{"id":1839,"date":"2025-04-30T21:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T21:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/1839\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T21:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T21:27:09","slug":"second-ever-uw-milwaukee-alum-a-j-blubaugh-makes-major-league-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/1839\/","title":{"rendered":"Second-ever UW-Milwaukee alum, A.J. Blubaugh, makes Major League debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston Astros<\/a> prospect A.J. Blubaugh, an Ohio native who played college baseball at UW-Milwaukee, made his Major League debut Wednesday against the Detroit Tigers<\/a>, becoming the second player from UWM to reach the big leagues and first pitcher.<\/p>\n

He joins outfielder Daulton Varsho as the only former Panthers to reach the big leagues.<\/p>\n

Blubaugh scuffled after a clean first inning, allowing five hits and a walk in the next three innings, though only two of the seven runs that scored against him were earned. He closed with a strong fourth and finished with six strikeouts.<\/p>\n

Presumably, there will be many more chances for the 24-year-old right-hander, ranked 10th among the organization’s prospects by MLB Pipeline.<\/a><\/p>\n

Hailing from Belleville, Ohio, Blubaugh selected in the seventh round of the 2022 Major League Baseball draft by Houston<\/p>\n

He has a career 4.02 ERA in 65 minor-league appearances (44 starts) with a 1.32 WHIP.<\/p>\n

He played three years at UWM, earning Horizon League Relief Pitcher of the Year in both seasons after the pandemic and earning first-team All-Conference nods each time. As a sophomore, he had just a 1.06 WHIP and finished with a 3.25 ERA in 16 appearances.<\/p>\n

Daulton Varsho makes an unbelievable catch for Toronto<\/p>\n

Speaking of Varsho, he produced an early candidate for catch of the year in the Major League, albeit somewhat unwittingly.<\/a> Back healthy for his first game of the season, Varsho stumbled trying to flag down a fly ball from Jaren Duren of Boston on Tuesday, then made a casual circus catch behind his back as he rose to his feet.<\/p>\n

Even that description doesn’t really do the snag justice.<\/p>\n

“When I fell, I was like, ‘Oh boy, it’s going to be somewhat near me,'” Varsho said afterward. “I saw it kind of really quick and kind of stuck my glove out.”<\/p>\n

Varsho, a Marshfield native, won his first career Gold Glove as a center fielder last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Astros prospect A.J. Blubaugh, an Ohio native who played college baseball at UW-Milwaukee, made his Major League…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,5,1468,854,147,53,139,54,843,4,306,319,169,214,300,316,301,185,317,594,1518,1520,1469,1519],"class_list":{"0":"post-1839","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-daulton","11":"tag-daulton-varsho","12":"tag-detroit","13":"tag-detroit-tigers","14":"tag-houston","15":"tag-houston-astros","16":"tag-milwaukee","17":"tag-mlb","18":"tag-national","19":"tag-national-sports","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-of","22":"tag-overall","23":"tag-overall-positive","24":"tag-positive","25":"tag-sports","26":"tag-sports-news","27":"tag-tigers","28":"tag-university","29":"tag-university-of-wisconsin-milwaukee","30":"tag-varsho","31":"tag-wisconsin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114429037589826788","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}