Six years in the minors across four different organizations. Two independent league stints. An array of injuries. All were part of a grind, and dream, that had brought DJ Johnson to a lumber yard in Portsmouth, Ohio, in the fall of 2016.
There, the newest Rockies’ reliever worked manual labor a dozen hours a day to help make ends meet, squeezing in his workouts at night after that. He hadn’t heard back that offseason from the Angels to re-sign, and the journeyman reliever’s path to the major leagues grew all the more improbable.
But then again, when had it not been?