Honeywell wins where he once watched

ATLANTA -- It was sometime in summer 2019. Brent Honeywell can't recall exactly when. He had just undergone a second surgery on his right elbow – the second of, eventually, four operations on his throwing arm in a three-year span. A top prospect in the Rays' system, Honeywell found himself at home in Georgia in the summertime. He wanted to be anywhere else. He wanted to be at a ballpark.

So he found one.

• Game Story: Padres strike early, hold on ▶️

A childhood Braves fan who grew up going to games at Turner Field, Honeywell got a couple tickets to Truist Park. He went with his mom. They sat behind the Braves' on-deck circle.

“I wanted to go watch baseball,” says Honeywell, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Four years -- and a lifetime -- later, Honeywell returned to Truist Park. He sat in the visiting bullpen this time during the Padres’ 5-4 victory Friday night over the Braves. He watched as his Padres took an early lead. He watched as Nick Martinez struggled with his command.

Truist Park began to buzz. Martinez ran into trouble in the fifth. The bullpen phone rang.

"When the crowds get loud -- that's what I've always wanted to do,” Honeywell said. “That's baseball. I wanted to be there. I wanted that phone call to be me.”

It was. Honeywell entered a tie game in the fifth inning with the bases loaded and the ballpark rocking. For the next two innings, he quieted it. He struck out Eddie Rosario to end the fifth-inning threat. He recorded five more outs, allowing only a pair of walks. The Padres, meanwhile, grabbed a sixth-inning lead on Xander Bogaerts’ check-swing single.

When Josh Hader slammed the door on the Padres’ victory, Honeywell had earned his first career win. After all those years recovering -- summers spent, agonizingly, away from the mound -- Honeywell’s first victory came here. Of all places. With dozens of friends and family in attendance.

“It’s a pretty surreal moment tonight,” Honeywell said. “It takes a lot. Especially when you don't play for so long, it's like you kind of just feel like you're stuck in a wheel. A lot of my friends here never really let me get stuck in that wheel. Family, friends -- a lot of people here know what I'm capable of. I was just happy to do it in front of them.”

The Padres needed Honeywell in the worst way, too. They had dropped consecutive games in which they held a late lead. Their bullpen was fried. For the fourth straight game, their starting pitcher was done before the sixth.

“There’s big outs during the course of a game,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “Usually they come towards the end. But that last out in the fifth was huge. To be able to get us that -- for a guy that didn’t really know what his role was early on … that’s getting tested.”

The Padres, of course, made an offseason’s worth of splashy moves. They signed superstars to extensions -- and they added in new ones. When Honeywell signed in early January, it flew almost entirely under the radar.

But rest assured, the Padres knew what Honeywell was capable of. He once checked in as MLB Pipeline’s fourth-ranked right-handed prospect in all of baseball. He won MVP of the 2017 Futures Game.

Back then, Jake Cronenworth was a teammate of Honeywell’s in the Rays’ system. He got his first look at the righty phenom on Field 2 in Port Charlotte.

“It’s nice to have a familiar face around and to see him doing what he’s doing,” Cronenworth said. “I’ve seen it before, before he had the surgery, and it was one of the best pitchers I’d ever seen.”

Now, the Padres are tasked with harnessing that version of Honeywell, four surgeries later.

So far, so good. Honeywell has allowed one run across 5 2/3 innings, while striking out seven and harnessing his signature screwball back into an out pitch. For the game’s biggest out, he whiffed Rosario on a heater to end the fifth. But he ended the next frame with a screwball that fell off the table. Sam Hilliard tried to stop his swing -- and couldn’t.

With the San Diego bullpen in flux, Honeywell might just get an opportunity to carve himself a bigger role. The Padres are short on middle-innings lefties, and his screwball and changeup (clearly) play well against left-handed hitters.

Still, Honeywell is doing his best to learn the nuances of a relief role. He has picked the brain of a handful of the team’s veteran relievers.

“But I don’t think anybody’s ready for a situation like that if you’ve never done it,” Honeywell said. “I’m running in out there. The lights are off. They’ve got the tomahawks going. And I’m a part of a big-time baseball game.”

Sure beats watching it from those seats by the on-deck circle.