Bazzana is coming back determined to ‘show what I can do’

Former Oregon State great Travis Bazzana has been idled with an oblique injury for nearly two months, but his return to the Akron RubberDucks — Double-A affiliate for the Cleveland Guardians — is imminent (courtesy Grace Hoppel/Akron RubberDucks)

Pardon the interruption, but Travis Bazzana is about to get back to business.

The former Oregon State All-American and Cleveland’s No. 1 pick in last year’s Major League Baseball draft has been on a rehab assignment for the past week in the Rookie-level Arizona Complex League following an oblique injury that took him out of action in May.

The left-handed-hitting second baseman has played four games for the ACL Guardians, going 2 for 9 with three walks. He figures he will be ready for a return to the Double-A Akron RubberDucks by the end of next week. Bazzana, who turns 23 on Aug. 28, was injured on May 20 and was expected to be sidelined for eight to 10 weeks.

“It is going great,” Bazzana told me Wednesday night from Goodyear, Ariz., site of the Guardians’ spring training complex. “The rehab process has been smooth. I am ahead of the time line. The tear healed up pretty fast to where I have been asymptomatic for some weeks now in building my body up for the rest of the season.

“I feel 100 percent physically. My running speed is up, my swing speed is good, I’ve been taking groundballs every day. It is just a matter of getting the game experience under my belt, and heading back out (to play).”

Bazzana suffered the internal oblique injury in the second game of a doubleheader against Chesapeake.

“I felt a little tweak on my side, getting back to first base during a pickoff attempt,” he says. “It felt a little uncomfortable.”

On the next at-bat, Bazzana ripped a double.

“The swing seemed to really bother my oblique,” the native Australian says. “It was like a sharp feeling that made me grimace and gasp for breath. Nothing too painful; just certain movements would give me a little shot of pain.”

Bazzana exited the game after being examined by the RubberDucks’ training staff. He was basically immobilized for a couple of days as the medical team waited for MRI results. Once the results showed a tear, rehab plans were mapped out and Travis headed for Arizona.

“The injury was worse than I expected,” he says. “Once I got (to Goodyear), we started some light movement and things that don’t stress it but could provide some blood flow and begin the healing.”

Bazzana wonders if there were things he could have done to help prevent the injury.

“I am disappointed in myself, frustrated with how I warmed up for the second game,” he says. “I was busy in the first game and it was a quick turnaround. I went up to the clubhouse and had a snack, came back out and went right into the game.

“I didn’t prep or warm up my body as effectively as I should have. It was a hot day, and I thought I could just go back out and play. Had I prepped in the gap between games a little better, maybe I could have avoided something. But we will never know.”

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Bazzana got off to a slow start this season, hitting .238 in 21 games in April, but his numbers at the plate picked up in May. Through 12 games he slashed .279/.392/.512 with four doubles, two homers, seven walks and 12 strikeouts.

“On the defensive side, I was good from the start, and my baserunning was good,” says Bazzana, who is batting .252 overall in 33 games this season with a .362 on-base percentage and .433 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. “I have high expectations offensively, and I was working through some things early on. But I felt great in the month of May before I went down. I was coming along to where I started to feel like I was controlling the things I can control, having good at-bats, and day to day doing what I was intending to do. It was a really good month, and I felt like I was going to continue that.

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“It is frustrating to miss so many games, but I am still going to have the rest of this year to continue to show what I can do offensively.”

The Guardians have been planning for the 6-foot, 200-pound Bazzana to be their second baseman of the future after taking him first in the ’24 draft and bestowing upon him an $8.95-million signing bonus — the fifth-largest in MLB history. (Ex-Beaver catcher Adley Rutschman got $8.1 million from Baltimore in 2019, a record at the time.)

After the draft, Bazzana hit .238 with a .369 OBP in 27 games with seven doubles and three home runs and 20 runs scored for the High-A Lake County Captains in Eastlake, Ohio — located 19 miles from Cleveland — helping them to the Midwest League title. It was mostly a chance to get his feet wet in pro ball, and after a strong spring training performance, he was elevated all the way to Double-A this season.

Cleveland has used about a half-dozen players at second base this season, with 28-year-old Daniel Schneeman (hitting .213 in 73 games) the primary starter. At Triple-A Columbus, the second basemen are both 23 — Milan Tolentino (.228 in 76 games) and Juan Brito (.256 in 24 games).

Before Bazzana’s injury, there was talk in the Cleveland media about a midseason call-up to Columbus. After spring training, Bazzana envisioned a season in which he merited a promotion to Columbus, and perhaps a September jump to the Guardians.

“I thought that was a realistic scenario, that those things would be in the picture,” he says. The timing will now have to be moved back, at least a little.

Bazzana’s batting average through 12 games in May before the injury was .279, trending upward from the start of the season (courtesy Grace Hoppel/Akron RubberDucks)

“Realistically, when I show I am ready and can bring value to the next level above — whether that is Columbus or Cleveland — it is always going to be in the picture,” Bazzana says. “Time-wise, it looks much tougher now, but that’s OK. I am going to get quality baseball no matter what. It was in the back of my mind to be in Cleveland at some point this year, but it is not the be-all, end-all. I just want to keep getting better and trying to play my best baseball every day.”

Bazzana etched his place on the Mount Rushmore of Beaver baseball during his three seasons (2022-24) in Corvallis. As a junior last season, he set school single-season records for home runs (28), runs (84), total bases (195) and slugging percentage (.911) and tied with Rutschman for walks (76) while becoming the eighth player to have a .400 batting average, hitting .407. Bazzana also holds the unofficial single-season record with six homers to lead off games. He has the program’s top career marks in homers (45), doubles (52), hits (251), runs (220), stolen bases (66), walks (180) and total bases (460) and is tied with Jacob Melton in slugging percentage (.660).

Bazzana says he followed Oregon State during the 2025 season “very closely.”

“I was in tune with the lineup there and what the Beavs were doing and where they were playing as much as I could,” he says. “Oregon State baseball is a big part of me, something I care deeply about. I was locked in for their journey.”

He calls their ride to the College World Series “unbelievable with how much was happening with the program in terms of no conference and an independent schedule.”

“You lose your Friday night guy (Aiden May), who was a second-rounder; your Saturday guy and a three-year starter (Jacob Kmatz), a high pick (Bazzana) and still get (to the CWS)?’ he asks rhetorically.

“Throughout the lineup, there was a lot of room for young guys to step up and show their abilities in the program. They did nothing but exceed what anyone could have imagined. It was a credit to the program, to perform and reach goals like going to Omaha. It was a credit to the people who make that place go.”

Bazzana watched all the Beavers’ CWS games on TV. Since he was out of action with the RubberDucks, did he consider flying in to watch any games in Omaha?

“It entered my mind,” he says. “It became a tough thing to show-and-go for a day. There were a lot of logistical things that came into that. It would have been a tough gig.”

The biggest difference that Bazzana has noticed between college and professional ball is in pitching.

For the rest of the 2025 season, “I just want to keep getting better and trying to play my best baseball every day,” Bazzana says (courtesy Grace Hoppel/Akron RubberDucks)

“There is more velocity, and a good more variety of pitches,” he says. “Four-seam fastballs dominate college baseball; you see a lot more sinker and cutter variations in professional baseball.

“But it is still baseball, and I get to play every day, and I love it. It is everything I have wanted, to be able to go on the field every day and compete. I love pro ball. It is the best of the best. It is why only a certain few guys get drafted. That is what makes it special.”

Bazzana is making Scottsdale, Ariz., his offseason home.

“It allows me to have some resources with the Guardians in Goodyear, and also Driveline (Baseball) has a facility in north Scottsdale,” he says.

The RubberDucks have four days off over the MLB All-Star break and pick up the schedule again on July 18. Bazzana intends to be in uniform.

“If everything over the next week goes well, I will be back with the team after the break,” he says.

Through Thursday, Akron was 7-8 in the second half of the season and in fourth place in the Eastern League’s six-team Southwest Division. The RubberDucks finished second in the division in the first half at 43-25, behind only Erie at 45-24.

Over the final two months of the season, what does Travis hope to accomplish?

“To consistently play my best baseball,” he says. “Control the strike zone, hit balls hard, be electric on the basepaths, play good defense and continue to work really hard and stay healthy. With a good healthy finish, my performance should continue to improve and hopefully help us win some ballgames.”

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Note: Nathan Grella, coordinator of creative services for the RubberDucks, didn’t attend Oregon State but has become an OSU sports fan. “Once I knew Travis was coming to the RubberDucks this season, I was super excited after seeing how well he played with the Beavers,” Grella writes in an email. “There is a bit of an Oregon State legacy with the RubberDucks developing, with Steven Kwan having come through Akron four years ago, and Matthew Boyd pitching on a rehab start last season. At the beginning of the year, we had three OSU players at once in Bazzana, Kyle Dernedde and Justin Boyd. We would keep an OSU hat up in the press box for good luck whenever they came up!"

Ironically, Calvin Toney-Cox, the RubberDucks’ director of promotions and community relations, worked in the Oregon athletics promotions department for a few years. “There has been a little bit of a fun rivalry developing between the two of us,” Grella writes.

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