Cloney’s Shutout Brings Arizona To The Brink

OMAHA—On June 8, 2015, Jay Johnson spoke to the media for the very first time as Arizona’s head coach. By most accounts, Johnson won over both reporters and Wildcats fans in that introductory press conference.

But he wasn’t done winning people over.

After the press conference ended, Johnson pulled out his cell phone and called J.C. Cloney, a lefthander at College of the Canyons in Castaic, Calif.,—and a commitment to the previous Arizona coaching staff as a juco transfer.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Johnson asked. “Nothing,” Cloney said.

“I’ll be there tomorrow.”

GAME AT A GLANCE

Turning Point: Going into the seventh inning, Arizona was still clinging to the one-run lead it established in the first inning. The Wildcats were able to expand their lead with two runs in the seventh, adding critical insurance runs on a sacrifice fly from Zach Gibbons and a two-out single from Ryan Aguilar. The Hero: Lefthander J.C. Cloney didn’t overpower Coastal, but kept the Chanticleers from ever getting into a rhythm at the plate. The junior held them to four hits – two of which came in the ninth – and three walks, while striking out six batters in a complete game effort. You Might Have Missed: Coastal righthander Zack Hopeck made his first start since regionals, and threw a career-high 6 1/3 innings. He held Arizona to two runs on five hits and three walks, but with Cloney shutting down Coastal’s offense, Hopeck suffered his first loss in 16 appearances, a streak that dated back to March 2, 2015. Box Score

The next morning, Johnson took a 6 a.m. flight out of Tucson, Ariz., showed up at Cloney’s Los Angeles home at 1 p.m. and gave Cloney his best pitch for why he should honor his commitment to Arizona—the one he made to previous head coach Andy Lopez.

“The two things I remember most were him saying he had the best pitching coach in the country (Dave Lawn)—and him denying my mom’s cookies,” Cloney said. “When he denied the cookies, I knew it was going to be a fun year.”

Johnson said he turned down the cookies so he could “stay focused on the task.” He wanted to win Cloney over—and it’s a good thing he did. Both men reaped the rewards on Monday night.

As it would turn out, the first recruit Johnson went after as Arizona’s head coach was also the man on the mound in the first game of the College World Series finals—and on Monday, facing Coastal Carolina, Cloney showed exactly why Johnson went after him so hard, pitching the Wildcats to a 3-0 win over the Chanticleers and putting Arizona on the brink of a national title.

Facing a potent lineup, Cloney held the Chanticleers to just four hits in a shutout, keeping them off-balance with a three-pitch mix and dotting his 84-87 mph fastball on the corners. After throwing seven scoreless innings against UC Santa Barbara earlier in the Series, Monday’s shutout pushed Cloney’s CWS scoreless innings streak to 16. The record is 16 1/3, set by Southern California’s John Stewart.

Cloney said he knew it was going to special night when he ate lunch at the same place as he did in his previous start—Spaghetti Works. He sat at the same table, with the same family members and ordered the same meal—the all-you-can-eat spaghetti.

Even still, he had no idea he’d go the distance or throw a shutout.

“I still haven’t really wrapped my head around what happened,” Cloney said. When he first checked his phone after the game, he had 112 text messages.

“It means the world—it’s more getting the ‘W’ for the team. But to go out and have it happen today, there’s really no words for it. It’s incredible.”

The Chanticleers simply couldn’t square Cloney up. They didn’t get their first hit until the third inning, their second hit until the eighth. Relying heavily on his changeup, Cloney induced 14 ground-ball outs—the most any pitcher has induced in a shutout in the CWS finals.

“You want to sit on a fastball, and he throws you a cutter, and you sit on the offspeed, and he throws a fastball,” Coastal Carolina shortstop Michael Paez said. “He just threw a great game . . . It’s hard to hit when you have a guy that’s going to add and subtract, throw three pitches for strikes and keep you off balance all game.”

One of the few times Cloney made a mistake was to Paez in the eighth inning. With a man on first and Coastal Carolina down, 3-0, Paez drove a ball all the way to the wall, where right fielder Zach Gibbons made a leaping catch. Perhaps in a more hitter-friendly ballpark that would’ve been a two-run home run—but not in TD Ameritrade Park.

“I thought it was a short popup,” Cloney said. “I knew the park played bigger than it looks, but when I saw him get to the wall and look for the ball when he was on the track, I had to hold my breath for a second. But when he jumped up and caught it, it felt good, and I knew it was just, ‘Let them go hit now.’”

As they’ve done all Series, the Wildcats got on the board early against Coastal, scoring a first-inning run off of starter Zack Hopeck thanks to leadoff ground-rule double by second baseman Cody Ramer and an RBI knock by three-hole hitter Ryan Aguilar. Arizona has now scored seven of the nine runs in the first inning of this CWS, and the Wildcats are 15-0 all-time in TD Ameritrade Park when they’ve outscored opponents in the first inning.

Though the Wildcats would go on to tack on two insurance runs in the seventh, one run was truly all Cloney needed. He faced little trouble throughout the night, with the Wildcats only in scoring position once.

This was the kind of performance Johnson had envisioned when he went after Cloney a year ago.

“I knew for us to have any success, evaluating the program, we needed more starting pitching,” Johnson said. “And I knew because of the three- or four-pitch mix, he could potentially do it. He’s lefthanded. He throws strikes. We play in a big ballpark. I just knew he would be really, really valuable—and he’s been more than really, really valuable.”

Johnson had been interested in the lefthander for some time, recruiting him out of high school when he was still an assistant coach at San Diego.

But Cloney went to Long Beach State instead, on a 90-percent scholarship. When he suffered a stress fracture in his elbow his freshman year, the Dirtbags dropped the scholarship to 40 percent and Cloney moved on to junior college, where he’d return to health and pitch well enough to garner interest from Lopez and Arizona’s staff at the time.

Eventually, as a fate would have it, Cloney crossed paths with the recruiter he had spurned out of high school.

“Now it’s a little blessing in disguise,” Cloney said after his shutout. “Now I’m playing for him, and we’re one win away.”

Even though he ended the eighth with 107 pitches—and wound up with 122 at game’s end—Cloney made sure Johnson let him finish what he started Monday—what the both of them started a year ago.

“I walked in the dugout,” Cloney said. “And I told coach Johnson, ‘I got this. Tell the guys in the pen to sit down. This is my game.’”

And just like Johnson did in Cloney’s Los Angeles home on June 9, 2015, the lefthander won him over.