What ever happened to ... Dan Reichert?

Do you know those moments where you know that you should be doing something productive, yet you just can't make yourself actually do work?  However, you feel guilty about it so you won't let yourself do anything that you really would like to do.  Instead, you decide to just waste away part of your day watching M*A*S*H* reruns or looking up something on wikipedia and just following links around for the next few hours.  Well, I don't have television, I already watched the movie Clue for the 100th time yesterday, and I finally bored of wikipedia.

So I found myself using the search feature to look up one of my favorite subjects...myself.  I found a blurb that I had written in 2007 on an old undrafted Royal named Byron Gettis (click here)and thought it might be interesting to do it again.  I decided to make an attempt at a "Where are they now" article about another former Royal and see where life had led them.  Maybe this will be a one-time attempt that fails miserably or maybe I'll be writing one of these about Danny Duffy in a few years.  Boredom makes us do strange things.

Daniel Robert Reichert was drafted in the eleventh round by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1994, but decided against playing in front of the best fans in the world.  Instead, he chose to attend the University of the Pacific where he excelled and eventually earned several honors including a place as First Team All-American.  The Royals were impressed and gave him a $1,450,000 signing bonus when they drafted him in the first round (seventh overall) in the 1997 amateur draft.

Reichert, a right-hander, had some major success in the minors.  From 1997 until he was called up in 1999, he pitched 252 and 2/3rds innings of minor league ball with slightly over half of those innings pitched with Omaha.  He managed a K/9 rate of 8.62 and a BB/9 rate of 4.31 (almost exactly a 2:1 ratio of Ks to BBs).  The Royals were impressed enough to call him up for 8 starts in 1999 where he exhibited his inability to locate the strike zone and a much reduced ability to strike people out.  Over the next few years, he spent time between Omaha and the Royals with flashes of minor success (2000 Royals) and improving command, though he still led the league in wild pitches in 2000.  Interestingly, he also was quite proficient at hitting batters. His improving command (which is a relative statement) came at a further reduction in his strikeout rate.  

The reduction of his strikeout rate may not be an entirely fair thing to focus on.  Reichert's main pitch is a low 90s fastball with good to great movement that manages to get a plethora of groundballs and he keeps the ball low.  He doesn't have any plus secondary pitches and he still walks too many, but with a good defense, scouts believed that he could be an acceptable reliever.  

In 2003, he became a Toronto Blue Jay relief pitcher.  He pitched very well at their AAA affiliate and was called up to the major league roster.  In 16 and 1/3rd innings, he continued to show the same kinds of results that he always had in the majors.  Reichert allowed hits and walks by the bunches, while keeping the ball down enough that home runs were a rare occurrence.  He also  had a spike in his strikeout rate that was almost certainly due to sample size issues.  This was to be his last appearance on a major league roster.

He spent the next few years split between independent leagues and various AAA teams (Milwaukee and Seattle).   In 2008, he signed with Cleveland and converted back to starter in Buffalo (actually, he was a starter in some of those independent leagues) before being traded to Pittsburgh.   Last year, Reichert found himself back in the independent leagues.  It is unclear where he is today, though I suspect he is pitching in the independent leagues.