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 When Aper arrives at Roger Dean Stadium today he will begin his
fourth year as a professional baseball player in the Miami
organization. Aper, who was drafted in June of 2013 in the 6th round
of the Major League Baseball draft, will be among big leaguers like
Giancarlo Stanton, Dee Gordon, Ichiro Suzuki and even Barry Bonds.
Bonds was hired over the winter by Miami as the hitting coach and
it’s a possibility that Bonds and Aper will cross paths. “I don’t
know what’s going to happen. I’ll see him. I am not sure that I’ll
get an opportunity to work with him just yet. But just being around
him...his knowledge will trickle down. Our minor league hitting
coordinator will be picking up stuff through Barry Bonds. He’s a
pretty good guy to have around in the organization. I’m excited and
looking forward to it. It will be interesting to see how that all
plays out and if we’re able to meet him. That would be cool.”
Aper, who has a dog named Wrigley (so you can read into that what
you want), will also be around plenty of Cardinals while in Jupiter.
The St. Louis Cardinals share Roger Dean Stadium with the Marlins
and each team has several practice fields throughout the complex.
 According to Aper, “We split with the Cardinals, so between the two
teams there are 14-16 fields and two half-fields for infield work
and bunting stuff. Each team is dispersed on a field. It’s a fun
time of the year.” Aper hopes to move up a level this season at
Spring Training, as he says that is always the goal. “Hopefully I’ll
be in the group which will be the High A group this year. That’s
what I’m hoping for. If not, hopefully I’ll just work my way into
that group because that’s ideally where I would want to be. It’s a
level up from where I was last year and that would be in the Florida
State League. That’s the plan every year...to move up a level,” said
Aper.
The National Junior College Athletic Association Division II Player
of the Year in 2013, Aper has moved up a level every year since his
stellar career at Lincoln Land Community College, where he hit .462
with 17 home runs and 12 triples his sophomore year.
As the overall 172nd pick in the 2013 MLB draft, Aper’s first
assignment was Short Season-A ball in the New York Penn League with
Miami’s Class A affiliate, the Batavia Muckdogs.
Aper actually was moved down to the Gulf Coast League during that
first season after he said he did not perform well enough to stay at
that higher level right out of college. He finished out his first
season in the Gulf Coast League but worked hard to get back to
Batavia the next year. “My first full season back after the
offseason I went up to Batavia all year. I went through extended
Spring Training in Florida until June and then back to Short
Season-A, which starts about mid-June and I finished out there in
Batavia,” he said.
In 2015 he found himself another step up in Class A ball with the
Greensboro Grasshoppers. “This last year I ended in Greensboro,
which is Full Season-Low A, a step above the New York Penn League. I
started the year in extended and was kind of on the bubble, outside
looking in, you know that fourth or fifth outfielder. Then a guy
ended up getting hurt and I got called up to Greensboro after about
the third week. I stayed for the rest of the season. I played pretty
well right out of the gates and then kind of hit a pause button a
little bit. I just wasn’t swinging the bat well and it was getting
in my head,” he said.
Aper batted .212 with 2 home runs and 18 RBIs with the South
Atlantic League team in 2015. “I ended up getting a better grip on
it towards the end of the year. I finished strong and just tried to
end on a good note,” said the outfielder who played in 70 games for
the Grasshoppers.
Aper also had 8 doubles and 8 stolen bases for Greensboro last
season. One of his highlights with Greensboro was when he had family
in the stands in Rome, Georgia, for a series against the Rome
Braves. He smacked a three-run home run against the Braves and had
really good series in front of family.
“That was actually my second series that I played with
Greensboro. That was a week and a half after I got called up. I had
a really good series there in Rome. I had my family in town and it
was great. My girlfriend, my mom, my step-dad and my brothers were
there, and they don’t get to see me play that often. It was a good
weekend. My first week up in low A, kind of shaking off the nerves
and it helps to have the comfort of my family and my girlfriend
there. It was a really good weekend.”
While Aper’s dad, Terry, may not have been in Rome that weekend, he
was able to see his son’s first minor league home run earlier in his
career on a trip to Pennsylvania. The elder Aper said, “It was neat.
His mom was there, too, so we both got to see his first professional
home run.”
Meanwhile, a real memorable moment for Aper’s dad came last season
in Greensboro on a Saturday night. That particular summer night back
in North Carolina will forever be etched in his memory. Terry called
the catch unbelievable. “I did get to see probably the best catch of
his entire life by him out there in Greensboro. I’ve seen a lot of
great catches by different players over the years and this was
probably the best catch I’ve ever seen. It was unbelievable. They
even had a write-up about it on the Greensboro website last year.
The head coach said that it was by far the best catch he had seen
all year. A couple of players said it was the best catch they had
seen period.”
Terry vividly remembers the moment, “He was playing centerfield.
Just regular depth centerfield. He might have been shaded a little
bit to the left. The ball was hit and it was a line drive hit to the
left-center gap. I mean it was a line drive. Once he picked it up
off the bat, he just immediately turned and sprinted for the wall. I
mean he took his eye off the ball and just dropped his head and
sprinted as hard as he could sprint. He probably ran 25 yards maybe,
just on a dead sprint.
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"When he turned back over his left shoulder to pick
up the ball again, I mean immediately as soon as he turned and saw
the ball, he dove and completely laid out horizontal to the ground
and it looked like he was in the air for 10 or 15 feet. He just flew
that far. As he’s coming down he’s still horizontal to the ground.
The only way he could catch it was with a backhand because the ball
was to his left. He was probably a foot off the ground and he caught
the ball like a foot off the ground, as he was sliding to the
warning track. I mean he was on his chest. I wish I could describe
it better. It was just the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. It
was by far, I mean I’m talking big league catch. I’d never seen a
guy make a catch like that in my life. That was a memorable moment
that I’ll never forget, that’s for sure,” said the proud papa.
Terry went on to mention another neat moment was when Ryan went yard
for the Grasshoppers and again he was there. “He hit a home run
while I was out there in Greensboro and he literally hit it out of
the ballpark. It was a bomb. That was pretty cool.” Proud dad
moments without a doubt and as the younger Aper continues to work
hard there will likely be more of those moments in the future.
Touching on the minor league career that Aper has had so far, he has
no complaints - not even the grueling travel. “The South Atlantic
League that I played in, the travel is pretty outrageous. We went
from the Jersey Shore to Savannah, Georgia, in about 24 hours. We
made a stop in Greensboro, which is halfway and it was about a 14
hour drive in total. I mean a lot of your time is spent on the bus.
Other than that on a home game it’s pretty much wake up, go to the
park, get ready, do your work. We’ve got practice and BP and then we
play a game. Go home and go to sleep and do it all over again every
day. I certainly can’t complain about the schedule, that’s for
sure.”
Aper keeps a busy schedule in the offseason, too, as he continues to
focus on his professional career. His offseason was spent at home in
Lincoln with many trips to Springfield for workouts. Aper emphasized
the importance of the offseason workouts. “That’s been my main
focus. I mean every offseason that is my number one goal, to get
stronger, gain weight, get faster and all that good stuff that goes
into just being a professional. The offseason is just as important
as the season so you gotta prepare yourself for 140 games.”
Aper noted, due to the Illinois weather his workouts were inside
either at LLCC, the Illinois State Fairgrounds or Body Symmetry in
Springfield and at the Lincoln Park District in his hometown. He and
other local athletes like Eric Jokisch, Mitch Trees and Justin
Knoedler get together and “We throw, we hit, we do everything we
would normally do around the game, we just do it inside,” said Aper,
of the winter workouts with fellow professional athletes.
“We all work together, we all pull for each other and try to help
each other out. It’s fun. I look forward to the offseason a lot.
Just getting back and surrounding yourself with baseball minds and
quality baseball players. We’ve got a good little group.” Knoedler
is retired from professional baseball, while Trees is in the
Cincinnati Reds organization, and Jokisch is with the Chicago Cubs
and hoping to make the big league roster out of Spring Training.
Sounds like a pretty good group of local talent for sure.
Another group of local talent Aper encountered this winter was the
2016 Lincoln Railers baseball team. Aper worked out at the Lincoln
Park District SportsCenter with members of the baseball team and
offered this about the high school talent, “I’ve been in there
working out with them and it’s a good bunch. They’ve got a good work
ethic, which is good to see. They will definitely have a good team
this year. They are going to be pitching and defense-oriented, but
from what I’ve seen they’ve got enough bats to where they will make
some noise in the conference.”
This winter also gave Aper a chance to be around his former high
school baseball coach, Pat Hake, whose son Cooper is a senior on
this year’s Railers squad.
Aper, now 22 years old, even offered some advice to the younger
players when talking about how much of the game of baseball is
mental. “That’s what I try and talk to these high school kids about.
As much time as you spend in the weight room you somehow need to be
mentally readying yourself for the season coming up. It’s just as
much mental as it is physical,” said Aper of the game of baseball.
Finally, if Aper could offer up one more piece of advice to younger
athletes it would be to branch out into more than one sport. “The
one thing I regret is not playing more sports in high school. I
would say don’t label yourself as a one-sport guy. It can only help
you. I see a lot of guys in the draft that are top priority because
they were athletes. They were great football players, great
basketball players, along with great baseball players. So you get a
good combination of all these athletic movements. I would just say
try to branch out and do it all until you need to (chose just one
sport). If it comes to a point in time when you need to solely focus
on one, then go ahead and make that decision for yourself. But I
would say, just don’t limit your athletic abilities.”
Great advice from a professional athlete who got his start on the
baseball fields of Lincoln.
[Teena Lowery]
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