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By Alexis Brudnicki
PBR Ontario Lead Writer

Michael Brettell is a changed man.

The 6-foot-4, 192-pound right-hander from Fonthill has consistently shown his strength but when he arrived at the second-annual Tournament 12, he brought a brand new slider with him and it quickly became a difference-maker.

“I used to have kind of like a knuckle-curve pitch and that slider I actually learned last Monday so it’s fairly new,” Brettell said. “This is actually the first time, [on Friday] and my last outing here were the first two times it’s actually worked the best. It’s nice for it to be coming along, so that’s pretty good.”

The 17-year-old pitcher has been working with Adam Arnold, the manager of his regular team at home, the Great Lake Canadians, on several of his pitches and his development and everything is starting to come together in time for the fall season.

“He had a slider and kept toying around with it,” Chris Robinson, coach of both Brettell’s Canadians and Ontario Green team said. “Then with [Arnold] they made a little adjustment on the grip the other day and made it a little sharper. He threw one in the first game where I said, ‘Whoa.’

“He’s got that feel for a changeup too. He came to us and he was throwing a [split-finger fastball] and it was filthy but at the same time that’s a pretty tough pitch on the arm, so [we wanted] to develop something else. If down the road it goes to a splitty then it goes to a splitty, but let’s see if we can develop the other pitches first.”

Brettell’s two-seamer has been up to 87 at Tournament 12 and his new slider has been sitting around 82.

“I’ve learned about different techniques for pitching to gain speed, and [Arnold] has been teaching me a new slider which has been working for me, which is good,” Brettell said. “He’s helped me with my changeup grip and my two-seam which is nice. They’ve helped me get better as a pitcher and as an athlete too.”

The high-school scholar started for Ontario Green on Friday and went five innings against Atlantic Grey, shutting the inaugural year’s championship team out and holding them to two hits, walking three and striking out seven on the day.

“It felt good, being scoreless through five,” Brettell said. “It was nice. It was a little nerve-wracking though, coming out and playing at Rogers Centre…I didn’t [get the nerves out of the way last year]. It’s still pretty cool to be playing at a major-league diamond.”

Watching from the dugout, Robinson couldn’t tell there were any nerves out on the mound.

“He’s a quiet, fierce competitor,” his coach said. “In some of the biggest games we’ve played this year as a team, he was a guy on the mound and you could tell there was some intensity there but there was no real show of emotion, which is a good thing. He’s got a good future.”

And, Brettell is constantly improving.

“He came to us and he threw hard, the velocity was there, but he and [Arnold] have done a really good job,” Robinson said. “They’ve got good chemistry, they work well together, and they’ve made some adjustments.

“He’s still working to develop his slider and that’s the big thing with him at this point. He’s just fine-tuning things, holding runners, and even today he was better at that. Sometimes you can get in this atmosphere and forget stuff like that and he did a good job.”

Uncommitted to a post-secondary school, Brettell is looking forward to going on more visits and hopefully locking down something in a warmer climate. After some fall ball and a couple of tournaments with Great Lake across the border in October, the righty will shut down for winter workouts until spring.

 For now, he’s enjoying his time on the big-league stage.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever done,” Brettell said.