It's been quite the journey, but Travis Blankenhorn finds a home with Rochester Red Wings

Just about every minor league ballplayer has endured a circuitous journey in their quest to reach the major leagues.

Not all, because there are the occasional exceptions such as Baseball Hall of Famers Al Kaline, Sandy Koufax and Dave Winfield who never played a single day in the minors. More recently in 2020, pitcher Garrett Crochet went straight from the University of Tennessee to the Chicago White Sox.

Travis Blankenhorn of the Rochester Red Wings could be the guy Johnny Cash sings about in his song “I’ve Been Everywhere” because Rochester is the 14th different town where he has swung a bat in anger since the Minnesota Twins made him a third-round pick in the 2015 amateur draft straight out of Pottsville (Pa.) High School.

And never was his minor league odyssey crazier than early in 2021 when even the GPS on his phone was confused about his whereabouts because he was moving so often.

“It was a wild month,” he recalled with a smile the other night following batting practice at Innovative Field. “I mean, honestly, I didn’t do much playing baseball. I did a lot of traveling.”

Blankenhorn had spent nearly six years bouncing from towns like Elizabeth, Tennessee; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Fort Myers, Florida; Pensacola, Florida; and St. Paul, Minnesota as he made his way through the Twins’ farm system. All of that resulted in just two games played in the majors - one on Sept. 15 2020 when he collected his first big-league hit, a double off White Sox reliever Matt Foster, and then one on April 21, 2021 when he served as a pinch runner and scored his first run.

The Twins released him on May 8, 2021, and so began the chaos. The Dodgers signed him on May 14, sent him to Oklahoma City where he played three games and then waived him May 21. The Mariners signed him May 24, sent him to Tacoma, and after four games he was waived June 1 and immediately claimed by the Mets.

“At one point, I was in St. Paul, I drove to Oklahoma City, then we went to Albuquerque,” Blankenhorn said, trying to piece together the madness. “I got DFA’d and picked up by the Mariners so my car was in Oklahoma City. Then I’m out in Tacoma and then we go to Reno, then I got DFA’d again and picked up by the Mets. They were in Arizona so I meet them there and my car is still two teams behind in Oklahoma City.”

Blankenhorn went straight to the majors for New York and he went on to split the rest of 2021 between there and Triple-A Syracuse.

“Definitely tough,” he said of all that upheaval. “I mean, sometimes I was on waivers for a little while so when you’re on waivers you can’t go to the field, you’re kind of just hanging out waiting to see what happens so I wasn’t practicing a lot. It was tough to get back in the groove.”

Things settled down in 2022 as he spent that year with Syracuse (with the exception of one game for the Mets), but he was released in December and that’s when he found his way to Rochester. He signed a deal with the Nationals and went on to have the best season of his career for the Red Wings in 2023.

“It was definitely my best season,” he said. “I didn’t start out the way I wanted to last year but I think something clicked midway through and I just rode that out and continued to stay hot and went from there.”

Blankenhorn hit 23 homers, drove in 75 runs, hit .262 with an .877 OPS and was named the Red Wings’ team MVP, mainly because he made a change to his approach at the plate.

“He made some adjustments with (Wings hitting coach Brian) Daubach and he basically got him to choose whether you’re going to chase up or chase down in the zone,” Wings manager Matt LeCroy said. “He’s a better high ball hitter and early in the season he was doing both; he would chase up and chase down. You saw what happened when he shrunk the zone and looked for his spot, he took off.”

The Nationals rewarded him with a September call-up but he hit .161 and after granting him free agency, he could have gone elsewhere but he decided that he wanted to stay in the organization. He re-signed in December and he has picked up where he left off for the Wings.

Blankenhorn was named International League player of the week for April 15-21 and he was just named the Nationals’ organizational player of the month for April. Through Thursday, he leads the Red Wings with eight homers and 22 RBI, he’s batting .286 with a .369 on-base and a .981 OPS.

“It was the best opportunity for me coming back here,” he said of returning to Rochester. “I was comfortable, I like the organization, I like the coaches, I like being here.”

His decision certainly made LeCroy happy, knowing he’d have the 27-year-old Blankenhorn, a veteran with more than 700 minor league games and 3,000 plate appearances, back in his lineup.

“We’d love to have a guy like him back and he didn’t think he’d come back, but then I see it and it was sweet because you know he can hit three or four in your lineup,” LeCroy said. “I still think he’s got a chance to help our big league team at some point this year. As long as he stays healthy, he should get that opportunity.”

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out every other Friday during the offseason, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Travis Blankenhorn finds success in minors with Rochester Red Wings