Freshman Impact Can’t Be Overlooked for Mountaineers
April 16, 2020 11:22 AM | Baseball
With so much recent talk around the immediate future of college baseball circling around seniors – and rightfully so – it’s been easy to overlook other parts of a club’s roster.
For the West Virginia University baseball team, one of those areas is its sizable freshman class. For those 14 first-time collegiate student-athletes who were just getting in the swing of things at the Division-I level, the sudden end to the 2020 season has left many of them already anxious to get going again.
It also halted an important step in the maturation process of becoming productive players at the next level.
Playing consistent, really good talent and having to go out there and grind every game, every single inning took a little while to get used to. But I thought we were doing really well; we had some momentum going into conference play.Freshman Catcher/Infielder Matt McCormick
McCormick was one of the Mountaineers’ many bright spots to begin the year. The Orland Park, Illinois, native hit .364 with three homers and 11 RBIs in 16 games, showing the type of early production typically expected beyond his years.
However, the power-hitting lefty portrayed what became a theme for the Mountaineers in the early going – the ability to step into a role and deliver. Despite one of the youngest rosters in program history, WVU opened the year with an 11-5 mark, good for the program’s best 16-game start since 2009.
That type of success wouldn’t have been possible without a youthful club learning quickly on the go.
“We were cooking pretty good,” WVU coach Randy Mazey said in regard to the team’s start to the campaign. “We were doing really well in our midweek games again – we threw a no-hitter and shut out a good Liberty team. So, we were on our way to Texas Tech (to begin Big 12 play) feeling pretty good about ourselves when the news of the virus came crashing down.”
The freshmen’s readiness to grow during that time didn’t go unnoticed by the team’s veterans, either.
“We knew we were going to have a young team, but from a maturity aspect, they wanted to grow up quickly,” redshirt senior right-handed pitcher Dillon Meadows said. “They prepared for what (the older players) knew was coming. They wanted to grow up because they knew how successful we’ve been, and they wanted to be a part of that, too.”
But adjusting to college baseball for the first time goes beyond being at the diamond on game day. The early-season travel can often wear on young players, especially when playing 13 of 16 games on the road like the Mountaineers did, and juggling schoolwork with an already loaded schedule can be a challenge, too.
Throw in the typical nerves and search for confidence on the field, as well as the same reality all college freshmen face in being away from home for the first time, and suddenly, the adversity can be felt. Through it all, though, five true freshmen tallied at-bats and seven more reached the mound for West Virginia in 2020, and many of them wasted little time showcasing their talent in their new uniform.
Freshman left-hander Jake Carr was a pleasant surprise to many, as the St. Albans native stepped into the weekend rotation and went 2-1 with a 1.52 ERA and 12 strikeouts in four starts, while classmate Tyler Strechay tallied a 2-1 record with a 3.07 ERA in four starts. At the plate, McCormick already began taking on the look of one of the Big 12’s top freshmen hitters, while freshman outfielder Victor Scott recorded three triples and four stolen bases early on.
On March 4, four pitchers combined to throw WVU’s first nine-inning no-hitter since 2002. Of those four, three were freshmen. Rookie right-handers Strechay, Skylar Gonzalez and Jacob Watters were joined by Meadows in the 8-0 win over Kent State.
“I think we all realized quickly that we’re all in it together,” Strechay said of this year’s team. “We treat each other like a family, and we spend so much time together. We all know that we support each other and have each other’s backs. That makes it a lot easier to play with each other.”
Now, the young Mountaineers must wait for the next opportunity to continue their transition into college baseball. They’ll do so with the knowledge that much of the team could potentially stay intact, thanks to the recent NCAA Division I Council’s vote to grant an additional year of eligibility to all spring sport student-athletes, which has left many already looking forward to a freshman year do-over.
And if this season’s small sample size tells us anything about the group, it shows how ready the WVU freshmen will be to continue impact on the program upon return.
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