Most of the biggest names in college pitching were on display yesterday as Friday Starters in college baseball's opening day. Matt Imhoff's draft stock undoubtedly took a big jump with the top performance of the day as he dominated a very good Kansas St. team. Here's the rundown:
Matt Imhoff, LHP, Cal Poly: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 14 K's.
Luke Weaver, RHP, FSU: 6 IP, 0 H, 1 BB, 7K. (Note the 6 inning no-no).
Brandon Finnegan, LHP, TCU: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 13 K.
Aaron Nola, RHP, LSU: 6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 6 K.
Tyler Beede, RHP, Vanderbilt: 5 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 7 K's.
Thomas Eshelman, RHP, Cal State Fullerton: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 8 K's.
Daniel Mengdon, RHP, Northeastern: 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 11 K.
Erick Fedde, RHP, UNLV: 7.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 11 K.
Andrew Morales, RHP, UCI: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 8 K's.
Travis Radke, RHP, Portland: 4.2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 7 K's. vs UCLA.
Matt Ditman, RHP, Rice(So): 4 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 10 K's(in relief vs Stanford).
Daulton Jeffries, RHP, Cal(Fr): 6 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 4 K's.
Jeff Hoffman, RHP, East Carolina: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 6 K's.
Michael Cederoth, RHP, SDSU: 3.2 IP, 3 H, 5 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 6 K.
Jeremy Null, RHP, Western Carolina: 8 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 12 K. Draft alert! Null is a 6'8", 230 lbs junior who put up this line last year: 9-2, 3.36, 91 IP, 27 BB, 109 K.
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Thanks for posting these! NC State's opener was cancelled due to weather, so I think we should see Rodon take the mound today. The FSU game was broadcast on ESPN3, but by the time I figured it out, Weaver had been pulled. Bummer!
ReplyDeleteI'll be in Anaheim in a couple of months, and I'm really hoping to attend a Fullerton game. Eshelman is very interesting... incredible walk rates, but he just doesn't have much for velocity right now. He's young though, even for a college soph I believe. Maybe it'll tick up some by the time he's draft-eligible.
Is there a particular website that you use to get these stats? I had seen many of these lines on Twitter, but some of them were not mentioned. Do you comb through box scores or pull these from some type of "highlights" section on a site?
Most of these I got from BA, which had a non-subscriber article summarizing the results this morning. I also do sometimes comb through box scores on the official NCAA baseball website D1 Baseball linked over on the left.
DeleteAdded a few more names after the original post. Grab a look at Jeremy Null!
DeleteNull is very interesting. BLF has a profile on him from last July. Says he tops out around 90 right now, but they full believe his mechanics are getting in the way of a 95 mph fastball (or more). Maybe he made some big changes this offseason. I love Imhof's size, from Cal Poly. 6-5 lefty, 225 lbs. Pretty impressive performance, as was Feddy from UCLA. This is looking like it could be the year of the pitcher in NCAA.
DeleteThanks for posting this... Watched Hawaii's opener against Oregon last night.. Saw a pretty good Soph. LHP coming out the Ducks bullpen by the name of Garrett Cleavinger and you can see why he was 9-0 1.24 43IP 24W 57K throwing a low 90's fastball and filthy slider in the mid 80's.. Someone to watch in 2015.. I'm anxious to see another LHP for Hawaii by the name of Scott Squier who pitches on Sunday.. He has a chance to be a high draft pick in 2014..
ReplyDeleteI can't help but think why couldn't the Giants have lost 3 more games in 2013, they could have had a top 10 protected pick. Maybe their approach to the offseason would have been different. They would have had a better chance at selecting an impact talent at #8-10 vs #14 which is in the middle of the 1st round.
LG
This is looking like a really deep draft, so I think the Giants will get someone really good at #14.
DeleteAgreed, they should get someone good.. Just thought they would have had a little more players to choose from if they were in the top 10. Forgot to mention that I heard that college baseball will adapt a flat-seamed baseball, which is used in professional baseball, in 2015. They currently use a raised-seamed baseball.. The NCAA concluded its research saying that they hope this increases the offensive production in the college game.. According to their research, the flat-seamed ball traveled something like 20 feet farther then the raised-seamed ball... My feeling is why not adapt it now!
DeleteLG
LG
Yup. Offense is WAY down in college baseball!
DeleteI expect a big year from Finnegan. I believe he tightened up his slider last summer with some help from Carlos Rodon, who showed him how he grips/throws the slider. This was before his Team USA stint, where he dominated. Apparently his slider has gone from a plus-ish "slurve" to a much more biting, possible plus-plus "whipeout" pitch. I tried to find the link to the comment/article about Rodon showing Finnegan his grip, but no luck.
ReplyDeleteDan
That's interesting. Rodon didn't start unit Sunday. He pitched OK, 1 ER in 6 IP with 6 K's, but got whupped by something called Canisius.
DeleteKind of slow at work, so I did some more digging. Here's the link to the article (it's actually a whole piece on his coming back from his 0-8 previous season and pitching with Team USA. I forgot that he actually played with Rodon on Team USA and got the tip prior to the Japan series):
Deletehttp://www.star-telegram.com/2013/07/26/5033189/tcus-brandon-finnegan-leaves-0.html
Here's the part of the article on the slider:
A pointer from North Carolina State left-hander Carlos Rodon before the Japan series helped turn Finnegan’s average slider into a devastating out pitch.
Rodon, who has the most effective slider in the college game, Schlossnagle said, showed Finnegan how he holds the ball.
“He told me to throw it like a fastball, to throw it as hard as I could,” Finnegan said. “Before my slider was pretty much 78 to 81, maybe. Changing the grip and the way I thew it I was getting it up to 89 mph the whole game.”
Before making the change, Finnegan said, the pitch looked more like a slurve, a bit too loopy to be consistently effective.
“It makes it a lot sharper and a lot harder for guys to hit, obviously,” he said. “It just dives out of the zone real quick. I got to where I could repeat it every game I pitched.”
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/07/26/5033189/tcus-brandon-finnegan-leaves-0.html#storylink=cpy
And why does Canisius actually ring a bell, have they been successful in baseball or hoops before, or had a player make it from there? It looks like the Wolfpack forgot to pack their bats!
Dan