New White Sox prospect Anthony Hoopii-Tuionetoa can very easily imagine not having a baseball career had he not received an important nudge.
He was part of two Hawaii state championship teams at Baldwin High School, the same place that produced longtime big leaguer Kurt Suzuki, but MLB scouts specifically assigned to the 50th state are rare.
"Just being from back home, it's hard to get into baseball," Hoopii-Tuionetoa said in a recent phone call.
He certainly wouldn't have envisioned traveling to the mainland US to pursue a professional career to pitch, having barely touched the mound over his first three years in high school. It's only upon hitting 90 mph while throwing a bullpen during offseason practice before his senior year did Hoopii-Tuionetoa learn there was professional potential in his right arm.
Even from there, he would need another boost.
In a practice that used to be a more common way for teams to keep tabs on underscouted areas, Baldwin’s baseball coach Shane Dudoit doubled as a scout for the Texas Rangers organization. Knowing the game would not easily find a raw teenager from Hawaii who already threw as hard as many draft prospects without any professional polish, Dudoit put the word out, both to the Rangers and his other contacts in the sport.
"I was throwing 90 mph in bullpens and he was saying that he knew some people and he could get the word out and I could pursue this after high school," Hoopii-Tuionetoa said. "I had never really thought about it like that, but he opened a lot of doors to me, where he reached out to a lot of people and got some sort of notice over there that I was throwing that hard."
As Hoopii-Tuionetoa describes it, his Hawaiian heritage is something "I wear on my sleeve" while moving through the baseball world. Suzuki, Shane Victorino, Kolten Wong and others have made it very clear that the state can produce valuable big leaguers, but it's still rare enough that the 23-year-old reliever is never going to miss an opportunity to dap up fellow Hawaiian prospects like Kala'i Rosario or Shane Sasaki when he sees them on the other side of a minor league field.
Hoopii-Tuionetoa is quick to place his rise in pro baseball in terms of what it could do for back home, whether it's simply to provide for his family, put him in a position to run youth clinics back near his hometown of Wailuku, or just provide an example that succeeding in professional baseball isn't as far away as it can seem. Because when Hoopii-Tuionetoa was getting adjusted to living stateside after the Rangers took him in the 30th round of the 2019 draft, Hawaii and all the goals he had for his career felt very far away. The experience turned Hoopii-Tuionetoa into a big believer in the Rangers' mental skills department.
"I could talk to them about anything, whether it was on the field, off the field, it didn't really matter," Hoopii-Tuionetoa said. "They helped shape the correct mindset I should have. I had it in me, but it wasn't entirely the mindset I needed it to be. I was still thinking too far ahead of instead of being where my feet are."
The 2020 COVID outbreak canceled the minor league season for Hoopii-Tuionetoa at a time where his career badly needed more reps, but spending a year back at home clarified to him that success in pro baseball was something he wanted, and why. Losing most of his 2023 season to a "non-structural" shoulder injury, isolated in rehab at the team complex where "the one thing that makes you your money and can make you your money, you're not doing," was mentally grueling, but Hoopii-Tuionetoa returned from it throwing harder than ever. Recording 9⅔ scoreless innings while touching high-90s in the hitter-friendly Arizona Fall League last October put him on the prospect map.
It also made him an appealing trade target for the rebuilding White Sox, securing a potential future piece of their bullpen in exchange for veteran outfielder Robbie Grossman in early May. After the five years in a Rangers organization that had helped him acclimate to living stateside, Hoopii-Tuionetoa felt like he was losing a family, and that he took the pressure of trying to impress a new team into his first outing and allowed a home run.
He hasn't allowed one since.
In all, opposing hitters have a .167/.246/.278 battling line against Hoopii-Tuionetoa at Double-A Birmingham, and he's struck them out at a 31.1 percent rate. The path from touching 90 mph as a 17-year-old with no concept of what he's doing, to throwing strikes in the mid-90s and occasionally touching 99 mph, has been cleared by his back leg.
"A lot of the velo and force you generate is from the ground up," Hoopii-Tuionetoa said. "I was kind 'tall and fall,' but I'm not a super-tall pitcher, so 'tall and fall' doesn't really help. I've got to sit in that back leg to generate that force and move down the mound a little bit faster and quicker."
A natural pronator with his right wrist, Hoopii-Tuionetoa feels comfortable enough with his changeup that he speculates it might soon become his favorite secondary offering, even if it has rarely been his primary focus as a right-handed reliever coming up through the minors. A subject of dedicated focus since coming over to the Sox has been refining his non-traditional slider with Barons pitching coach John Ely. Hoopii-Tuionetoa starts his grip like a sinker before shifting his hand to the right side of the ball. From there, the cue he's focused on is to think of himself as cutting the ball in half, and just ripping down on it like a fastball and trusting the movement will be there, rather than trying to actively manipulate the ball with his release.
"That was pretty much the one way that it clicked every time because like, I can throw a heater," Hoopii-Tuionetoa said. "[The White Sox] let you go about your business the way you've been going about it. They let you do what you know you need to do. It's not so much like coaching or getting on you about certain things. It's more about you being accountable and professional enough to go up to them and ask when you need something."
The results at a Double-A affiliate that has already shuttled an unusually large portion of pitchers straight to the majors, combined with a Chicago roster that's about to be excavated, would suggest Hoopii-Tuionetoa should get a big league look this year. He has to be Rule 5 protected on a 40-man roster this winter anyway, which easily could have prompted his trade away from the Rangers.
But less than two months removed from being traded from the organization that drafted him, Hoopii-Tuionetoa has shifted more to a process-oriented viewpoint where if he's doing what he's supposed to be doing, a large opportunity will come from somewhere, rather than being dependent upon a specific set of perfect circumstances. Looking ahead, short-term validation or even just valuing himself solely on on-field results is not what he's trying to center his focus on.
It's not quite the nudge he'd look to give other Hawaiian baseball players, where believing in the long-term view is paramount because the short-term opportunities can look too far away.
"Some kids fall back on 'I'm from here, nobody ever comes here and nobody wants to see Hawaiian baseball players' and you want to shed that light and say 'You can make it, if you do the things you need to do and stay consistent and stick with it, and honestly, just listen.'" Hoopii-Tuionetoa said. "You don't want to be the star of the show, because obviously Hawaii is a very humble place. It definitely helps when you can think about it like if I'm able to do this, I can help out. I can bring people I know from here back home to help them. Throw these little camps, or lessons for kids to help them out with their game. It's a big thing."
