‘Playing for a Purpose’: How Brandon Barriera Found His Edge

Growing up, Blue Jays prospect Brandon Barriera was told he wasn't good enough. Those words still fuel him.

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

He heard them all.

Travel ball teams saying they didn’t have a spot. Coaches whispering about wild pitches and blown saves. Parents murmuring after losses. Back then, they told Brandon Barriera he wasn’t good enough, he'd never be anything.

At the time, they were right. The whispers came before Barriera transformed into one of the best high school pitchers in the country. Before he drew crowds of scouts and starred on the nation’s top showcase teams. Before the Blue Jays made him their 2022 first-round pick and signed him for a $3.6 million draft bonus.

Barriera has silenced the doubt, but the whispers still fuel him. They’re his “certain edge,” the lefty said, on his path to the big leagues.

“I’ve just put my head down and had that chip on my shoulder,” Barriera told Inside the Blue Jays. “At one point, people doubted me. It just keeps me grounded. Keeps me playing for something, playing for a purpose.”

When Nick James pulled Sergio Barriera aside after a 2014 travel ball tryout, the father thought he was nuts.

“I think your kid has a chance to be absolutely special,” James told him.

Other South Florida teams turned his son away, cutting Barriera from travel tryouts, and now this Cannons Baseball Academy coach claimed real potential. The control problems were obvious, but that southpaw arm speed drew James in. “Never give up on a lefty,” he said.

With a Formula 1 arm, Barriera just needed help getting his learner’s permit. During his first season in the program, the lefty was statistically the worst pitcher in the CBA program. James had to force other coaches to pitch him, essentially threatening to fire them if they didn’t find innings for the young pitcher. One game, with his team up 8-0, James tapped Barriera on the shoulder and told him to get on the mound. With his son warming up, Sergio Barriera ran to the dugout and questioned the coach.

“We’re going to blow this,” he said. “What are you doing?”

Sure, Barriera did blow that eight-run lead, but James didn’t care. He knew the young lefty would walk three in a row, buzz balls by batters’ ears, and send half his pitches to the backstop; it was an accepted consequence. For every blown save, there was a moment where it clicked, a fastball hissing by a whiffing bat on the corner of the zone. Barriera needed those moments, the glimpses of potential that James saw in that tryout.

“It has to start with the individual,” James said. “You have to believe in yourself above all else. And I think when success started to come and he started to see what potential he was capable of, I think it only fueled him to work harder.”

Barriera and his parents bought in, and the flashes of the future began to dwarf the wild pitches. It took plenty of tinkering before they found it, dropping Barriera’s delivery into a 10 o’clock arm slot and developing a timing mechanism—patting the ball back into his glove—that delayed the upper half and created repeatability.

Barriera grew into a 95-mile-per-hour slinger, and now he had control. In one year, he went from mop-up duty on his travel squad to the USA National Team. By age 14, he was the top lefty pitcher in the country for his age group.

Barriera pitched for Cannons Baseball Academy (now CBU) from age 10 until the 2022 MLB Draft / Image courtesy of Cannons Baseball University

But, the whispers didn’t stop. They weren’t talking about blown saves or shaky command anymore—how could they, with Barriera’s 11-0 high school record, 2.00 ERA, and 111 strikeouts in 70 innings? Now, college recruiters and pro scouts questioned the chip on his shoulder, his edge.

You’ll hear Barriera talking to himself on the mound sometimes. When he gets a guy to two strikes, he gasses himself up. Often, the commentary stays in his head. Other times, it leaks out. As he sat down opponents with ease during his final high school seasons, recruiters and scouts asked: “Is he an asshole?”

“It’s confidence,” Barriera said. “Not cockiness. Confidence.”

In the weeks leading up to the 2022 MLB Draft, Barriera had teams as high as the Marlins, drafting sixth overall, express real interest. The Florida native thought he’d fall somewhere between the sixth and 18th picks, where many mock drafts had him going. But then, the draft started.

Crammed onto a white leather couch at the outdoor draft show in Los Angeles, Barriera waited with his family, agent, and coach for the phone call that would finalize his dream. In an all-black suit, with a gold chain around his neck, Barriera hunched forward, watching lower-ranked high school pitchers walk across the stage before him. All told, 22 picks before the Blue Jays made the call.

It was a flashback to the travel ball coaches turning away the kid with no control. He’d proved them wrong; he was a first-round pick in the MLB Draft. So, Barriera vowed to do it again.

"Those 22 teams before me," Barriera said after the draft. "They're going to regret this."

“I was in the moment,” the lefty said looking back. “I was fired up. Obviously, I was emotional, I sacrificed a lot of time throughout my whole life. Pretty much my whole life, I sacrificed 18 years to get here. That was a lot of emotions coming out.”

Barriera’s fire was a red flag for some, but not the Blue Jays. For Toronto, it was a draw.

"Those 22 teams before me, they're going to regret this."

As the early sun poured over palm trees at the Blue Jays’ player development complex in Dunedin, Florida, a line of prospects and coaches leaned against the chain-link fence in silence.

Digging into the first rubber on a row of mounds, Barriera broke the peace with a fastball—the piercing thwack of ball meeting glove at unhittable velocity.

The noise repeated. Fastball, slider, change. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. The only interjections came from a coach reading off velocities and a young catcher shouting affirmations.

“Yup, that’s the one,” the backstop said.

The edge follows Barriera everywhere he goes, he can’t simply turn it on between the lines. In anything even tangentially baseball-related, he wants to know he’s the hardest worker. In the weight room, throwing Plyoballs against a wall, or even playing catch, Barriera wants to win.

“I feel like I worked my ass off to get where I’m at now,” Barriera said. “So what’s the difference? Am I just going to be a competitor on the mound and nothing else?”

The lefty hasn’t appeared in an organized baseball game since April 2022, ending his final high school season early to avoid injury before the draft. Many of Toronto’s 2022 selections got a taste of High-A or the Complex League last year, but Barriera had to watch from the sidelines.

After months off, the Jays deemed ramping Barriera all the way back up for two or three starts not worth it. Instead, the 19-year-old paired with nutritionists and trainers to add 30 pounds to his frame and worked with coaches to hone his changeup.

But, supplement schedules and pitch grips don’t light the competitive fire. Occasionally, he got into a live batting practice against teammates, but Barriera’s high-stakes contests these days come from NBA2K games or hours-long, sweat-filled matchups in the ping-pong arena. Admittedly, Barriera’s not at the top of the pong hierarchy among Toronto’s prospects. But soon, the battles return to his domain.

When he gets into lower-minors action for the first time this season, the lefty has an opportunity to face a few of the 22 organizations that passed over him on draft day—the ones he vowed would regret it. But, those starts won’t be any different for him, Barriera said, because every outing is Game 7 of his World Series.

For Barriera, every start is an opportunity to put time and distance between him and the whispers. Every pitch, an opportunity to keep proving them wrong.