Phillippe Aumont

Phillippe Aumont pitched in 46 big-league games over the course of four seasons for the Philadelphia Phillies (2012-2015). A tall (6-feet-7), powerfully-built (265 pounds), and hard-throwing (fastball in the high 90s) right-hander, Aumont is as of 2022 the player from Quebec selected highest in the amateur free-agent draft. The Seattle Mariners made the 18-year-old hurler from Gatineau, Quebec, the 11th overall selection in the first round of the 2007 draft.  Aumont pitched professionally for 13 years, spending time in the Mariners, Detroit Tigers, Toronto Blue Jays, and Chicago White Sox organizations as well as for the Phillies, where he completed the entirety of his major-league service. He worked almost exclusively as a relief pitcher for the Phillies, starting just one game in his career. Aumont posted a 1-6 career record with an ERA of 6.80 during a major-league career highlighted not only by his status as an important milestone holder in Canadian baseball history but also the 2012 and 2013 campaigns, when he served as a key stopper in Philadelphia’s bullpen.

Aumont was born on January 7, 1989, in Gatineau, a city of more than 275,000 that sits across the Ottawa River from Canada’s capital city. The future major leaguer grew up in a working-class Francophone neighborhood and was raised primarily by his father, Jean-Pierre Aumont, who worked as a laborer for a moving company.1  

“Where I come from, we speak French. English is something you start to learn in school and past that, nobody really uses it,” Aumont said of his upbringing in a 2021 interview.2 He spent most of his time as a young man outside, playing with other children from his neighborhood. At age 11, he started playing baseball competitively and soon joined up with Canada’s national baseball program, playing in junior tournaments across North America. As Aumont grew during his adolescence, the baseball-mad teenager started to draw interest from baseball scouts. 

“My style of pitching was more power pitching than anything else. I never wanted you to touch the ball. All I was shooting for was a strikeout. Period,” Aumont said.3 His size and strength helped make his approach to pitching highly successful.

“My high-school career was great. I won many trophies and many medals,” Aumont recalled.4 As a junior in high school, he first realized that scouts were following his games closely, but this came as a surprise to him despite his success.

“I had no vision on going further and playing pro. The dream wasn’t really something I had coming up. I love to compete and when I do, I always want to win,” Aumont said.5

When the Mariners made Aumont their first-round pick in 2007, selecting him from high school (Ecole du Versant in Gatineau), it was a significant milestone in the baseball history of Quebec. Never before had a native son of La Belle Province been selected so highly in the first round. The most recent Quebecer selected in the first round previous to Aumont was Ntema Ndungidi of Montreal, an outfielder selected 36th overall in the 1997 draft by the Baltimore Orioles. Only two previous Canadians, pitchers Adam Loewen and Jeff Francis (both selected in 2002), had been selected higher than Aumont in baseball’s amateur draft.

“I had great support locally. People were really happy about it and I certainly gained a little bit more fame,” Aumont said of the experience.6

The Mariners, too, were excited to get their hands on the robust young prospect. 

“The first time I saw him last summer, he was throwing 92-93 [MPH] at the time, with the makings of a slider and some sink on his fastball,” Mariners scout Dave May said of Aumont to the Seattle Times. “This spring, he was up to 96 on his fastball with heavy sink and his slider got better. With him getting better and better, I think he has one of the highest ceilings of anyone in this draft.”7

Aumont signed with the Mariners and progressed rapidly in their minor-league organization. At just 20 years of age, he advanced to Double A, spending much of the summer of 2009 with the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx of the Southern League. The trajectory of Aumont’s career changed in December 2009 when he was one of three players (the other two being minor-league outfielder Tyson Gillies and pitcher JC Ramírez) sent to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for 2008 Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee. The trade didn’t really pan out for either club. Lee spent less than half a season in Seattle while Aumont, Ramírez, and Gillies all failed to turn into long-term big leaguers.

For the next three seasons, Aumont bounced around the Philadelphia organization before debuting for the Phillies on August 23, 2012. In 2010 the Phillies organization tried Aumont out as a starter in Double-A Reading with little success. In 2011 he made a combined 43 relief appearances in Reading and Triple-A Lehigh Valley with much greater success. Before making his big-league debut in August, Aumont was again a stalwart in Lehigh Valley’s bullpen, making 41 appearances with an ERA of 4.26.

Aumont recalled the jitters he felt when he entered his first major-league game at Citizens Bank Park. He came in for the eighth inning against the Cincinnati Reds.

“The gut feeling when you get the phone call in the bullpen to start warming up. The adrenaline kicks in and it just feels surreal,” Aumont recalled.8 The 23-year-old rookie did great in his debut, pitching a scoreless inning while surrendering a walk to Miguel Cairo. The Phillies went on to win 4-3 in 11 innings that evening.9 Aumont’s strong debut presaged a strong rookie campaign. Over the next two months, he made 18 appearances for Philadelphia, earning two saves and garnering a 3.68 ERA as a middle reliever.

The Gatineau native split the 2013 between Triple-A Lehigh Valley (International League) and Philadelphia. He again performed admirably for the Phillies, making a career-high 22 appearances, all in relief. In 2013, Aumont had a 4.19 ERA for the season and a 1-3 overall record.

Aumont gained his first and only career victory on April 12, 2013, against the Miami Marlins. He entered a 1-1 game in the bottom of the ninth inning at Marlins Park and faced three batters. He retired Plácido Polanco on a groundout, walked Justin Ruggiano, and got Greg Dobbs to hit into a double play. Chase Utley and Michael Young drove in runs for the Phils in the top of the 10th and Jonathan Papelbon finished off Miami in the bottom of the inning, earning the save to Aumont’s win.

 “I came out, did my job to put up a zero on the board and we scored the next inning with Papelbon closing it out,” Aumont recalled.10

For whatever reason, Aumont could never break out of his status as a borderline big-league pitcher in the Philadelphia organization. Both at the major- and minor-league levels, he had a tendency to give up walks and home runs – both were certainly a product of his power-pitching approach to the game. The 2014 and 2015 seasons proved to be particularly frustrating ones for Aumont. During both campaigns, he pitched well for Lehigh Valley but struggled in his rare appearances at the major-league level.

In all, Aumont made just five appearances for the Phillies in 2014, posting an ERA of 19.06 for the season. In 2015 he made just one major-league appearance.

On June 19, 2015, Aumont started his first game in the majors. He surrendered six earned runs to the St. Louis Cardinals in four innings, taking the loss in a 12-4 Cards win. The defeat proved to be not only Aumont’s first career start but also his final major-league appearance and his only appearance of the 2015 major-league season. The Phillies released Aumont shortly thereafter, thus beginning a more than half-decade odyssey throughout Organized Baseball.

On June 28, 2015, Aumont signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and made five appearances for the Buffalo Bisons, the club’s Triple-A affiliate. Toronto released him in late August. He joined the Chicago White Sox organization during the offseason and spent the first half of the 2016 campaign with the Triple-A Charlotte Knights before being released. In 2017 Aumont returned to his old stamping grounds, pitching for the Ottawa Champions of the independent Canadian-American Association.

The Detroit Tigers were sufficiently impressed with Aumont’s performance in Ottawa to sign him to a minor-league contract in January 2018. The then 29-year-old pitcher spent the vast majority of the season with the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens and was released after the season.

After his release by the Tigers, Aumont re-signed with Ottawa of the Canadian-American Association in 2019 and enjoyed a renaissance season. Working exclusively as a starter, he was named the league’s Pitcher of the Year, going 8-4 with a 2.65 ERA. In one outing, Aumont struck out a league-record 18 batters.11 His production in 2019 earned Aumont another opportunity to make it back to the big leagues.

In December 2019 Aumont signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and gave it another shot in spring training. Before Major League Baseball shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March of 2020, Aumont made two appearances for the Blue Jays in spring training. Amid the shutdown, he decided to retire from baseball and pursue family farming on a farmstead just outside Gatineau. As of the June 2021 interview, he and his wife, Frederique, were still settling into the 12-hour workday on the farm.  

“This is our first year growing crops in greenhouses. We plan to grow fully organic in high tunnels and outside in the fields within the next three to five years,” Aumont said of his life after baseball.  “We want to create a bit of an ecosystem on the farm where we can develop self-sufficiently and also feed our community with organic foods and get away from industrial chemicals foods.”12

Looking back on his big-league career, Aumont said he felt a great sense of pride.

“From where I come from to where I am now, not many people in the world can say they did and experienced what I did. I’m proud to be part of that.”13

Photo credit: Courtesy of Phillippe Aumont.

Notes

1 Phillippe Aumont, interview by the author, June 14, 2021; David Singh, “Why Phillipe Aumont Gave Up Pro Baseball to Become a Pitcher,” Sportsnet, September 13, 2020. Accessed September 14, 2020: https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/longform/phillippe-aumont-gave-pro-baseball-become-farmer/.

2 Aumont interview.

3 Aumont interview.

4 Aumont interview.

5 Aumont interview.

6 Aumont interview.

7 Scott Hanson, “M’s Pick Up Aumont at No. 11,” Seattle Times, June 8, 2007. Accessed on September 14, 2020: https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/ms-pick-up-aumont-at-no-11/.

8 Aumont interview.

9 “Phillies Slip Past Reds in 11th on RBI Single from John Mayberry Jr.,” ESPN.com, August 23, 2012. Accessed September 14, 2020: https://www.espn.com/mlb/recap?gameId=320823122.

10 Aumont interview.

11 “Champions Hurler Sets Single-Game Strikeout Record,” CBC.com, July 17, 2019. Accessed September 14, 2021: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phillippe-aumont-gatineau-strikeout-record-champions-1.5214601.

12 Aumont interview.

13 Aumont interview.