Columbia's Arias hopes speed will get him to baseball's next level

FLORENCE – Like so many baseball players from the Dominican Republic, Branfy Arias has big-league dreams.

It’s an economically poor country that loves baseball, and many of its players use the sport as an avenue to not only help themselves and their families, but their fellow countrymen as well.

If Arias, the Columbia Blowfish’s starting right fielder, ever makes it to that level, one thing is clear: He will run to get there.

Arias said teammates brought to his attention a couple of weeks ago that he was creeping up on the Coastal Plain League record for career stolen bases. He achieved that mark by swiping one base against the Florence RedWolves in a 5-4 comeback win Wednesday in Columbia. It was Arias’ 59th career CPL swipe. He had 60 – 33 this season – heading into Saturday night’s game at Morehead City.

“It’s a good record because this is a good league,” Arias said before Thursday’s game against Florence. “I wasn’t even thinking about being that close to the record. I was just focusing on playing baseball. But somebody told me, ‘Branfy, you got a chance to break the record.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll go do it.’”

Team of thieves

That might very well be the attitude of Columbia’s team in general when it comes to stealing bases. The Blowfish also set a CPL season record that same night with their 145th steal this year, eclipsing the mark set by Peninsula just last year.

Coach Lee Gronkiewicz might not have known his team would set a league record for stolen bases, but he knew they’d be wreaking havoc on the base paths this season.

“This team was definitely built around speed,” Gronkiewicz said. “We took a tradeoff for power. We don’t have as much power as a lot of teams, but I felt like our speed would give us a chance to win.”

Gronkiewicz, a former relief pitcher at South Carolina, had something specific in mind when he decided to go with a speed-laden team.

“What really agitated me on the mound was when I had to control the running game,” he said. “If you’ve got somebody on base who’s looking to steal second or looking to steal third, the pitcher is much more likely to make an error to the batter and make a bad pitch.”

That’s why teams have to go into games, especially against the Blowfish, with a plan to slow down the running game. Arias has been a nightmare to contain, but Florence might have done it this season as well as anyone. He has five steals against the RedWolves and has been caught a couple times and picked off once in 11 games.

Florence wraps up its regular season at home against Columbia on Aug. 2, the last time this season the teams are scheduled to meet.

“Branfy’s a big part of it, but their whole team is a headache because they all go crazy (stealing bases),” Florence coach Russell Carter said. “It burns them sometimes, but it also creates some positive things for them. When you’ve got a team that sort of plays in that controlled chaos, it makes it tough on our end.
“With Branfy, you have to be ready for a stolen base every time. There are six or seven guys in their lineup that will go every time they get on.”

Longing for more

The record is nice, Arias said, but he’s hoping it’s his ticket to bigger and better things. He spent the first part of his college baseball career at USC Salkehatchie before moving on to Division II Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tenn.

Arias does have something going against him – he’ll turn 24 in October, and that’s significantly older than most players at which MLB scouts take serious looks.

Arias said in the Dominican Republic, players can sign and play professional baseball at age 16. Many of them, he said, skip high school to do so, hoping to play three years well enough to get noticed by major league teams.

“We play some soccer in high school, but baseball is the biggest thing there,” he said. “We play baseball every day.”

And despite his age, he’s not going to give up, he said.

“Everybody told me if you steal a lot of bases in college, you’ll get a chance to play professional,” he said. “So I’ll keep trying.”

Some things have to happen, though, if Arias is to live out his dream. Gronkiewicz said his star base stealer needs to become a better, more patient and more powerful hitter, and Arias agrees. His average is hovering around the .250 mark.

“I hit pretty good (.277) in this league last year, but this year, they got me,” he said, chuckling.

But the coach said his player has made significant progress from when he first saw him last year. Arias’ aggressive nature on the base paths comes at least in part from the aggressive style of play that is taught in the Dominican Republic, Gronkiewicz said. That aggressiveness, especially in young players, can lead to various mistakes – errors when diving unnecessarily for balls, baserunning blunders and throwing to the wrong base from the outfield – the coach said.

Gronkiewicz said he had to pull Arias aside last season a few times to explain situations to him, but that hasn’t been the case this time around.

“He was a lot more wild when I first got him,” Gronkiewicz said. “I don’t think I’ve had to pull him to the side one time this year about throwing to the wrong base.”

If nothing else, Arias is having plenty of fun doing what he loves to do. In a July 12 game against Wilmington, he walked, stole second, stole third and stole home. The steal of home was the second this season, Arias said, and it involved no deception on a delayed steal.

“No, I’m running with the pitch,” he said. “My game is speed. I like to run. It’s fun for me.”

“Hopefully, somebody will give him a shot (at professional baseball) at some point,” Gronkiewicz said. “Every single day, we hope the phone rings and somebody is there saying, ‘Branfy, we’ve got a spot for you somewhere.’ I think he definitely can compete at a rookie ball to low A level and see where it goes from there.”