There’s a lot of names within the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates worth keeping an eye on. While the organization has utterly failed at their most important job, keeping the major league club competitive, their prospect pool is a fascinating deep dive.

But it will take you going pretty far down the list to get to Drake Fellows, a relatively unknown righty who has grown into a more veteran role in Triple-A Indianapolis, home of Pittsburgh’s top farm team.

Fellows was originally a sixth round pick by the San Diego Padres in 2019. Selected out of Vanderbilt University, Fellows was having the summer of a lifetime. Before his draft, his college comrades, the Commodores, had won the College World Series.

Now, he was heading to sunny San Diego with a chance for a major league career.

But that summer of success came to a screeching halt when he was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma shortly after signing with the Padres organization.

But his journey in professional ball probably took many more turns that Fellows had expected, and it took quite a long time for Fellows to be able to get his legs under him.

Fighting that diagnosis, plus the cancelation of the entire minor league baseball circuit in 2020 due to Covid-19 meant that Fellows never actually pitched while he was a member of the Padres organization.