New York Mets’ draftee Eric Orze said cancer made him a stronger person and a better pitcher

Eric Orze, the New York Mets‘ fifth-round pick in the 2020 draft, has fought his fiercest battles outside of the mound. He has beaten cancer twice, and is now ready to start the journey that will take him to the major leagues as a pitcher.
It all started as a groin discomfort that didn’t take too much of Orze’s attention. However, after he volunteered to catch bullpens in the University of New Orleans baseball team, the pain returned until one night he was screaming in pain.

After an ultrasound, he learned that he had testicular cancer.

“Your whole body kind of goes numb,” the Mets’ player said to MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo in a telephone interview earlier this week. “You don’t really know how to react. You don’t really know what to do. And then that wave of emotion hits you.”

He started shaking and crying, but shortly after that, he made the determination of not letting the disease beat him.

In the two subsequent years, Orze also battled skin cancer in four different spots on his body.

He grew as a person and as a pitcher, so much that the New York Mets were convinced to take him in the fifth round of the draft.

“It just shows you that you’re capable of doing anything you want to,” said Orze’s college coach, Blake Dean.

Orze still remembers that moment in 2018 when he was in that hospital room, shortly after being diagnosed with the disease. He called his mother.

“I could just hear her breathe for a second,” Orze recalled, “and then she just goes, ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Your dad’s work is 10 minutes down the road, I’ll call you back when I get there. I just need to go find your father.’ So she hung up, called me back probably 10 minutes later and she was already crying. … My dad was pretty emotional as well. That was definitely probably the toughest phone call I’ve had to make.”

He fought, even when he could barely walk. He overcame his second diagnosis, the skin cancer, using the strength he had built up after the first one. He worked to get healthy, to regain his weight, and to embrace healthy habits. He kept going even when throwing a bullpen session made him “wake up the next day feeling like I got hit by a truck.”
By the time the 2020 season started, he was ready. After struggling in his first appearance against Southern University, he tossed five brilliant innings in his next game, earning his first win in two years.

The Mets got themselves a winner

The New York Mets know that Orze just won’t quit. Before quarantine started, he was flourishing, with a 3-0 record and a 2.75 ERA.

“It sounds crazy and it sounds bizarre, but cancer was a blessing in disguise for sure,” Orze said. “If I hadn’t gone through that … I had Draft aspirations, but I don’t think anything would have come of it. Even though I had good numbers and I had good stuff and I did well before being diagnosed, I was a very average college pitcher. I thought I was doing enough at the time. Realizing now how much really goes into being a professional, I don’t know that it would have happened.

“Seeing the transformation I’ve made to now, I’m realizing that I really wasn’t as good as I thought I was. It kind of put me in my place, and gave me the perspective that I needed to understand that a professional is different.”