
Cusick on Shuster: “We really worked hard that 2019 fall, and we had a group of four guys where we were lifting, we were throwing every single day together and we were trying to make big jumps, and I think I saw the jumps really come to fruition in his Louisville start when he went out there and went 7 ⅔ and (allowed) one run and we ended up walking that game off, which was a pretty big upset at the time. I think that was pretty cool where I was like, ‘Wow, we really worked hard together and it was starting to come together.’”
Shuster on Cusick: “Probably seeing him get drafted, just being proud of him and seeing him get picked by the Braves, too, knowing we’d get to work together. Seeing all his work pay off.”
Cusick and Shuster share a special bond formed through their similar paths to this spot. They could one day add to that by both playing for the big club together. Until then, they are prospects working tirelessly with that goal in mind.
After Cusick and Shuster finished speaking with reporters, they walked back past the dorms and into the clubhouse. Soon, two pitchers emerged, with equipment, and walked across the field by the weight room and toward the backfields, ready to work some more.
It was Cusick and Shuster, side by side, just as it has been for years.
