Happy Hacker
May 15, 2006 05:26 PM | General
May 15, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- From the moment Justin Jenkins first laced up a pair of spikes and put on his stirrups, he has always been able to hit a baseball. Some guys can talk about hitting, breaking it down into a precise science. The real good ones like Jenkins just go up to the plate and let it rip. Their bats do the talking.
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| Junior Justin Jenkins leads a free-swinging West Virginia offense that ranks first in the Big East with a .344 batting average.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
“The guys that have to try and figure it out are the ones that can’t do it,” says West Virginia coach Greg Van Zant. “Justin is just a great hitter. He probably crawled out of his crib hitting.”
The late Roberto Clemente once said the best way to snap out of a hitting slump is to swing the bat, figuring that if you swing it 12 times during a game (three times each in four at-bats) the chances are much better of you getting at least one hit.
Apparently Jenkins is on the same wave length. As of Monday, West Virginia’s junior third baseman has walked just eight times in 222 official at-bats this year, or three fewer times than he’s been hit by pitches.
Jenkins has also hit more home runs this season (10) than he’s hung around at the plate waiting for free passes. Last year he produced a 12-home run season as a sophomore in 2005, giving him 22 round-trippers in only 105 career games. Jenkins has hit home runs at a rate of once every 4.8 games during his career. Compare that to WVU career home run leader Tim McCabe who hit 35 home runs in 207 games for an average of one home run every 5.9 games.
The point is this: the way Jenkins has hit the ball his first two years at WVU, even if he doesn’t get a single hit the remainder of the season his performance still ranks among the best in school history.
Jenkins is just six hits shy of breaking Mark Landers’ school record of 91 established in 61 games in 1994, and his .373 career batting average already places him fourth in school history. Jenkins has crept up the school career charts in doubles (third), extra base hits (fifth) and home runs (ninth) despite playing in about half as many games as the leaders in those categories.
“He’s one of the best hitters we’ve ever had,” admits Van Zant, who counts All-Americans Mark Landers and Joe McNamee among those he’s coached at WVU.
But any aspiring hitters out there looking for batting tips from the soft-spoken Jenkins might as well forget it. You have a better chance of getting advice from Clemente, Ted Williams or any others out there on a Ouija board.
“I’m just looking for something to drive into the gaps, especially when there are runners in scoring position,” Jenkins says of his hitting philosophy. “My main focus is trying to put the ball in play and hitting it as hard as I can.”
The free-swinging Mountaineers currently lead the Big East in batting with a .344 average, .17 points higher than second-place St. John’s at .327. West Virginia hackers have the best slugging percentage in the league (.489), have scored (416) and driven in the most runs (371), and are tied with Rutgers with the most home runs (45).
Last weekend, Mountaineer batters danced through a dozen different Cincinnati pitchers to the tune of 50 hits and 32 runs in a three-game series sweep. In West Virginia’s 13-12 victory over the Bearcats on Saturday, Cincinnati coach Brian Cleary went to the bull pen five different times. Each pitcher came into the game having the look of a condemned man making the long walk to the electric chair.
Jenkins admits its easy batting third in a lineup full of .300 hitters.
“If I didn’t have Doug (Nelms) in front of me and Stan (Posluszny) behind me along with Kyle (Matuszek) and Casey (Bowling), I wouldn’t see the pitching that I am,” he says. “All down the lineup we’ve been pretty strong. It’s been interesting.”
Jenkins’ path to Morgantown is interesting, too. After being born in Wiley Ford, W.Va., about a Tiger Woods driver and 3-wood away from Ridgeley -- which is on the other side of the Potomac River from Cumberland, Md. -- he spent the next 12 years living in Corsicana, Texas, roughly 60 miles south of Fort Worth. Then when he was in the sixth grade his family decided to move back to Ridgeley.
“It was a real big adjustment for me,” he said. “We played year-round down there and I was on a real good Little League team. They wanted me to stay there but my parents chose to move back to West Virginia. It was kind of disappointing at first but things eventually worked out.”
Jenkins played football, basketball and baseball at Frankfort High School but baseball was by far his best sport. Van Zant noticed him playing in an American Legion game the summer after his senior year and he knew then that Jenkins was a good enough hitter to play at WVU right away.
“When I first saw him I thought, man this kid can hit,” Van Zant said. “But he was not ready to go to a big school right out of high school. I would have loved to have had him and got him in our program right away.”
“I just felt that I wasn’t ready to go to Division I right out of high school,” Jenkins said. “I thought I needed to go a step down to get some time against college pitchers and really work on some things fielding wise.”
So Jenkins first went to Potomac State, where former WVU assistant coach Doug Little has developed a powerhouse junior college program. Jenkins broke into the lineup as a freshman and earned second team junior college All-America honors in 2003.
Then in the summer right before his second year at Potomac State Jenkins hurt his left shoulder diving for a ground ball.
“I didn’t rehab or anything, I went back to Potomac State and played half the fall and then I dislocated my shoulder again. I had to have surgery and missed the whole year,” he said.
Even though Jenkins had a bum shoulder, Van Zant and other colleges like Coastal Carolina knew enough about him to offer him a scholarship.
“(Coastal Carolina) didn’t know that I had already signed with West Virginia when they called me,” Jenkins said. “I had contact with other schools but West Virginia was pretty much my first choice.”
Despite the success he had at Potomac State, Jenkins still wasn’t sure he could do it at West Virginia playing in the Big East Conference.
“Guys in Division I are so much stronger and so much bigger and faster,” he said. “I worked with the strength coaches here a lot: they have done an amazing job with helping me out and getting me to where I am today.”
Where exactly Jenkins is at right now is hard to tell in the fickle eyes of professional baseball scouts. While he is easily one of the top hitters on the East Coast, Jenkins probably doesn’t have a strong enough arm to play third base professionally. The best position for him may eventually be left field.
“I have had some scouts that I’ve talked to but I haven’t really thought about that much,” Jenkins said of being drafted. “It’s always a Division I college athlete’s dream to get drafted.”
Right now, Jenkins says he is more concerned about finishing out this year with a flourish.
“We’re hitting the ball well, we’re fielding well and we’re coming on pretty strong right now,” he said. “Hopefully we can make a run through the Big East tournament.”
The way this team hits the baseball there is a good possibility of that happening. Just don’t expect any long-winded explanations from the team’s best hitter Justin Jenkins.
