Mark Montieth: Hometown boy Matt Gorski makes good with Indians

He’s the local boy making good for the Indianapolis Indians, with all the comforts of home. His wife, mom, sister and brother are regulars at Victory Field, and his phone dings constantly with texts from friends from high school and college. He lives downtown but if inclined could drive up to Fishers and visit his childhood home, where his bedroom remains a virtual shrine.

“I’m in the city I grew up in, one of my favorite cities ever, in downtown Indianapolis,” Matt Gorski said, seated in the dugout before a game at Victory Field. “Being around family and being around friends I grew up playing with … it’s really a cool thing.”

He’d love to leave it all behind, though. Get out of town soon, in fact. The Pirates life is for him, with the Indians’ major league affiliate in Pittsburgh, and given recent trends, that seems a realistic possibility.

Gorski was hitting .265 heading into Tuesday evening’s game at Rochester, New York, with a team-leading 14 home runs and 44 RBI. He started the season slowly, but when the weather and quantity of his plate appearances heated up, so did he. He hit seven home runs through a nine-game stretch May 18-27, which put him in the conversation for a promotion to the Pirates. They could use a power surge. Heading into Tuesday’s games, they were 37-41 and had fewer home runs (72) than all but five major league teams.

“At the beginning of the year, his playing time wasn’t an everyday type of deal, but he became the guy we rely upon when it comes to production,” Indians Manager Miguel Perez said of Gorski. “When you have reps every day and start seeing pitchers on a day-to-day basis, you start making adjustments.”

Gorski has made a few tweaks at the plate over the years to aid the cause of hitting professional pitching. Long before that, however, there were bigger adjustments to be made while growing up in Fishers.

Truth be told, he wasn’t a natural for baseball—not at first, anyway. He recalls being “the 12th hitter and the right fielder” in his early seasons, the kid kept out of the way as much as possible. He gradually improved but was thinking of giving up baseball after a hard-driving coach in the 13-under summer program drained the fun and zapped his confidence.

He liked soccer better in those days. If nothing else, the season was shorter, and “you didn’t get to do it as much.” Baseball took up the rest of the year, whether it was training or playing, and could be a grind at times.

The turnaround

Gorski’s mother, Lisa, credits Ken Elsbury, who took over the Indiana Nitro summer team, with reviving Matt’s interest.

“He had a pretty miserable [13-year-old] travel experience,” Elsbury said. “We made some changes in the organization, and I moved over and took over the 14-under age group. I said, ‘I understand you’re thinking about not going to tryouts. Just give me one year.’ We ended up spending the next three years together.”

Elsbury adjusted more than Gorski’s attitude.

“He was playing second base, a head taller than everybody else,” Elsbury recalled. “You could see Matthew was going to have size to him, and he always had great speed. I convinced him at the end of that first season, ‘Let’s try outfield.’”

Regardless of the sport or position, Gorski has always had bloodlines in his favor. His father, Mark, who lives in Naples, Florida, was a scholarship basketball player at Western Michigan University. Mom, Lisa Gorski was a swimmer in high school and competed again after having three children. Matt’s older siblings, Steven and Kristen, were athletes, as well.

“All the carpooling was chaos,” Lisa said.

Matt was the standout as he matured, earning all-state honors in soccer and baseball his senior year (2015-2016) at Hamilton Southeastern. One doesn’t find many soccer stars among the ranks of baseball’s power hitters. That’s why Elsbury calls Gorski “a bit of a unicorn.” He had speed and agility to go with his strength, and as he grew and filled out, it became apparent baseball would be the sport most worth pursuing. He gave hints of what was to come by blasting two grand-slam home runs in one game for HSE and began attracting the attention of major league scouts.

Gorski is listed at 6-foot-2 but passes the eye test at 6-foot-4 and in fact was listed at that height at IU, where he played three seasons. He was a member of the team that won the Big Ten championship in 2019. He batted .271 and hit 12 home runs in 55 games that season, after which Pittsburgh selected him with the 57th overall pick in the Major League Baseball draft.

He didn’t expect to go the first day of the draft, and in fact was in his dorm room packing to go home and wait for the second day of the draft when the call came from the Pirates shortly before midnight.

“You talk to just about every team, three or four a day, and get asked the same questions and take the same tests,” he said. “They’re all looking for the same things. I didn’t have any indication.”

Rocky road

Gorski’s path to the precipice of Pittsburgh hasn’t been smooth, as is the case for most prospects. He played a portion of a single-A season in West Virginia in 2019. The pandemic wiped out the 2020 minor league season. He spent the 2021 season with Greensboro’s single-A team, then moved up the ranks through four teams the following year. He missed two months of the 2022 season with a torn quadricep muscle but was able to join the Indians for their final game and pick up a single and stolen base in two at-bats.

The 2023 season was a slog. Frustration over having to begin the season in double-A Altoona, Pennsylvania, after getting a whiff of triple-A life with the Indians the previous season and a hamstring injury took a toll. He hit just .238 over 93 games with Altoona, then .190 in 15 games with the Indians.

“I didn’t start on the team I should have started on,” he said. “I wasn’t happy being in Altoona, I wasn’t happy being in double A … a bunch of mental stuff, a bunch of physical stuff.

“And baseball’s really hard.”

Gorski is as settled as a triple-A player can be. He and his wife, Megan, make their off-season home in Parish, Florida, but are in a comfort zone while riding out the uncertainty of his future. They are housed downtown, and Victory Field was a familiar place even before Gorski joined the Indians. He attended the traditional July 4 fireworks games with his family as a kid and once played there with IU in a regular-season game against Ball State—the only other college he considered attending. He hit a game-winning walk-off single in that one.

Singles won’t pave a path to Pittsburgh, though. Power will do that. He admits to being focused on hitting a home run virtually every time he goes to bat.

“Obviously in certain situations, you might try to do other things, but I’ve had a lot of people tell me you have to be really good at what you’re good at,” he said. “I’m really good at hitting the ball over the fence. If that’s what I have to do to have an impact at the next level, it’s what I feel I need to do. Hopefully, it’s what [Pirates executives] feel I need to do.”

The constant waves of youth into the minor leagues have a way of leaving older players in their wake. A still-promising player can wash out of baseball because major league executives have shifted their attention to the Next Big Thing. One could argue this is a make-or-break season for Gorski, who turned 26 in December.

Perez doesn’t necessarily agree.

“I’m a big believer in, ‘You never know,’” he said. “That’s one of my favorite quotes. It depends how you see it. Do you want to see the cup half empty or half full? Maybe that’s the age where he actually explodes. I don’t think he has to rush. Everybody is different.”

Gorski, meanwhile, can’t afford to worry about it.

“You just hope it works out for you,” he said. “It’s a crazy game. People get hurt every day. And you hate to play [general manager] and think, ‘This person in Pittsburgh isn’t playing well; should I be there?’ That can be detrimental to your thought process and development.

“Just be where you are is the best way to go about it,” he added.•

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Montieth, an Indianapolis native, is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer. He is the author of three books: “Passion Play: Coach Gene Keady and the Purdue Boilermakers,” “Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis,” and “Extra Innings: My Life in Baseball,” with former Indianapolis Indians President Max Schumacher.