How Peyton Graham has learned to trust the process

Every athlete has that moment when they believe they’ve faced adversity for the first time.

For Peyton Graham, it was the 2022 College World Series.

Facing Ole Miss, Graham and his Oklahoma Sooners dropped back-to-back games in the Series finals to solidify elimination.

“I think losing in the World Series set the table pretty well for me,” Graham said. “There’s a lot of failure here, and that’s probably the biggest kind of failure you can feel, especially at that level, being so close, and not ending up winning it. There are a lot of failures that go into this game, and I think just growing up as a person helped me along the journey here.”

Following the loss for the Sooners, Graham didn’t have much time to dwell on it. A month later, he was selected by the Tigers in the second round of the 2022 MLB draft.

Graham admits that dwelling on failure has never been his forte.

“As soon as I step off the field, it’s over,” Graham said. “I mean, you try and forget it as fast as you can just because you don’t want it to leak into the next day or ruin your week. If it’s a good game, you want to carry that with you, but if it’s a bad one, just let it be.”

This mentality would ultimately serve Graham well as he began his professional career, which proved to be anything but seamless.

Following a 27-game campaign with Class-A Lakeland in 2022, Graham was held to just 57 games in 2023, after getting hit in the face by a pitch that resulted in 15 stitches, in addition to a sprained ankle.

Fast forward to 2024, and the Oklahoma alum was sidelined once again, this time with a pair of broken fingers.

Now, for the first time in his professional full-season career, the 24-year-old is playing uninterrupted baseball into July, and the gratitude from Graham is impossible to hide. While navigating the obstacles early on, Graham once again credits his mindset for keeping him grounded while moving on and off the Injured List.

“We all have the same end goal here,” Graham said. “That goal is to get to the big leagues and win a championship there. I mean, at the end of the day, I still have the same goal, so I think that has kept my head on straight.”

Graham’s uninterrupted stretch of playing time has allowed not only the fan base to get a true look at his profile in action, but it’s also allowed the Texas native to dive into valuable development time on both sides of the ball, including extensive infield work with Tigers’ roving instructor Alan Trammell.

When it comes to analytics versus feel for Graham’s style of play, he admits it’s a bit of both, and he’s learning how to apply the pieces he gathers when the situation calls for them.

“I’ll take the bits and pieces that I need,” Graham said. “I try not to overwhelm myself with it because it’s a lot. There is definitely a lot of stuff to look at, and I think you can get engulfed in that. For some people like me, it would just take over and probably not in a good way.”

Graham, as with multiple members of the West Michigan lineup, has been in the Midwest League before. With his return, it’s allowing time to apply lessons learned about opposing pitching from last season and combine them with a bit of perfecting to his stance and swing mechanics.

“For me, it’s just about catching everything out front,” Graham said. “At the end of the day, for me, that’s how I find success. If I catch it deep, then I’m not going to have much success or power back there. Most of my power is just way out front.

“It clicked this year. In previous seasons, I had been working on going the other way, but I think that stalled my bat a little bit, and I just kind of left that in the past and went back to hitting stuff out front and trying to hit it far,” Graham said. “I would say with the teams that we have played this year, the pitching has been pretty good, especially on our side of the league. But they throw around the strike zone. Most of these guys throw multiple pitches for strikes, and I honestly think it gets easier when they start doing that, because you know you’re not going to get 97 miles per hour at your head and then three on the black. So, I think it’s just a confidence thing going in the box.”

As the season has progressed, Graham’s offense has grown increasingly stronger. Slashing .313/.378/.550 with a .928 OPS in June, Graham has set new single-season career-highs in hits, home runs, and RBI, as well as tying career-highs in doubles and triples.

While Graham has a personal focus on his offensive development, he, along with the rest of the lineup, has taken full advantage to pick the brains of his teammates; a lineup that has overpowered the Midwest League all season long.

“We do it all the time,” Graham said. “That’s pretty much all our locker room is. It’s either just messing around or we’re talking about hitting, or whatever we might be thinking on the field. I think everybody can take bits and pieces from it and add them to their bag. It’s really nice, especially with Kevin (McGonigle) and (Max) Clark and (Josue) Briceño. Having those guys in there, it’s pretty cool. Everybody’s got something new, something different that works for them.”

Although it took a while to get to this point, Graham is healthy, and it shows.

A simplistic approach is all the 24-year-old knows, but the choice to stay true to that has steadily positioned him within the organization as a name that could begin to move, and move quickly.

“I’d say I’m playing in a healthy way, just being me,” Graham said. “I can’t get in my head too much. I’m not a big thinker, especially when it comes to going up to the plate. If you’ve got anything on your mind, you’re in trouble. It’s about clearing my head and just letting me do what I know how to do.

“It’s just one pitch at a time. Win the pitch, and once that pitch is over, it could be a bad call,” Graham said. “You just take a breath, take your time out, whatever you have to do. If you can win each pitch, then I think you’ll be pretty successful in this game.”

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