Former Paloma Valley star Nolan gets big break with Yankees

By Doug Spoon, Editor

Whatever baseball skills Chance Nolan developed as a 12-year-old sure stuck with him. By his own admission, he had no idea they wouldn’t come in handy again until age 25.

Nolan, a standout as a kid playing travel baseball, appeared to have given up the sport when, as a freshman at Paloma Valley High School, he decided football was his future. Being groomed as the eventual varsity quarterback, Nolan focused on football. He did not play high school baseball and made a name for himself on the football field.

In his three-year varsity football career at Paloma Valley, Nolan passed for 9,024 yards and 104 touchdowns. He passed for 3,797 yards and 43 TDs in his senior year of 2017, leading the Wildcats to a 10-3 record and to the CIF Division 5 semifinals. That led to a college football career that included stints at Middle Tennessee State, Saddleback College, Oregon State, and a short time at TCU.

So where is Nolan now? He’s a pitcher in the New York Yankees’ minor league system. Makes sense, right?

Even Nolan admits it’s been a long and unusual journey.

“It all happened so fast,” Nolan said in a phone interview last week from Tampa, where he has been in the Yankees’ spring training camp since signing a minor league contract Jan. 28. “I kind of have to pinch myself when I’m in the locker room and I look around. If you had told me a couple years ago I would be here, I would’ve said, ‘No way.’”

Nolan became well-known in the college football ranks at Oregon State, where he started 19 games at quarterback from 2020 to 2022. He passed for 4,153 yards and 32 touchdowns, leading Oregon State to the 2021 LA Bowl. But he suffered a neck injury midway through the 2022 season and lost his starting job.

Nolan transferred to TCU for the following season but left the program before the end of fall camp. Looking back, he says that was one of the toughest times of his life.

“For the first time in my life, I was very transparent with football,” Nolan said. “I thought about all the injuries, the number of times I took hits to the head. I started doing all the camp stuff (at TCU), but on the third day I just remember thinking, “What am I doing?” I just started crying. Football is a game you have to play with your whole soul and heart. The desire to play football just wasn’t there anymore.”

Although he had received several concussions over the years, Nolan had never suffered what he considered a serious injury. He knew at that point in time, he was still in good physical shape. Stuck in a six-month lease in Ft. Worth, he sat in his apartment and wondered what to do next.

“He sat there thinking, ‘I’ve got the rest of my life ahead of me. What do I want to do?’” recalled Chance’s father, Mark Nolan. “I texted him one day at like 6 in the morning and I said, ‘You used to be a hell of a baseball player and you have a cannon for an arm. Why don’t you trying pitching again?’ He said, 'Dad, I’ve been thinking the same thing'.”

Chance began working with a pitching coach. “He got on the mound and threw 91 right away,” Mark said. It took a while to master control problems, but he was hitting 100 mph by the end of the summer. Chance decided to contact Morningside University, an NAIA school in Sioux City, Iowa, where his brother Cade played baseball.

“I had a nice little curveball and a four-seamer (fastball),” Chance recalled about his arrival at Morningside in January 2024. “When I first got to camp, I was originally a closer and I was striking everyone out. But when I got into games, I had trouble with my command."

Chance Nolan played three outstanding varsity football seasons at Paloma Valley. (File photo)

 
Nolan appeared in seven games, pitching 3.1 innings with a 2.70 ERA. After the season, he moved home to Menifee and continued to work on his pitching with a local coach. He also spent many hours in his “baseball customized” back yard, throwing hard off a mound and working on his mechanics.

Nolan soon found out about Driveline, a nationally known baseball training program. Nolan went to Scottsdale and worked with experts who studied him with the latest technology, including “motion capture analysis”, which uses video equipment to capture body movements and suggest adjustments in mechanics.

Seeing Nolan’s potential as a pitcher, coaches encouraged him to prepare for a Pro Day – a tryout before pro scouts. So on Jan. 17, 2025, he threw off a mound in front of about 10 scouts along with other prospects. Mark Nolan was there to watch his son pitch.

“Everything he threw was over 95,” Mark Nolan said. “He had the fastball going, a change, a sinker. You could tell that with the scouts ... nothing they had watched before caught their attention. Then Chance throws his first ball 99 and suddenly every scout was watching. There wasn’t a peep out of them.”

Several scouts immediately showed interest in the 25-year-old right-hander, with the Chicago Cubs and Seattle Mariners among those most interested. Then a couple days later, the Yankees called.

“They were adamant about having the ability to develop me,” Chance said. “They definitely showed the most interest and offered the most money.”

Nolan is optimistic as he works out daily in Tampa, where major leaguers are beginning to report for spring training. He certainly is not the youngest pitcher in Yankees camp, but he has a live arm and is ready for wherever the Yankees send him in the minor leagues.

“The Yankees told him, ‘It was very important what you did by yourself,’” Mark Nolan said, referring to the hours Chance threw off a mound in his Menifee back yard last summer and fall. “They said they were actually glad he hasn’t been pitching the last few years because his arm is fresh. A lot of guys his age have already had Tommy John surgery by now.”

So today, as major league pitchers and catchers report to Yankees spring training camp, Nolan has already been on site for almost two weeks, preparing for a career he couldn’t have imagined a couple years ago. Although he’s a few years older than many of the young signees reporting to baseball camps this week, Nolan is optimistic about the opportunity.

“Actually, you’d be surprised how many low A and high A players are 25, 26,” he said. “I may be a little late, but the Yankees told me they just drafted someone who’s 25.

“I’ll be patient. Obviously I’ll be at a low level at least the first couple months. I’ll give it three or four years. I want to trust the process.”